ors,
were too weak to interfere in the distant islands. The Irish relapsed
into the use of what is called the Celtic Easter, and to other
practices which were usual before Patrick's day and which served to cut
them off from the newly-converted Teutons, as well as from the Latin
world in general. [Sidenote: Death of S. Patrick, 461.] Patrick died
in 461. In 563 Columba, trained in the great schools which had sprung
up in the Irish monasteries, crossed to what is now called Scotland to
confirm the faith of the Irish settlers and to convert the heathen
Picts. The organisation of the Church to which he belonged was
essentially tribal and monastic. [Sidenote: The Celtic Church.] Though
S. Patrick had probably consecrated diocesan bishops in large numbers,
the Church soon became "predominantly monastic." Tribal feeling was so
strong that the Church, too, assimilated itself to the tribal idea, and
the Church's monasteries were her tribes. In a land where there were
no cities monasteries took their place, and the bishops naturally came
to dwell in them, and so to seem less prominent in their episcopal than
in their monastic aspect. The monks became the chief power in
Christian Ireland; and in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries
there were many bishops without dioceses, and it seems probable that
their rank, though not their function, was less important than that of
the abbats, the heads of the tribal monasticism.

In the seventh century again the Irish Church came back into closer
association with the Church throughout {115} Europe. This union was
due very largely to the influence of learning, and still more to the
influence of missionary zeal. "From Iceland to the Danube or the
Apennines, among Frank or Burgundian or Lombard, the Irish energy
seemed omnipotent and inexhaustible." [2] Into Ireland it would seem
that classical culture was introduced by the first Christian teachers,
and that from the first it was intended to serve as a preparation for
religious teaching.[3] It would seem that it was from Brittany that it
spread to Ireland. [Sidenote: The influences outside Ireland] The
schools of Ireland became famous. Books as diverse as the Antiphonary
of Bangor and Adamnan's Life of Columba show that the teaching in its
different ways was a sound and a liberal one.

In England the Irish tradition and influence spread. If the Celtic
school of Bangor perished in the stress of the bitter wars between
English a