om his kingdom, and divided
Munster in three parts. In fact, there was such a storm of war
throughout the whole country, that St. Celsus was obliged to interfere.
He spent a month and a year trying to establish peace, and promulgating
rules and good customs in every district, among the laity and clergy.
His efforts to teach "good rules and manners" seem to have been scarcely
effectual, for we find an immediate entry of the decapitation of
Ruaidhri, after he had made a "treacherous prey" in Aictheara. In the
year 1128 the good Archbishop succeeded in making a year's truce between
the Connaught men and the men of Munster. The following year the saint
died at Ardpatrick, where he was making a visitation. He was only fifty
years of age, but anxiety and care had worn him old. St. Celsus was
buried at Lismore, and interred in the cemetery of the bishops.

We must now give a brief glance at the ecclesiastical history of
Ireland, before narrating the events which immediately preceded the
English invasion.

In the year 1111 a synod was convened at Fidh Aengussa, or Aengus Grove,
near the Hill of Uisneach, in Westmeath. It was attended by fifty
bishops, 300 priests, and 3,000 religious. Murtough O'Brien was also
permitted to be present, and some of the nobles of his province. The
object of the synod was to institute rules of life and manners for the
clergy and people. St. Celsus, the Archbishop of Armagh, and
Maelmuire[238] or Marianus O'Dunain, Archbishop of Cashel, were present.
Attention had already been directed to certain abuses in ecclesiastical
discipline. Such abuses must always arise from time to time in the
Church, through the frailty of her members; but these abuses are always
carefully reprehended as they arise, so that she is no longer
responsible for them. It is remarkable that men of more than ordinary
sanctity have usually been given to the Church at such periods. Some
have withheld heretical emperors from deeds of evil, and some have
braved the fury of heretical princes. In Ireland, happily, the rulers
needed not such opposition; but when the country had been again and
again devastated by war, whether from foreign or domestic sources, the
intervention of saintly men was especially needed to restore peace, and
to repair, as far as might be, the grievous injury which war always
inflicts on the social state of those who have suffered from its
devastations.

Lanfranc, the great Archbishop of Canterbury, had alread