ngs of Ireland we find, in fact, two
kinds or classes of churches, the "ecclesiae majores" and "minores," if
we may call them so, and principally distinguished from each other by
their comparative length or size. It appears both from the remains of
the first class which still exist, and from the incidental notices which
occur of their erection, measurements, etc., in the ancient annals and
hagiology of Ireland, that the larger abbey or cathedral churches of
that country, whose date of foundation is anterior to the twelfth
century, were oblong quadrangular buildings, which rarely, if ever,
exceeded the length of 60 feet, and were sometimes less. In the
Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, he is described as prescribing 60 feet
as the length of the church of Donagh Patrick.[77] This "was also," says
Dr. Petrie, "the measure of the other celebrated chapels erected by him
throughout Ireland, and imitated as a model by his successors."[78]
"Indeed," he further observes, "that the Irish, who have been ever
remarkable for a tenacious adherence to their ancient customs, should
preserve with religious veneration that form and size of the primitive
church introduced by the first teachers of Christianity, is only what
might be naturally expected, and what we find to have been the fact. We
see," Dr. Petrie adds, "the result of this feeling exhibited very
remarkably in the conservation, down to a late period, of the humblest
and rudest _oratories_ of the first ecclesiastics in all those
localities where Irish manners and customs remained, and where such
edifices, too small for the services of religion, would not have been
deemed worthy of conservation, but from such feeling."[79]

The second or lesser type of the early Irish churches, or, in other
words, of the humble and rude oratories to which Dr. Petrie refers in
the last sentence of the preceding paragraph, were of a similar form,
but of a much smaller size than the larger or abbey churches.[80] We
have ample and accurate evidence of this, both in the oratories which
still remain, and in a fragment of the Brehon laws, referring to the
different payments which ecclesiastical artificers received according as
the building was--(1.) a duirtheach or small chapel or oratory; (2.) a
large abbey church or damhliag, etc.[81]

Generally, according to Dr. Petrie, the average of the smaller type of
churches or oratories may be stated to be about 15 feet in length, and
10 feet in breadth, though