(see p. 45, n. 1). And
he goes further when he asserts that none were allowed to be bishops who
were not of their family (Sec. 19); thus leaving the impression that
under the rule of the eight lay abbots--that is, for a century and a
half--Armagh was deprived of episcopal ministrations. But this is wholly
unhistorical. The Ulster Annals mention six bishops of Armagh,
contemporary with the lay abbots. They seem to have followed one another
in regular succession, and there is no indication that any one of them
belonged to the Clann Sinaich. They were no doubt monastic bishops, such
as are found in the Irish Church from the sixth century onwards, who
exercised the functions of their order at the bidding of the abbots.
They were probably not referred to in St. Bernard's document; and if
they were, one who had been trained in an entirely different
ecclesiastical system would have been at a loss to understand their
position.

Thus we conclude that St. Bernard, in the passage which we are
considering, used good material with conscientious care, but that he was
misled by lack of knowledge of Irish ecclesiastical methods. This result
is important because it may apparently be applied to the whole of his
memoir of St. Malachy. His statements, as a rule, stand well the test of
comparison with the native records; and when he is at fault we can
usually explain his errors as misunderstandings, due to ignorance of
conditions of which he had no experience.

St. Bernard has been charged with gross exaggeration in another passage.
"A great miracle to-day," he writes (Sec. 30), "is the extinction of
that generation, so quickly wrought, especially for those who knew their
pride and power." It is an extravagant hyperbole to say that either the
O'Neills, or the great tribe of the Oirgialla, represented to this day
by the Maguires, the O'Hanlons and the MacMahons, was blotted out when
the _Life of St. Malachy_ was written. So argued some in the time of
Colgan (_Trias_, p. 302). But they misrepresented St. Bernard. The word
"generation" obviously means in the sentence before us what it meant in
Sec. 19 ("adulterous generation")--not an extensive tribe, nor even the
Clann Sinaich as a whole, but the branch of that sept which provided
abbots for Armagh. The speedy extinction of a single family is not a
thing incredible. And it is worthy of remark that neither the Clann
Sinaich, nor any person described as ua Sinaich or mac Sinaich is
mentioned