Note 348 — Chapter X · THE CHURCH.

The Bishops of the Gaelic Church were ordained in the usual manner. Thus Finan, when he ordained Cedd, called in two other bishops to assist in performing the ceremony—Beda, Hist. Eccl., l. iii., c. 22. But many probably were chorepiscopi, at whose ordination it was only requisite for one bishop to officiate. It was this order, long suppressed and forgotten in the Roman Church, that scandalized Lanfranc, Anselm, and others, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. That the leading bishops of the Gaelic Church at this time were regularly ordained, may be inferred from the fact that there is no allusion to any re-ordination of bishops at the time when the Churches of Scotland and Ireland were remodelled. Perhaps “the dignity of Noble Bishop” (Uasal Escop., Vide A. F. M., 1106), may allude to the superior or episcopal order, as opposed to the inferior or chorepiscopal. The want of a fixed diocese must have contributed to impress the Irish bishops with that character for wandering which was so much complained of in the ninth century. Bishops without a diocese, however, were not confined to the Irish Church, as at a much later period, Olaf the Saint had his “Hird-Bishop,” whose peculiar duties must have attached him to the royal household. The necessity of episcopal ordination for the priesthood is implied in the story related of Columba by Adamnan, in his life of that saint. Upon hearing that Findchan, a priest, had “laid his hands” on the head of Aodh Dubh, to complete the ordination which the bishop had refused to proceed with, Columba exclaimed, “Illa manus dextra quam Findchanus, contra fas et jus ecclesiasticum, super caput filii perdicionis imposuit, mox computrescit.” Much information about the early Irish Church is contained in Dr. Reeves’ Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, etc., Appendix A. The custom of Iona, in the seventh century, as described by Beda, seems to have resembled the ancient custom of the Church of Alexandria, by which, “not the bishops, but twelve presbyters were the electors, nominators, and (according to Eutychius) consecrators.—(Stanley’s East. Church, p. 266, note 2.) These twelve presbyters are very like the twelve Culdees who formed, as it were, the Staff of every Gaelic monastery.