were? The community system alone afforded the necessary mutual
encouragement and protection to the missionaries. Each monastic station
became a base of operations. The numerous diminutive dioceses,
quasi-dioceses, or tribal churches, were little more than extensive
parishes and the missionary bishops were little more in jurisdiction
than glorified parish priests. The bishop's 'muintir,' that is the
members of his household, were his assistant clergy. Having converted
the chieftain or head of the tribe the missionary had but to instruct
and baptise the tribesmen and to erect churches for them. Land and
materials for the church were provided by the Clan or the Clan's head,
and lands for support of the missioner or of the missionary community
were allotted just as they had been previously allotted to the pagan
priesthood; in fact there can be but little doubt that the lands of the
pagan priests became in many cases the endowment of the Christian
establishment. It is not necessary, by the way, to assume that the
Church in Ireland as Patrick left it, was formally monastic. The clergy
lived in community, it is true, but it was under a somewhat elastic
rule, which was really rather a series of Christian and Religious
counsels. A more formal monasticism had developed by the time of
Mochuda; this was evidently influenced by the spread of St. Benedict's
Rule, as Patrick's quasi-monasticism, nearly two centuries previously,
had been influenced by Pachomius and St. Basil, through Lerins. The
real peculiarity in Ireland was that when the community-missionary
system was no longer necessary it was not abandoned as in other lands
but was rather developed and emphasised.



INTRODUCTION--ST. MOCHUDA