325 



forward exercised as one of natural right and universal extent over 

 all countries, " quibus soljustitiae Christus illuxit." ;nh 



In 1 175, in that very council at Windsor where the league was rati- 

 fied between Henry and Roderic, the former is recorded to have exer- 

 cised the first act of that authority in the ecclesiastical affairs of Ire- 

 land, which the Pope's Bull, if genuine, would have delegated to him, 

 in appointing a bishop to the then vacant see of Waterford, Hoveden 

 mentions this circumstance in his Annals, ad ann. 1175,* and it is 

 evident from his account, how prudently he exercised this first act of 

 interference, not only in selecting an Irishman for the see, and send- 

 ing him back in the company and as with the concurrence of the 

 Archbishop of Dublin, but also in directing him to be consecrated by 

 his future metropolitan. 



' Doubtless from the corrupt mode of domestic nomination, much 

 ecclesiastical disorder must have ensued. Saint Bernard attributes to 

 it a want of canonical discipline among the clergy, and a general im- 

 morality and superstition among the laity. -f* It was probably this 

 laxity of clerical example that caused the decree of the council of 

 Clane in 1163, that no one should be admitted a reader in divinity 

 unless he had been educated at Armagh. J On the subject of the mar- 

 riage of the clergy, although such marriages were severely reproved 

 in Cumian's Essay, " De Poenitentiarum mensura," (c. 3,) and in the 

 twelfth canon of Columbanus's Book upon the same subject, they yet 

 continued to be very generally practised^ to the time of Malachy, 



♦ In eodem vero concUio dedit rex Angliae magistro Augustino Hibernensi episcopatum 

 Waterfordiae, qui tunc vacabat in Hybemia. Et misit eum in Hybemiam cum Laurentio 

 Diviliniae archiepiscopo, ad consecrandum a Donate Cassiliensi archiepiscopo." 



+ " Inde tota ilia per universam Hyberniam, de qua multa snperius diximus, dissolutio 

 ecclesiasticas disciplinae, censurae enervatio, religionis evacatio, inde ilia ubique pro consuetudine 

 Christiana sseva introducta barbaries, &c." — Vita Malachiae, c. 7. 



X See Borlase's Reduction of Ireland, p. 44. § See Archdall. Mon. Hib. p. 23. 



