326 



whose historian severely animadverts upon their prevalence. Saint 

 Bernard, however, wrote with the same prejudices which actuated 

 Malachy, and his work is therefore too truly charactered as " the 

 grand reservoir, from which all succeeding defamers of the Irish 

 Church and nation have drawn their authorities and arguments."* 

 This much, however, is certain, that Malachy was the first who seri- 

 ously applied himself to abolishing such marriages. -f- 



At the synod of Cashel, held by Henry the Second in 1172, of 

 which and the decrees passed therein Giraldus gives a very full de- 

 tail, ;{: the attention of the assembly seems to have been particularly 

 directed to the prohibition of marriages within canonical degrees, and 

 the regulations of the ceremonies of celebrating lawful marriages, in 

 such an earnest manner, as seems to justify the reproaches of Lan- 

 franc§ and Anselm§ on that head ; further regulations were there also 

 made concerning the celebration of baptism in public churches, the 

 payment of tithes, the exemption of church lands from all taxes and 

 impositions, the due execution of wills by a person dying, " confes- 

 sore suo et vicinis astantibus," the rites of Christian burial, and the 

 introduction of the Roman liturgy. 



In the constitutions and canons of Comyn, Archbishop of Dublin, 

 at the close of the twelfth century, || confirmed by Pope Urban the 



« O'Halloran's History, vol. ii. p. 322. 



t Malachie archevesqued'Armaghe.enHibemie obeissantaux ordinances du papeCalixte, 

 i'ut le premier qui en son diocese renonce au marriage, ayans este tous ses predecesseurs mar- 

 ries ; tellement que ceste dignite archiepiscopale etoit venue jusques a luy de pere en fils par 

 cinque generations." — Vignier Hist, de I'Eglise, p. 338. And again, the same author says, 

 "Malachie legat du pape en Hibernie voulut contraindre les prestres de son diocese de laisser 

 leur femmes des quels ils auoient jusques alors use en marriage, dont il excita des grandz 

 troubles a I'encontre de luy." — Vignier, Hist, de I'Eglise, p. 350. 



J Hib. Expug. lib. i. c. 36. § See their letters in Usher's Sylloge. 



ii See Ware's Bishops, p. 316, and Lanigan, yuI. iv. p. 269. 



