418 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



importance. It must have been before 488, the year of the death of 

 Bishop Mel. This would be about the middle of the period of the 

 First Order ; or, again, if we adopt the date of St. Patrick's death, now 

 accepted by the best authorities as 463, we obtain a narrower limit, for 

 it would then have been at least 25 years earlier, and the members of 

 the Order must therefore have been fully acquainted with it. Taking 

 this into consideration, we have here a manifest contradiction. The 

 First Order who are honoured with the title of sanctissimi, and said to 

 have had St. Patrick in a special sense as their leader, are declared to 

 have, as their chief title to holiness, the observance of a practice strictly 

 forbidden by him, as well as by the most famous Synod of the Irish 

 Church. Surely such disobedience to the rule of the Founder of the 

 Church would be evidence of anything but holiness. Nor is the state- 

 ment, that the Second Order rejected it, more consistent with the facts 

 of history, for we find in the Calendar of Oengus,* St. Brendan, a pro- 

 minent member of the Second Order, holding an inquiry like St. Patrick 

 into a case of the kind. And in fact all through the early history of 

 the Church, and long after the close of the three periods referred to, 

 frequent mention occurs of the so-called sisters of saints living with 

 them, and assisting in their work. In the neighbourhood of Mill- 

 street, in the County of Cork, the people tell of a Saxon saint named 

 Bercert, who lived there with a sister ; and as his death is assigned 

 by the "Annals of the Four Masters" to 839, it brings down the prac- 

 tice to a late period. Local tradition records that the sister, on her 

 return home every evening, brought "the seed of the fire" in Jier 

 apron, which, owing to her sanctity, was incombustible. One evening 

 she arrived without the fire, and with a large hole burnt in her 

 apron. He demanded an explanation, and she told him her foot 

 had been admired by a shoemaker, who was measuring her for a pair 

 of shoes. This awakened feelings of vanity in her mind, and her 

 apron at once caught fire. The brightness of her holiness being 

 thus dimmed, he would no longer allow her to remain with him. 

 The idea seems to have prevailed widely that the sanctity of a saint 

 rendered her garments proof against fire, and this afforded an easy 

 way of establishing her innocence if it was called in question. "When 

 St. Patrick investigated the case of Bishop Mel, and ordered the 

 parties to separate, the story nevertheless goes on to describe the 

 sister as appearing before him holding burning embers in her chasuble, 



* Page xxxii. 



