509 



mixed up with more or less pure Gnosticism ; for, " the 

 greatest part of the Gnostics adopted very austere rules of 

 life, recommended rigorous abstinence, and prescribed severe 

 bodily mortifications, with the view of purifying and exalt- 

 ing the mind," like the Irish ascetics. " These tenets were 

 revived in Spain, in the fourth century, by a sect called 

 Priscillianists," where they may have been, to a certain de- 

 gree, suppressed by the instrumentality of missionaries and 

 seculars from Rome. The same system which existed in 

 Spain previously, and which planted those views there after- 

 wards, may have also planted them here; and the same 

 means which suppressed them there for a time, may have 

 here suppressed them; or there may have been, to a certain 

 degree, for several centuries, a compromise between the ad- 

 vocates of both systems, and that which was finally adopted 

 here, and called Christianity, may have, in a covert way, 

 contained much Gnosticism, particularly that branch of it 

 which was adopted by the ascetics, or Culdees, and small 

 religious communities, and by whom the first t£)wers may 

 have been originally built.* It is a curious circumstance, 

 not hitherto noticed by any writer on the Round Towers, 

 that the technical term for a Bauddist monastery in the East, 

 is a tower; no matter whether it be a cave in the earth, or 

 a cabin or palace on its surface. 



We may add to these notices another notion of the 



* The following extract, from the very old Irish MS. called the Speckled 

 Book, in the Academy, will explain and confirm what I have stated concerning 

 Irish asceticism : " When, then, said St. Bartholomew, the Son of God was 

 born, he was tempted by the Devil, but Christ overcame, by fastings in the wil- 

 derness, him who overcame Adam, in Paradise, through gluttony ; for it was 

 meet that Christ, the son of the Virgin, should overpower him who overpowered 

 Adam, the son of the virgin, .i.e. the son of holy earth; for the (mother) earth 

 of which Adam was formed was virgin, because it had not then been polluted 

 by iron, nor by the blood of man, nor had it been opened for the interment of 

 man in it at that time." 



