Ancient Celtic Ecclesiastical Bell. By J. A. Smith. 189 



the permanent conversion of the Angles who occupied the eastern 

 districts between the Tweed and the Forth, and for the found- 

 ation of churches, or rather Oolumban monasteries among them" 

 (p. 199). 



Aidan was the first of the Columban bishops, and founded the 

 monastery of Old Melrose on the Tweed, and Saint Cuthbert be- 

 came a monk of this monastery shortly after the death of Aidan, 

 in 651. 



" In the year 664 the Columban church in Northumbria was 

 brought to an end by the adverse decision of the Council of 

 Whitby, and Bishop Colman left the country with those of his 

 Scottish clerics who would not conform to Eome. Eata, the 

 abbot, however, and his provost, Cudbercht (Cuthbert), gave in 

 their adhesion to the Eoman party, and, at Bishop Colman's sug- 

 gestion, the monastery of Lindisfarne was placed under Eata's 

 charge, who thus became abbot both of Mailros and Lindisfarne. 

 To the latter monastery Eata transferred Cudbercht, ' there to 

 teach the rules of monastic perfection, with the authority of a 

 superior, and to illustrate it by becoming an example of virtue ' 

 (p. 209). 



" The causes which combined to bring the old Celtic church to 

 an end may be classed under two heads — internal decay and 

 external change. Under the first head the chief cause was the 

 encroachment of the secular element upon the ecclesiastic, and the 

 gradual absorption of the latter by the former." " The external 

 change produced in the church was the result of the policy 

 adopted towards it by the kings of the race of Queen Margaret." 

 '* It mainly consisted, first, in placing the church on a territorial 

 in place of a tribal basis, and substituting the parochial system 

 and a diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with their 

 monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy ; secondly, of in- 

 troducing the religious orders of the Church of Eome, and 

 founding great monasteries as centres of counter-influence to the 

 native church ; and, thirdly, in absorbing the Culdees, now the 

 only clerical element left in the Celtic Church, into the Eoman 

 system, by converting them from secular into regular canons, 

 and merging them in the latter order " (p. 366). 



" Edgar, the eldest son of Queen Margaret, had no sooner 

 made good his right to the throne* by English assistance, than 



*1097— 1107 A.D. 



