EARLY CELTIC CHCECHKS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 189 



St. Laisseii, the founder of Devenish Abbey on L. Erne, is changed 

 to Molaissi, or St. Aedh or Aedan to Modoc, or the Welsh St. 

 Cadoc to Docus, or in Scotland Si. Kentigern's name, the patron 

 Saint of Glasgow, was changed to St. Mungo, meaning " my dear 

 friend." This tradition is interesting as bearing on the question 

 of the existence of Christians in Ireland before St. Patrick, and 

 we shall see that another out of the four persons of whose 

 origin and life we have some details is also said, and this time 

 not by the Irish themselves, to have been an Irishman. 

 The second name is that of Eastidius. 



Now it is astonishing to me that the name of Eastidius is, 

 even among persons interested in such matters, so utterly 

 unknown. Eor from Eastidius we get the tirst living voice of 

 the Christian Church in Britain ; the first w^ritings which give 

 us an insight into the thoughts and life of a Christian teacher 

 living in this country in the fourth or early fifth century. And 

 apart from all this, one out of the two tracts preserved to us by 

 Eastidius is in itself a piece of writing of the inspiration of which 

 any Church might be proud. We know little of" Eastidius 

 except that Gennadius of Marseilles, who about 480 a.d. made 

 a sort of biographical dictionary of the lives of well-known 

 Christian persons, hving or dead, tells us that he was a British 

 bishop and that he had written one book entitled De Vita 

 Christiana.^ This tract Eastidius wrote to a Christian widow 

 lady named Eatalis, whom he calls " dilectissima soror." He 

 compares his tract to " country-bread, better for the hungry than 

 that of fine flour." We feel that it is so indeed. The learned 

 have sought for traces of Pelagianism beneath its simple words ; 

 but to most of us the strange attraction of this tract will lie in 

 the fact that while the Church without was spending its strength 

 and v/eakening its powers of affection on subtle questions about 

 Eree-will and Predestination, which still as we look back catch 

 and hold our gaze as though the very existence of Clnistianity 

 depended on their solution, here on our own soil a simple bishop, 

 otherwise unknown to us, was pouring out his mind on the actual 

 details of the true life of a Christian. It is not a small thing that 

 at the opening of its course the Church of this country should be 

 found to lay stress not on dogmas of the mind or even on 

 discipline of the bodyrcorporate, but on the spirit of the 

 Christian life. 



Gennadius, De lllv.strihus Vrn's, ch. 56. The Corbey copy of 

 Gennadius reads only " Eastidius Britto," but all other MSS. read 

 " Episcopus." 



