Malachi returned from Rome armed with legatine powers, and proceeded vigorously with the reforms which he had long before commenced. He held numerous councils, extirpating abuses everywhere, renovating the ancient rules of discipline and introducing new ones, bending all his energies to abrogating the national institutions and replacing them with those of Rome.[730] The earnest asceticism of his nature, exaggerated by the training of his youth, led him to give a strongly monastic character to the church of which he was thus the second founder. On his journey homeward from Rome, he had tarried a second time at Clairvaux to see his friend St. Bernard, and had left there four of his attendants to be exercised in the severe Cistercian discipline that they might serve as missionaries and as models for his compatriots, who had heard, indeed, of monkhood, but had never seen it.[731] His efforts, in this respect, were to a considerable extent successful, at least in a portion of the island, though his death in 1149, at the comparatively early age of 54, cut short his labors before they could yield their full fruit.[732] The incongruous character thus imparted to the Irish church is described by Giraldus Cambrensis some forty years later. The prelates were selected from the monasteries, and the church was completely monastic. Chastity was the only rule of discipline thoroughly preserved, and Giraldus confesses his wonder that it could be maintained, in contradiction to all former experience, when gluttony and drunkenness were carried to excess. The monastic principle of selfishness was all-pervading, and the pastors took no care of their flocks. Among the people, marriage was still unknown, incest was of common occurrence, even the rudiments of Christian faith were left untaught, and the church was regarded without reverence.[733] His account of the absence of regular stipends and tithes is confirmed by the fact that an Irish bishop attending the council of Lateran in 1179, in complaining of the condition of his native church, stated that his only revenues were derived from three milch cows, which his flock were bound to replace as they became dry.[734] This poverty, however apostolic in itself, can only, in an age of magnificent sacerdotalism, be regarded as an indication of a church whose degradation could command neither the respect nor the support of its children. That the reforms of Malachi, one-sided as they were, extended only over a portion of the island, is evident from the inquiry which, a few years later, the Archbishop of Cashel addressed to Clement III. as to whether the children of bishops could receive orders and hold benefices; and the exceptional character of the Irish establishment was recognized by the pope when he decided that they could, provided they were born in wedlock, and were otherwise worthy of position.[735] This requisite of legitimacy was apparently not imposed in ignorance,