To Columbanus Rome was still the traditional Rome of the fourth and fifth centuries. Since then the Irish Church had not come into contact with her, and inherited the same feelings of regard and deference with which the early church had regarded her before the period of their isolation, and while she was still to them the acknowledged head of the churches in the western provinces of the Roman empire. In this letter, which also is extant, he addressed Boniface IV. as ‘the holy lord and[14] Apostolic Father in Christ, the Pope.’ He tells him that he had long desired to visit in spirit and confer ‘with those who preside in the apostolic chair, the most beloved prelates over all the faithful, the most revered fathers by right of apostolic honour.’ He vindicates the doctrine of his church as no way differing from that of other orthodox churches, but claims to be regarded ‘as still in his fatherland, and not bound to accept the rules of these Gauls; but as placed in the wilderness and, offending no one, to abide by the rules of his seniors;’ and he appeals to ‘the judgment of the 150 fathers of the Council of Constantinople, who judged that the churches of God established among the Barbarians should live according to the laws taught them by their fathers.’ This was the second œcumenical council held at Constantinople in the year 381. The second canon directs that the bishops belonging to each diocese shall not interfere with churches beyond its bounds. It then regulates the jurisdiction of the great patriarchates, and concludes by declaring that the churches of God among the Barbarian people—that is, beyond the bounds of the Roman empire—shall be regulated by the customs of their fathers.[15] The position which Columbanus took up was substantially this—‘Your jurisdiction as Bishop of Rome does not extend beyond the limits of the Roman empire. I am a missionary from a church of God among the Barbarians, and, though temporarily within the limits of your territorial jurisdiction, and bound to regard you with respect and deference, I claim the right to follow the customs of my own church handed down to us by our fathers.’ It is unnecessary for our purpose to enter further into the life and doings of Columbanus. They have been referred to here at the very outset, because it was by his mission that the churches of the extreme west were again, for the first time, brought into contact with the Roman Church; and he has left behind him authentic writings which present to us at once the points of contrast between the two churches, and the relation they bore to each other, and thus afford us a fixed point from which to start in our examination of the early history and peculiar characteristics of these Celtic churches during the dark period of their isolation, when all intercourse with the Continent was cut off. [Sidenote: Three Orders of Saints in early Irish Church; Secular, Monastic, and Eremitical.]