Those who devoted themselves to such a solitary life were said to give themselves up to God,[469] and the name of _Deoraidh_, literally strangers, was applied to them as ‘strangers and pilgrims’ in the religious sense of the term, and ‘_Deoraidh De_,’ or pilgrims of God.[470] But their connection with the monastery from which they emerged was not entirely severed; for, as we have seen, when the abbacy became vacant, the _Deoraidh De_, or pilgrim, was entitled to succeed in the fifth place; and the Brehon Laws provide that if a bishop commit certain offences, ‘the Ferleginn, or lector, shall be installed in the bishopric, and the bishop shall go into the hermitage or pilgrimage of God’ (_Aibilteoiracht no in Deoruighecht De_).[471] [Sidenote: The third order of Irish saints Eremitical.] Towards the end of the sixth century this passion for a solitary life had increased so much that it tended greatly to break up the monastic system, and became embodied in what was termed the third order of saints; and, while the second order expresses a purely monastic church, this third order which succeeded it, was Eremitical. ‘It was,’ says the Catalogue, ‘of this sort. They were holy presbyters and a few bishops; one hundred in number; who dwelt in desert places, and lived on herbs and water and the alms of the faithful. They shunned private property; they despised all earthly things, and wholly avoided all whispering and backbiting; and they had different rules and masses, and different tonsures—for some had the coronal and others the hair; and a different paschal festival—for some celebrated the Resurrection on the fourteenth moon, or sixteenth, with hard intentions. These lived during four reigns, and continued to that great mortality,’ that is, from about 600 to 666. In 634, as we have seen, the church of the southern half of Ireland had conformed to Rome, while the northern Irish were not brought over to the Roman system till the end of the century. What, therefore, is alluded to, when they are said to have different masses and different tonsures, is that this order consisted of two parties—one belonging to the southern Irish which had adopted the coronal tonsure and the Roman method of calculating Easter; while the other in these respects adhered to the customs of their fathers. They appear at this time not only to have lived a hermit life in the desert, but to have founded eremitical establishments, where a number of hermits lived in separate cells within the same enclosures. To both the name of Desert or _Diseart_ was usually given; and Colgan mentions no fewer than ten establishments, and the Annals of the Four Masters fourteen, the names of which commence with the word _Diseart_.