The great ecclesiastical offices thus became hereditary in the persons of laymen in two ways; either by the usurpation of the benefice by the lay chieftains from whose tribe or family it had been supplied, or in the family of the abbot by whose direct descendants the office was filled, and who ceased after a time to take orders. It must be borne in mind that prior to 1139, though celibacy was enforced upon monks by their monastic rule, and upon the clergy generally as a matter of discipline, marriage, when it did take place, was not unlawful. It was not till the second great Council of Lateran, held in that year, declared all such marriages _ipso facto_ null and void, that they became so; and the effect of this, where the benefice had become hereditary in a particular family, was, instead of restoring the former clerical character of its possessor, to stereotype their condition of laymen and to convert them into a purely lay family. The well-known passage in Giraldus Cambrensis’ _Itinerary of Wales_, in which, talking of the church of Llanpadarn Vawr, he says ‘that this church, like many others in Wales and Ireland, has a lay abbot; for a bad custom has prevailed amongst the clergy, of appointing the most powerful people of a parish stewards, or rather patrons, of their churches, who in process of time, from a desire of gain, have usurped the whole right, appropriating to their own use the possession of all the lands, leaving only to the clergy the altars with their tenths and oblations, and assigning even these to their sons and relations in the church. Such defenders, or rather destroyers, of the church have caused themselves to be called abbots, and presumed to attribute to themselves a title, as well as estates, to which they have no just claim,’[647] gives us an illustration of the first, and the equally well-known statement by St. Bernard, in his Life of St. Malachy, as to the state of Armagh when Celsus became coärb, or abbot, in 1105, affords an illustration of the second. He says, ‘A scandalous custom had been introduced by the diabolical ambition of certain of the nobles, that the holy see should be obtained by hereditary succession. For they allowed no one to be promoted to the bishopric unless such as were of their own tribe and family. Nor was it for any short period this execrable succession had continued, as nearly fifteen generations had already passed away in this villainy; and so firmly had this wicked and adulterous generation established their unholy right, or rather wrong, which deserved to be punished with any sort of death, that although, on some occasions, clergymen of their blood were not to be found among them, yet bishops they were never without. In fine, there had been already, before the time of Celsus, eight individuals who were married and without orders, yet literates.’[648] The church of Armagh was situated in the territories of a tribe descended from Colla-da-Chrioch, one of the