Dr. Reeves has printed in the appendix to Bishop Colton’s Visitation, edited for the Irish Archæological Society, p. 109, a rule of Columcille taken from one of the Burgundian MSS. It is obviously the same rule which Colgan describes as ‘aliam regulam eremiticam seu præscriptum fratribus scripsit.’ It cannot be connected with St. Columba himself, and it is probably a rule compiled for the _Deoradh De_ at the time the Disert Columcille was founded at Kells. It will be found in the Appendix. Footnote 691: See _antea_, p. 342. Footnote 692: These notices are taken from the Annals of the Four Masters, where they will be found under their respective dates. Footnote 693: St. Ciaran, the founder of Clonmacnois, has left a trace of his name in Iona; for a rising ground south of Martyr’s Bay is called Cnoc Ciaran. CHAPTER IX. EXTINCTION OF THE OLD CELTIC CHURCH IN SCOTLAND. [Sidenote: Causes which brought the Celtic Church to an end.] The causes which combined to bring the old Celtic Church to an end may be classed under two heads—internal decay and external change. Under the first head the chief cause was the encroachment of the secular element upon the ecclesiastic, and the gradual absorption of the latter by the former. As long as the old monastic system remained intact there was a vitality in its ecclesiastical organisation which to a great extent preserved the essential character of these monasteries as great ecclesiastical foundations; but this was to some extent impaired by the assimilation of the church to that of Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries, which introduced a secular element among her clergy; and the Danish invasions, with all their devastating and destructive consequences, completed the total disorganisation of the Monastic Church. The monasteries were repeatedly laid waste and destroyed, and her clergy had either to fly or to take up arms in self-defence; her lands, with their ruined buildings and reduced establishment, fell into the hands of laymen, and became hereditary in their families; until at last nothing was left but the mere name of abbacy applied to the lands, and of abbot borne by the secular lord for the time. The external change produced in the church was the result of the policy adopted towards it by the kings of the race of Queen Margaret. It was in the main the same policy as that adopted towards Ireland by the Norman kings of England. It mainly consisted, first, in placing the church upon a territorial in place of a tribal basis, and substituting the parochial system and a diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with their monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy; secondly, in introducing the religious orders of the Church of Rome, and founding great monasteries as centres of counter influence to the native church; and, thirdly, in absorbing the Culdees, now the only clerical element left in the Celtic