crossed the Irish Channel to the city of Kilmuine, where he found the three holy men, David and Cathmael[99] and Gildas, and became their disciple. After remaining thirty years in Britain, partly in the monastery of St. David and partly in other monasteries in Wales, he returned to Ireland followed by several of the ‘religious’ Britons, ‘to gather together a people acceptable to the Lord.’ [Sidenote: The school of Clonard.] He eventually founded the great monastery of _Cluain-Erard_, or Clonard, in Meath, which is said to have contained no fewer than three thousand monks, and which became a great training school in the monastic life, whence proceeded the most eminent founders of the Irish monasteries.[100] In an Irish Life of Finnian quoted by Dr. Todd in his _Life of Saint Patrick_, we are told, that ‘after this a desire seized Finnian to go to Rome when he had completed his education. But an angel of God came to him, and said unto him, “What would be given to thee at Rome shall be given to thee here. Arise and renew sound doctrine and faith in Ireland after Patrick.”’[101] And in the Office of Finnian it is said that, ‘when he was meditating a pilgrimage to Rome, he was persuaded by an angel to return to Ireland, to restore the faith, which had fallen into neglect after the death of Saint Patrick.’[102] These expressions all point to an effete and decaying church restored through the medium of Finnian and his monastic school of Clonard, and to a great revival and spread of Christianity through a new and living organisation based upon the monastic institution. [Sidenote: Twelve apostles of Ireland.]