preserved the privilege of retaining within their walls a bishop expressly for their own community, as was the case in the abbeys of St. Denis, and of St. Martin at Tours. Such was the manner in which the abbot eventually assumed a subordinate position beneath the recognized Head of the clerical order, wherever the monastery was introduced upon a state of society, amongst which a settled ecclesiastical system had long prevailed. But neither regular dioceses, nor secular clergy, existed in Ireland at the time when Patrick disseminated throughout that country the rule, and the discipline, with which he had become familiarized in Gaul. Monachism may be said to have brought in Christianity; and the Faith was ingrafted on the Rule, rather than the Rule on the Faith. The monastery was all in all, and the whole scheme of Church government was based upon a monastic foundation. Instead of dioceses under the jurisdiction of metropolitan and suffragan bishops, wide districts were under the sway of different monasteries, the greater number dependant upon some leading community, like that of Armagh, or Iona. It is not to be supposed, however, that there were no bishops.[348] Every monastic establishment of any pretension possessed one bishop, sometimes several, within the walls; but as the prelate was without a diocese, he was in an anomalous, and in some measure in a subordinate situation. It was amongst the privileges of the monastery of Bobbio, founded in Italy by the Irish Columbanus, that the bishop of the diocese was never allowed to enter the precincts of the abbey except for clerical purposes alone; and the position in which the Italian prelate must have been placed, during the brief period for which he remained amongst the brotherhood of Bobbio, was the normal condition of a bishop in the Gaelic and British Churches. As a priest, he was the ecclesiastical Head of the whole community, upon whom he alone could confer orders; whilst as a monk he observed the same rule as the rest of the brethren, asserting no authority in this respect over the abbot, who, as the Regular Superior of the Fraternity, became in reality the leading churchman of the district.