The difficulties and errors which have arisen as to the spirit and principles of Patrick’s ecclesiastical policy are due to the circumstance that after his death his work was partly undone, and the Irish Church developed on lines which were quite from the purpose of his design. The old Easter reckoning survived his reform and lasted till the seventh century.[196] Irish monks abandoned the recognised mode of shaving the head which he had enjoined, and adopted the native tonsure of the pagan Druids.[197] The central authority at Armagh could not maintain itself against the centrifugal spirit of the land or resist the love of local independence which operated in ecclesiastical exactly as in political affairs. Monasticism, an institution which appears to have been intensely attractive to the temper of the people, ran riot, we might say, at the expense of ecclesiastical organisation. Abbots became of more account than bishops. The political changes in Gaul and Italy, connected with the dismemberment of the Empire, tended to keep Ireland out of touch with the continental churches in the later part of the fifth and in the sixth century. The injunction to appeal to Rome, though no one would have thought of repudiating it, was a dead letter. Looking at Irish Christianity as it appears in the seventh century, when the movement set in to bring it into line with the rest of the western Church, students have been inclined to assume that Patrick inaugurated the peculiar features which were really alien to the spirit of his work. Whatever concessions and modifications he may have found it necessary or politic to make in view of the social conditions of Ireland, he certainly did not anticipate, far less intend, such a development as that which actually ensued. But though his organisation partially collapsed, and though the Irish Christians did not live up to his ideal of the _unitas ecclesiae_, there was one feature of his policy which was never undone. He made Latin the ecclesiastical language of Ireland. The significance of this will claim our consideration when we come to examine his historical position. It was remembered in the traditions of his work that he used to write alphabets for youths who were chosen for a clerical career; it was the first step in teaching them Latin. [Sidenote: INTRODUCTION OF LATIN]