The historical importance of this new bond, which marks an epoch in the history of Ireland as a European country, has been somewhat obscured through the circumstance that after Patrick’s death the Irish Church, though it did not sever the link which he had forged, or dream of repudiating its incorporation as a part of Christendom, went a way of its own and developed on eccentric lines. Relations with the centre were suspended, and this suspension seems to have been due to two causes. The instinct of tribal independence, co-operating with the powerful attraction which the Irish found in monasticism, promoted individualism and disorganisation; monastic institutions tended to over-ride the episcopal organisation founded by Patrick, and the resulting lack of unity and general order was not favourable to the practical maintenance of that solidarity with Christendom which was inaugurated by the sending of Palladius. But it was not entirely due to the self-will and self-confidence of the Irish themselves that they drifted from his moorings. The political changes on the continent must also be taken into account. We can hardly doubt that but for the decline of the Imperial power and the dismemberment of the Empire in western Europe, the isolation[225] and eccentricity of the Irish Church in the sixth century would not have been so marked. The bishops of Rome, between Leo I. and Gregory the Great, were not in a position to concern themselves with the drift of ecclesiastical affairs in the islands of the north. But no sooner has Gregory accomplished his great revival and augmentation of the authority of the Roman see in western lands than the movement begins which gradually brings Ireland back within the confederation from which it had practically, though never formally or intentionally, been severed. The renewal of the union with continental Christianity in the seventh century was simply a return to the system established by Patrick and his coadjutors, and it would not be surprising if, in that period, men looked back with intenser interest to his work and exalted his memory more than ever. It seems probable, as we saw, that the tendencies which asserted themselves after Patrick’s death were partly of the nature of a relapse. Men went back to some practices which had been adopted in the Christian communities existent before his arrival on the scene. An old Easter reckoning, which he had attempted to supersede, was resumed. Perhaps, too, the Druidical tonsure from ear to ear had been used by earlier Irish Christians, and when it afterwards prevailed over the continental tonsure which he introduced, this was also a reversion to a pre-Patrician practice.