Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

284 Old Irish Rcligio7is.
in 811 some were said to have been miraculously conveyed
across the sea. Bede, who opposed them, whether from
Ireland or Scotland, was shocked at their holding his
religion "in no account at all," nor communicating with his
faithful " in anything more than with pagans." He banished
those who came to his quarter.
He found these Irish, Welsh, and Scotch Christians to
have, in addition to many heresies, the Jewish and Druidical
Property of the Church
system of hereditary priesthood.
even descended from father to son ;
and, says Dr. Reeves,
" was practically entailed to members of certain families."
He adds that they were understood in the 12th century as
" a religious order of clerks who lived in Societies, under a
Superior, within a common enclosure, but in detached cells,
associated in a sort of collegiate rather than ccjenobical
brotherhood."
Giraldus, as well as Bede, complained of their hereditary
priesthood. The same principle prevailed in the Druidical
region of Brittany, and only yielded to the force of the
Council of Tours in 1127.
Although St. Columba had no exalted idea of the other
sex, saying, " Where there is a cow there will be a woman,
and where there is a woman there will be mischief" — yet
his followers practised marriage. But while, says Mylin,
they " after the usage of the Eastern Church, had wives,
they abstained from them, when it came to their turn to
minister." The " Woman's Island " of Loch Lomond was
one of the female sanctuaries on such an occasion.
Their
opposition to celibacy brought them much discredit with
other priests.
Archbishop Lanfranc was shocked at their not praying to
Saints, not dedicating churches to the Virgin or Saints, not
using the Roman Service, and because, wrote he, " Infants
are baptized by immersion, without the consecrated chrism."