THE CULDEES.
49
who were
not very numerous in Ireland, while the
term Servus Dei is a general expression, ajDplicable to religions of all classes, and included the
These Ceile Be, however, show precisely the same
secular canons as well as the monks.
term
Ceile
De
applied to a distinct class,
is
which belonged
characteristics
Bd
to the
Like the Bei
Colce of the Continent.
Colce,
they
were Anchorites, for we find that when the name of Cde Be appears as a personal title, it is
borne by one who had lived as a solitary in a desert, or who is termed an Anchorite. Thus
Angus the
Enos,
well
is
"After
an
Hagiologist,
who founded a
desert called after his
known as Aengus Ccle Be."
666 we iind the nomenclature
name
now
Disert
of the Continental anchorites begins to appear in
A.D.
Irish form, attached to the eremitical class in the Irish Church.
we
Disert Aeugus,
*
find these Irish anchorites having the
term of
Ceile
Be
In
lieu of the
applied to them.
term
Beicolce,
Tliese terms,
though not etymologically equivalent, may be considered as correlative, and intended to
^
represent the same class and as Christicola becomes in Irish Celedirist, so Bcicola assumes in
;
Irish the
form of
As we have
Ceile Be."
already seen, Northern Britain was not the original, any more than it was the
there were ecclesiastics so named in England, in Wales, and in
only seat of the Culdees
The canons
Ireland.
;
York were
of
styled Culdees in the
reign
of Athelstan,
and the
seem generally to have been distinguished by the same title.^
Giraldus Cambrensis says that there were Culdees in the island of Bardsey the holy island
of Wales
unmarried, and living a most religious life. In Ireland the Culdees had numerous
secular clergy of the cathedrals
—
—
and retained
establishments,
name
their
Armagh down
at
to
the
time
of
Archbishop
Usher.*
The history
when
of the Culdees begins only
very fragmentary character.
All
we can do
far
advanced in their decline, and
is
of a
aid of extracts gathered from
is, by
musty charters
and annals, and ecclesiastical records, to survey them at different places between the eighth
century and the sixteenth, and mark how they are engaged. From the time when, in the
eighth century, they conformed to the Roman practices as to order and ritual, their
individuality was virtually at an end, and their usefulness as well.^
That the
^
denoted by the term Cdle-de were not supposed by the Irish to
island, we learn, not only from a passage in Tirechan's Life of St
class of persons
own
be peculiar to their
Twenty-four years before the foundation of Tamlacht, in which church Aengus succeeded St Maelruain, an order
was foimded by Clirodegang at Metz. An intermediate class, between
of canons, Fraircs Dominici, afterwards Carwnici,
monks and
secular priests, having the disciiJline without the
in churches (Reeves,
^
sound
Mr
The Cuhlees
Herbert says
(for else it
"Of
:
would be
'
"
and discharging the
office
of ministers
9).
the word [Culdee], Keledeus imitates the sound, and Colideus, besides imitating the
The word of which the sound is closely followed in
latter, is ceile-D^,
having a sequestered habitation,'
also false in sense
of the former,
deicola) gives a sense or interpretation.
the former, and the sense in the
cuil-deach,
vows
of the British Islands, as they appear in History, p.
is a
To suppose that
'servant of God.'
these words are formed from
speculation not unworthy of ct3'raologist3, being false iu sound, and
(British Magazine, 1844, vol. xxvi., p. 2).
'Grub, Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 229. Dr Lingard, after quoting a charter of Ethclred II.,
" In the charter the
says
prebendaries are termed Oultores clerici, a singular expression, which seems to intimate that
the collegiate clergy were even then styled Culdees cultores Dei in the south as well as the north of England" (History
:
—
and Antiquities
*
of the
ii.,
p. 294.
Sir J. Ware, The History and Antiquities of
vi., p. 174
Grub, Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, vol. i., p, 230.
Usher, British Ecclesiastical Antiquities, 1639, vol.
Ireland (translated by
°
—
Anglo-Saxon Church, 1845, voL
W.
Harris), 1764, vol.
ii.,
p.
236
;
;
British Quarterly Review, No. cxlix.
G