not till after that
date, as Reeves (p. 154) assures us, that the monastery began to
decline.

[303] See Secs. 61, 62.

[304] Matt. xxvii. 51.

[305] John ii. 11.

[306] "Scotic" is obviously to be understood here in its earlier
meaning as equivalent to "Irish." From this departure from his
ordinary usage (see p. 20, note 1) we may infer that St. Bernard is
quoting the words of his authority. The habit of constructing churches
of wood prevailed in early times among the Celtic and Saxon tribes in
the British Isles, the introduction of stone building for such
purposes being due to Roman influence (Plummer, _Bede_, ii. 101). The
older custom lingered longer in Ireland than elsewhere; and by the
time of Bede it had come to be regarded as characteristically Irish,
though wooden churches must still have been numerous in England (Bede,
_H.E._, iii. 25). In a document of much later date, the Life of the
Irish Saint Monenna (quoted in Adamnan, p. 177 f.), we read of "a
church constructed of smoothed planks according to the custom of the
Scottish races"; and the writer adds that "the Scots are not in the
habit of building walls, or causing them to be built." Petrie (pp.
138-151) maintained that stone churches were not unusual in early
Ireland; but he admits (pp. 341-344) that one type of church--the
oratory (in Irish _dairtheach_, _i.e._ house of oak)--was very rarely
constructed of stone. The only two passages which he cites (p. 345) as
mentioning stone oratories (he says he might have produced others) are
not to his purpose. The first is a notice in _A.U._ 788, of a man
being killed at the door of a "stone oratory": but another, and
apparently better, reading substitutes _lapide_ for _lapidei_, thus
altering the entry to a statement that the man was killed "by a stone
at the door of the oratory." The second is Colgan's rendering
(_Trias_, p. 162) of a sentence in _Trip._ iii. 74, p. 232, in which
there is in reality no mention of any ecclesiastical edifice. So far
as I am aware, there is no indisputable reference in Irish literature
to a stone oratory earlier than the one mentioned below, Sec. 61.

[307] Cp. the quatrain of Rummun on an oratory which was in course of
construction at Rathen (_Otia Merseiana_, ii. 79):

"O my Lord! what shall I do About these great materials? When will
these ten hundred planks Be a structure of compact beauty?"

[308] Evidently until he became bishop. The next sentence implies that