ssion of the Staff of
Jesus (8). Finally he resigned his office (11) and Gelasius was
appointed to it (12). If this is a true account of the course of events,
one statement of the Annals needs correction. They tell us that Gelasius
succeeded Niall; on our hypothesis he succeeded Malachy. But that the
Masters should have substituted the former for the latter was to be
expected; for according to their previous (as I believe misplaced)
statement Niall, not Malachy, was in possession in the latter part of
1136.

2. We now turn to St. Bernard's narrative of these transactions.
Sections 22 and 23 present no difficulty. They are simply an
amplification, with differences in detail, of what we learn from _A.T._
In the early part of Sec. 24 it is stated that Malachy remained in
Armagh after the king, with whose aid he had "ascended the chair of
Patrick," had returned home; and in the succeeding narrative it is
implied that he never left it till he went to Down. That is to say, the
visitation of Munster is ignored. This need cause no surprise. It is
quite possible that St. Bernard had never heard of it. Again, there is
no explicit mention of the reinstatement of Niall. But it seems to be
implied in Sec. 24 (see p. 53, n. 9). The whole story becomes more
intelligible if we assume that Niall was in possession for a short time,
and then fled, but continued to exercise his functions outside the city,
as Malachy himself had done in a previous period (Sec. 21). If we
suppose that the visit to Munster took place shortly after the episode
of Sec. 23 we can explain the only difficulty in the narrative, the
return of Niall after he had been driven out. The latter part of Sec. 24
seems to intimate a lessening of opposition to Malachy's rule. The whole
passage, Secs. 24-27, with the exception of the last two sentences of
Sec. 27, must relate to the period before July 1135, inasmuch as Niall
is represented as carrying about with him the Staff of Jesus as well as
the Book of Armagh.

Up to this point St. Bernard's narrative harmonizes admirably with the
story as it has been reconstructed above from the Annals. But we must
carry our comparison of the two accounts a little further. They agree in
giving 1137 as the date of the appointment of Gelasius as coarb of
Patrick; but while St. Bernard puts the resignation of Malachy in the
same year the Masters record it under 1136 (p. 61, n. 7). Now their
phrase (11), that he "resigned for the sake of G