seem to have been scarcely effectual, for we find an immediate entry of the decapitation of Ruaidhri, after he had made a “treacherous prey” in Aictheara.  In the year 1128 the good Archbishop succeeded in making a year’s truce between the Connaught men and the men of Munster.  The following year the saint died at Ardpatrick, where he was making a visitation.  He was only fifty years of age, but anxiety and care had worn him old.  St. Celsus was buried at Lismore, and interred in the cemetery of the bishops.

We must now give a brief glance at the ecclesiastical history of Ireland, before narrating the events which immediately preceded the English invasion.

In the year 1111 a synod was convened at Fidh Aengussa, or Aengus Grove, near the Hill of Uisneach, in Westmeath.  It was attended by fifty bishops, 300 priests, and 3,000 religious.  Murtough O’Brien was also permitted to be present, and some of the nobles of his province.  The object of the synod was to institute rules of life and manners for the clergy and people.  St. Celsus, the Archbishop of Armagh, and Maelmuire[238] or Marianus O’Dunain, Archbishop of Cashel, were present.  Attention had already been directed to certain abuses in ecclesiastical discipline.  Such abuses must always arise from time to time in the Church, through the frailty of her members; but these abuses are always carefully reprehended as they arise, so that she is no longer responsible for them.  It is remarkable that men of more than ordinary sanctity have usually been given to the Church at such periods.  Some have withheld heretical emperors from deeds of evil, and some have braved the fury of heretical princes.  In Ireland, happily, the rulers needed not such opposition; but when the country had been again and again devastated by war, whether from foreign or domestic sources, the intervention of saintly men was especially needed to restore peace, and to repair, as far as might be, the grievous injury which war always inflicts on the social state of those who have suffered from its devastations.

Lanfranc, the great Archbishop of Canterbury, had already noticed the state of the Irish Church.  He was in constant communication with the Danish bishops, who had received consecration from him; and their accounts were probably true in the main, however coloured by prejudice.  He wrote an earnest epistle to Turlough O’Brien, whom he addresses respectfully as King of Ireland, and whose virtues as a Christian prince he highly commends.  His principal object appears to have been to draw the king’s attention to an abuse, of which the Danes had informed him, with regard to the sacrament of matrimony.  This subject shall be noticed again.  Pope Gregory VII. also wrote to Turlough, but principally on the temporal authority of the Holy See.