Here he erected a small oratory of wood, and joined himself to a few devoted men ardent for the perfection of a religious life.  He was soon after elected Bishop of Connor.  With the assistance of some of his faithful monks, he restored what war and rapine had destroyed; and was proceeding peacefully and successfully in his noble work, when he was driven from his diocese by a hostile prince.  He now fled to Cormac Mac Carthy, King of Desmond;[240] but he was not permitted to remain here long.  The See of Armagh was vacated by the death of St. Celsus, and Malachy was obliged to commence another arduous mission.  It is said that it almost required threats of excommunication to induce him to undertake the charge.  Bishop Gilbert of Limerick, the Apostolic-Delegate, and Bishop Malchus of Lismore, with other bishops and several chieftains, visited him in the monastery which he had erected at Ibrach,[241] and at last obtained compliance by promising him permission to retire when he had restored order in his new diocese.

[Illustration:  BANGOR CASTLE.]

St. Malachy found his mission as painful as he had anticipated.  The lay intruders were making a last attempt to keep up their evil custom; and, after the death of the usurper who made this false claim, another person attempted to continue it; but popular feeling was so strong against the wretched man, that he was obliged to fly.  Ecclesiastical discipline was soon restored; and after Malachy had made a partition of the diocese, he was permitted to resign in favour of Gelasius, then Abbot of the great Columbian Monastery of Derry.

But peace was not yet established in Ireland.  I shall return again to the narrative of domestic feuds, which made it a “trembling sod,” the O’Loughlins of Tyrone being the chief aggressors; for the present we must follow the course of ecclesiastical history briefly.  St. Malachy was now appointed Bishop of Down, to which his old see of Connor was united.  He had long a desire to visit Rome—­a devotional pilgrimage of the men of Erinn from the earliest period.  He was specially anxious to obtain a formal recognition of the archiepiscopal sees in Ireland, by the granting of palliums.  On his way to the Holy City he visited St. Bernard at Clairvaux, and thus commenced and cemented the friendship which forms so interesting a feature in the lives of the French and Irish saints.  It is probable that his account of the state of the Irish Church took a tinge of gloom from the heavy trials he had endured in his efforts to remove its temporary abuses.  St. Bernard’s ardent and impetuous character, even his very affectionateness, would lead him also to look darkly on the picture:  hence the somewhat over-coloured accounts he has given of its state at that eventful period.  St. Malachy returned to Ireland after an interview with the reigning Pontiff, Pope Innocent II.  His Holiness had received him with open arms, and appointed him Apostolic Legate; but he declined to give the palliums, until they were formally demanded by the Irish prelates.