Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/161

PEEFACE. cliii of her offshoot at Lindisferne : — " Omnes Presbyteri, " Diaconi, Can tores, Lectores, ceterique gradus eccle- " siastici, monachicam per omnia, cum ipso Epis- " copo, regulam servent" (Vit. S. Cuth. c. xvi.) She required the exercise of episcopal functions within her as much as any other chiirch, and had the superior order of bishops, according to canonical rule, for the purpose ; but, just as the tendency of all monasteries within a church was to obtain ex- emption from the rule of the diocesan Bishop, and even to have within themselves a resident Bishop, for the exercise of episcopal functions in the monas- tery, to whose abbot he was subject, as being under the monastic rule ; so when the entire Church was monastic, the whole episcopate was necessarily in this position. There was nothing in it derogatory to the power of episcopal orders, and to the episco- pal functions of which they are the source, but the mission, and the jurisdiction which flowed from it, was not in the Bishop, but in the monastery, and was necessarily exercised through the abbot, who was its monastic head. These two Christian systems, derived from Two churches churches of different character, and entering Scot- land from different quarters — the one from the south, and the other from the west— necessarily came ia contact with each other in the common field of their missionary labours, and occasionally superseded each other, according as the one or other prevailed in the different districts, and, though the m