Pope Gregory answers, 'As for the Church of England, in which you are as yet the only bishop, you can no otherwise ordain a bishop than in the absence of other bishops.' It is evident therefore that this of itself would not have rendered the Irish ordinations invalid in the sight of Rome. Yet it is quite clear that they were so regarded. The very answer of Pope Gregory shows it, for he completely ignores the bishops of the British and Irish Churches who were already in the country. According to modern Romish doctrine, the sacrament of orders cannot be repeated; yet we find that re-ordination was insisted on in the case of Celtic bishops.
Let us take, for example, the case of Saint Chad. When he was first consecrated bishop, the ceremony was performed by Wini, Bishop of the West Saxons, assisted by two British bishops who kept Easter according to the Roman method, 'for at that time,' Bede informs us, 'there was no other bishop canonically ordained besides that Wini'—that is to say, the British and Irish were all regarded as outside the pale of the Church of Rome. Here we have the canonical number of consecrators, and one of them at least had orders which were recognised by the Church of Rome; but the form used on the occasion must have been the Celtic, for Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury afterwards upbraided Bishop Chad, that he had not been duly consecrated, and himself 'completed his ordination after the Catholic manner.'[1] Chad had received his religious training from the Irish, and in his youthful days had spent some years in Ireland; for a long time, too, he had upheld the Celtic customs against the teachings of
- ↑ Bede, Eccl. Hist., iv. 2.
