together bishops, clergy and nobles of the land, you must hold a general council; and thus by the consent and common vote of all, send some honourable persons over to ask for the pall, and it shall be given you.'
On his way back from Rome, Malachy again visited Bernard, and arranged that some young men from Ireland should be received at Clairvaux, and after having spent some time there, should return to their own country with others from the same convent, and establish a branch of the Cistertian order. The result of this was that in 1142, the abbey of Mellifont, near Drogheda, was founded. Shortly afterwards several other branches of the same order were planted in different places. The influence of these Cistertian monks did more than anything else to hasten the Romanizing of the Church of Ireland.
We have so often spoken of the monastic institutions of the Irish Church, that one might readily fall into the mistake of supposing that we have here nothing more than the mere bringing in of a new order of monks, who were to take their place side by side with those already in the country. But we must remember that the same name is often given to things that differ most materially. We speak of the constitution of the ancient Irish Church as 'monastic,' and we speak of the establishment at Mellifont as 'monastic'; we use the same name, but the two systems had scarcely any resemblance. The Irish Christian 'families,' busied with the cultivation of the ground, with the work of education and the arts of civilization, had nothing in common with the cloisters where men were bound with the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Malachy and Bernard knew well that the two things were
