The copy of the
Latin Psalter "was enshrined in the base of a portable altar as the
national relic of the O'Donnell clan," and was preserved by that family
for thirteen hundred years. It was placed on exhibition as late as 1867,
in the museum of the Royal Irish Academy.
Enough has now been said to enable the reader to understand something of
the spirit and labors of the monks in an age characteristically
barbaric. For five centuries, from the fifth to the tenth, the
condition of Europe was deplorable. "It may be doubted," says an old
writer, "whether the worst of the Caesars exceeded in dark malignity, or
in capriciousness of vengeance, the long-haired kings of France." The
moral sense of even the most saintly churchmen seems to have been
blunted by familiarity with atrocities and crimes. Brute force was the
common method of exercising control and administering justice. The
barbarians were bold and independent, but cruel and superstitious. Their
furious natures needed taming and their rude minds tutoring. Even though
during this period churches and monasteries were raised in amazing
numbers, yet the spirit of barbarism was so strong that the Christians
could scarcely escape its influence. The power of Christianity was
modified by the nature of the people, whose characters it aimed to
transform. The remarks of William Newton Clarke respecting the
Christians of the first and second centuries are also appropriate to the
period under review: "The people were changed by the new faith, but the
new faith was changed by the people.
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