Taking  the  words  strictly,  *  abnegabant  mu —
lierum    administrationem,'    '  they   rejected   th^
ministrations  of  women,*  we  may  perhaps  infcK"
that  the  prohibition  at  first  extended  only  to  the
employment  of  women  as  servants,  or  attendants,
in  permanent  connection  with  the  monasteries ;
and  that  the  greater  strictness  which  excluded
women^  from  the  monastic  churches,  and  forb^A

this  dangerous  practice,  if  it  were  ^  Women,    See  scrnie  exampki^^r

at  all  coraraon,  would  be  a  better      this  strictness  in  Ussher,  Pmno^Sll


reason  for  the  rule  'abnegabant  mu-  p.  941, sa,  (Works, yi. p.  510).  ^

lierum  adrainistrationem '  than  that  story  told  of  St.  Enda  or  EnniP-      ^

given  by  Lanigan.  Perhaps  the  differ-  Aran,  that  he  refused  to  lee        _.
ence  between  the  two  orders  of  saints  sister,  S.  Fanche,  and  her  compmio^S

may  have  been  in  reality  this;  that  the  when  she  visited,  him  in  his  fore^^^

first  order  admitted  this  singular  test,  monastery  to  induce  him  to  retu.^^^

*  ventum  tentationis  non  timentcs,'  to     Ireland,   has     evidently    bc^^

and  the  second  order  prohibited  it ;  dressed  up  in  the  ideas    prevak^^

Scuthin  alone  having  been  ambitious  at  the  period  when   his  biograf^^^^

enough  to  aim  at  rivalling  in  this  was  written.     He  erected  a  tent  ^^

respect  the  <  Ordo  sanctissimus.'  her  <  in  solo  monasteriiy*  and  cotr^'


TROD.]     the  first  and  second  Orders  of  Saints,      g^

monk  so  much  as  to  look  upon  the  face  or
)rm  of  even  his  nearest  female  relative,  was  the
Towth  of  a  later  time.
