CUI,'DEES, or KELDEES, (Celt. Ceile-De; Lat. colidei, culdei, calledei, keldei, keledei), the name given in the British islands to an ancient order of ecclesiastics. The word seems to be of Celtic origin, and in the Irish language signifies an " attendant of God." Giraldus Cambrensis, writing towards the end of the 12th c., when the order still flour ished, interprets the name in one place by the Latin word cerlicola, i.e., "worshiper of heaven;" and in another by ecelebs, i.e.," single," or "unmarried." Boece and Buch anan. in the 16th c., translate it cultores Dci, i.e., " worshipers of God." There is some uncertainty as to the first appearance of the order. There is no trace of it in the works of Adaman, of Bede, of Alcuirr, or of any other ecclesiastical historian of the 8th or 9th century. An abbot and bishop of the n. of Ireland, who compiled a metrical calendar of Irish saints about the year 800, was known in his own time as "./Engus the Ceile-De." But it has been questioned whether the title was not used rather to denote his great personal piety, than to describe his ecclesiastical character. The four masters, again, in their Annals of Ireland, compiled about the year 1636, record certain great wonders wrought by a Ceile-De in the year 806. But no such event is recorded in the ancient chronicles from which the four masters compiled their work, and Irish antiquaries think that the passage must therefore be rejected as apocryphal. But in Irish annals of undoubted authority, it is chronicled that, in the year 919, "a Ceile De came across the sea westward to establish laws in Ireland ;" in other words, as Irish archwologists conjecture, to bring the Irish into conformity with the rule for canons which had been enacted in 816, at the council of Aix-la-Chapelle. The annals of Ulster record that, in 920, Armagh was plundered by Godfrey, son of Ivor, the Dane, but that he spared the oratories with the C. and the sick. The C. of Armagh, who thus appear in the beginning of the 10th c., survived till the beginning of the 17th century. Arch bishop Usher, who died in 1655, writes that they continued until within his own mem ory. They were secular priests or canons, about 12 in number, living in community, under the rule of a prior, who—after the beginning of the 13th b., when the metropol itan cathedral of St. Patrick was remodeled after the English fashion—officiated as presenter, his C. being the clerks or choir. The antiphonary or service-book, with the musical notation, from which they sang, is still preserved in the library of Trinity col lege, Dublin; and its calendar records the deaths of several of their number, one of them so lately as the year 1574. The prior seems generally to have been a pluralist, it having been formally ruled in 1448, after an appeal to Rome, " that the priory of the college of secular priests, commonly called Culdees, being a simple office, and without cure of souls, is not incompatible with a benefice." The C. of Armagh, dissolved at the reformation in 1541, were resuscitated for a brief space in 1627. Their old posses
sions-A–among which were 7 town-lands containing 1423 acres, 7 rectories, and 4 vicar ages—were, in 1634, bestowed upon the vicars choral of the cathedral, who still enjoy them.
There were at least 7 other houses of C. in Ireland, viz., at Clonmacnois, Clondalkin, Devcnish, Clones, Popull, Monanincha, and Sligo.
If tradition could be trusted, the first appearance of C. in Scotland should be placed about the middle of the 9th century. A leaf of the register of St. Andrews, written about 1130, relates that Brude, the son of Dergard, the last king of the Picts (who ceased to reign about 843), gave the island, since called St. Serf's Inch, in Lochleven, to God, St. Servan and the Culdee hermits serving God there. They were governed by an abbot; and about the year 1093, during the rule of abbot Ronan, they gave up their island to the bishop of St. Andrews, on condition that he should find them in food and raiment. They had grants of lands or immunities from all the kings of the Scots who reigned between 1039 and 1153, the roll of these royal benefactors being headed by the renowned Macbeth (1039-56) and his wife Gruoch, the daughter of Bodhe. They had a grant of a church from each of the three bishops who ruled the see of St. Andrews between 1040 and 1093; and about 1120, they had a grant of lands from one of the sons of king Malcolm Canmore and St. Margaret—Ethelred, earl of Fife, and hereditary lay-abbot of the Culdec monastery of Dunkeld. A few years after wards, the bishop of St. Andrews gives their island, and all their possessions, including their church vestments and their books, to the newly founded canons regular of St. Andrews, in order that a priory of that rule might supplant the old abbey of C. in St. Serf's Inch. About 1140, the bishop's grant was enforced by a charter from king David, in which it was ordered that such of the C. as chose to live canonically and peacefully under the new canons should remain in the island. "If any one of them refuse so to do," says the king, "my will is, and I command, that he be expelled from the island." We hear no more of the Culdee hermits of Lochleven. The Canons regular who came in their place continued till the reformation, and we are indebted to one of their priors, Andrew Wyntoun, who died about 1429, for a valuable metrical chronicle of Scotland. A catalogue of the books of the Culdee abbey, when it was bestowed upon the canons regular of St. Andrews, about 1140, has been preserved. The number of volumes was not quite twenty. They were—a pastoral, a gradual, a missal, some of the works of Origen. the sentences of St. Bernard (who was still living), a treatise on the sacraments, in three parts, a part of the Bible, a lectionary, the Acts of the Apostles, the gospels, the works of Prosper. the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles, a gloss on the Can ticles, a work called In terpretationes Dietionum, a collection of sentences, a commentary on Genesis, and a treatise on the exceptions from ecclesiastical rules.