READINGS IN IRISH HISTORY

New Zealand Tablet, 28 June 1917, Page 19

READINGS IN IRISH HISTORY

By “Shanachie.”

CONDITION OF THE IRISH CHURCH FROM 1014-1169. The condition of the Church in Ireland from the battle of Clontarf to the Anglo-Norman invasion was in marked contrast with the vigor and prosperity of the preceding centuries. In many instances it is hard indeed to recognise it as the Church that produced Columba and Columbanus with their numerous disciples abroad, and the crowded monasteries at home. In the long-drawn-out struggle against the Danes many of the churches and monasteries were laid in ruins, and a warlike race lost its love of solitude and study. During the years that Brian ruled as supreme King a revival of religion and learning took place. It was, however, only a temporary improvement, for the internal dissensions that arose after Brian’s death were fraught with evil for religion. This long period of strife and turmoil was a time of bitter trial for the Church. In the past centuries the plunder of churches and monasteries had been left, except in some few cases, to the Danes, but this unholy work was now done by native chiefs; and when O’Brien invaded Ulster, or O’Connor went to Thomond, the annals record that they spared neither churches not territory on their march. Thus within the century after Clontarf, Clonmacnoise was plundered six times, Armagh three times, Kells and Ardbraecan twice, Derry and Glendalough once each nor does this exhaust the list of churches that suffered by native hands. The Danes were weak except at Dublin and Waterford, and, moreover, had become Christians, and since 1040 a Danish bishop was at Dublin; but though they ceased to be pagans they had not ceased to be plunderers, and among other churches they pillaged Ardbraecan twice and Armagh once. Amid the wreck and ruin the monasteries struggled on, some in a precarious condition, but others, such as Clonmacnoise, protected and endowed by Turlogh O’Connor; Lismore, patronised by the O’Briens of Thomond, and the MacCarthys of Desmond; and

Derry, where O’Loughlin of Tyrone died,—these in the twelfth century enjoyed a moderate degree of prosperity. The exodus of Irishmen to foreign lands still continued, and at Wurtzburg, Fulda, and Ratisbon were monasteries almost, if not exclusively, Irish. At Fulda lived and died (1002) Marianus Scotus, who wrote a valuable chronicle in Latin; and at Ratisbon was another, Marianus Scotus (died 1088), who wrote a learned commentary on the Scriptures. At home, also, there were some distinguished scholars: O’Loughlin, Flann, Tighernach, most accurate and reliable of all the Irish chroniclers; O’Malone, who wrote the Chromcon Scotorum, and MacLiag, King Brian’s secretary, and author of the Wars of the Gael and the Gall a work described as verbose and bombastic, “but yet of enormous historic value.”

St. Mai achy and St. Laurence O’Toole.—ln dealing with the state of religion in Ireland during this period, special reference must be made to these two great leformers of morals and restorers of piety and discipline. They went in for bold and radical measures in suppressing vice and abolishing abuses among clergy and laity alike; and if the Irish Church was restored to something like its former purity and zeal before the year 1069, the change was due, to a great extent, to the personal example-and reformative measures of SS. Malachy and Laurence. It is necessary to insist on this point, for it is often asserted that Henry 11. came over from England under Papal sanction, “to extend the limits of the Church, to reform the manners of the Irish, and to plant virtue among them.” He had been forestalled by more capable men. St. Malachy was born in 1094, and educated at Armagh and Lismore. He became Archbishop of Armagh in 1132 and afterwards Papal Legate. Twice he went to Rome, where he was received by Innocent 11. with the greatest respect. On these journeys he turned aside to Clairvaux, where he made the acquaintance and became the personal friend of St. Bernard, in whose monastery and in whose arms he died (1148). St. Bernard wrote his life, wherein he drew a most sombre picture of the Irish Church during the lifetime of Malachy. From St. Bernard’s account we learn that one powerful family had taken possession of the See of Armagh, and held its titles and its revenues for over two hundred years. Eight of them were laymen and married, though educated. They assumed the title of Archbishop and paraded as successors of St. Patrick. These usurpers were more solicitous about the fleeces of their flocks than for the flocks themselves'* they insisted on their hereditary rights, but their obligations they conveniently ignored. Thus we find that Armagh had been left in part without a roof for a hundred and thirty years, that the monastery of Bangor had ceased to exist, and that when St. Malachy, m his efforts to re-establish it, undertook the building of a stone church there, the lay usurper, presumably lest he might be called upon to fulfil his obligations, incited the people to violence, telling them that they were Irish and not Gauls, and that a wooden church should be built as was done by their ancestors. Neither at Connor nor Armagh were the offices chanted by the clergy; there were no confessions, no preaching • marriages were irregularly contracted ; faith was dead] and the people were Christians in name, but pagans in reality. Thwarted in all his efforts at reform, Malachy lived for two years outside his episcopal city of Armagh kept our forcibly by the lay usurpers, Maurice and Nigellus, and when he entered the city, he was compelled, as a protection against violence, to have an armed guard night and day. Such is St. Bernard’s picture of Armagh, the See of St. Patrick, and one© the seat of a great monastery. Truly the salt had lost its savor, the fine gold had become dim. It is sometimes said in regard to the statements made by -St Bernard about the condition of the Church in Ireland at this period, that they are rather the outpourings of a grieved friend than the carefully weighed sentences of an historian. This may be so, indeed; but that there were abuses cannot be denied. Another great bishop and reformer of the Church in Ireland on the eve of the Norman invasion was St.

Laurence O’Toole, Archbishop of Dublin. His father and mother came of the noblest stock of Leinster, and during the invasion of the Norman freebooters had to retire into the mountains of Wicklow. When a child the saint was given as a hostage to Dermot MacMurrogh, King of Leinster, and by him treated with barbarous severity. Eventually his father secured his release and then the youth was handed over to the charge of the Bishop of Glendalough, in which monastery he subsequently became a monk. We cannot delay to recount his works of piety and zeal, his love of solitude, and great austerities. When he was made Archbishop of Dublin, he needed all his zeal and stoutness of heart, for Danish Dublin was not at that time a model city. He lived to see the Normans and Dermot MacMurrogh batter down the gates of Dublin, force an entrance into the city, and perpetrate deeds of awful carnage, despite the entreaties of the Archbishop, who often interposed his own person between the brutal soldiers and their victims. Laurence O’Toole, at the head of the Irish bishops, and following the example of the chiefs of the South and West and East, made submission to Henry towards the close of 1171. Herein he proved himself a true patriot, though the submission must have cost him a severe pang. He had seen enough to prove that resistance was hopeless, and that his duty to God and to his people was to yield to a power which he could not oppose. In 1171, or the beginning of 1172, Laurence attended a Synod at Cashel to enact such disciplinary laws as the deplorable state of the times rendered imperative. In 1175 we find him in London negotiating a treaty between Rory O'Connor, last King of Ireland, and Henry, whereby the Irish king was to renounce his claims to the kingdom of Ireland, and accept Connaught as a fief from the English monarch. 1178 Alexander 111. convoked a General Council to assemble at Rome for the first Sunday of the following Lent. Crossing over to England with five other prelates, his companions, he was very rudely treated by Henry, and not allowed to proceed till he had sworn on oath that he and his companions would do nothing, during their stay in Rome, derogatory to the English crown. There were present with him at the council five other Irish prelates—a larger number than came from England and Scotland together. He died in Normandy, in the monastery of the Canons of St. Victor. When one of his attendants suggested that ho should make his will, he replied in words that sum up the life and virtues of Ireland’s last canonized saint: “I declare before God that I have not one penny under the sun to dispose —not one penny.”

He died with a prayer for his distracted country on his lips, crying out in bitter anguish; “Ah foolish and misguided people, what will become of you now?” He was canonized by Honorius 111. in 1225.