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Fifteenth-Century Irish Provincial Legislation and Pastoral Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Michael A. J. Burrows
Michael A. J. Burrows*
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
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Extract

It is rewarding, if usually fairly difficult, to discover to what extent the views of medieval bishops on matters of devotion and church discipline impinged upon the spiritual lives of ordinary lay people. In the case of Ireland, provincial legislation probably provides the best available means by which to attempt this. Although the most important pastoral relationship within the Church was always that of priest and people in the parish, both parties were under the guiding hand and oversight of the bishop. It is to this ancient episcopal role as overseer, in die pastoral context, that the surviving sources direct us most.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 25: The Churches, Ireland and the Irish , 1989 , pp. 55 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989

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References

1 Concerning the scope of these registers, see Registrum Johannis Mey: The Register of John Mey, Archbishop of Armagh, 1443-1456, ed. W. G. H. Quigley and E. F. D. Roberts (Belfast, 1972), pp. ix-xii, xxxvii-xlii; A. O. Gwynn, The Medieval Province of Armagh, 1470-1545 (Dundalk, 1946), p. 20.

2 Watt, J., ‘“Ecclesia inter Anglicos et inter Hibernicos”: Confrontation and Coexistence in the Medieval Diocese and Province of Armagh’ in The English in Medieval Ireland, ed. Lydon, J. F. (Dublin, 1984), pp. 56–7.Google Scholar

3 Regarding travel through Armagh inter Hibernicos, see Simms, K., ‘The Concordat between Primate Mey and Henry O’Neill’, Archivium Hibemicum, 34 (1977), p. 77 Google Scholar. In his efforts to ensure that his agents might have a peaceful passage across Ulster, the primate showed himself to be entirely dependent on die good will of the Gaelic rulers, especially the O’Neills—see Watt, J., The Church in Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1972), p. 204.Google Scholar

4 Gwynn, Medieval Province, pp. 7 seq.,20; Reeves, W., Memoir of Octavian del Palacio, Archbishop of Armagh (Dublin, 1875).Google Scholar

5 Watt. ‘“Ecclesia inter Anglios et inter Hibernicos”‘, pp. 49-50; Trinity College Dublin MS 557/2, p. 359 (an extract from the register of archbishop Fleming); D. A. Chart, A Calendar of the Register of John Swayne, Archbishop of Armagh (Belfast, 1935), p. 53.

6 FrColmcille, , ‘Some Documents from the Old Abbey of Mellifont’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, 134 (1953-6), p. 58.Google Scholar

7 Lynch, A., ‘The Archdeacons of Armagh, 1417-1471’, ibid., 19 (1979), pp. 218–26 Google Scholar; cf.Simms, K., ‘The Archbishops of Armagh and the O’Neills, 1347-1471’, Irish Historical Studies, 19 (1974-5), pp. 38–55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim.

8 Gwynn, Medieval Province, pp. 20, 73-5; cf. his Anglo-Irish Church Life: Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Dublin, 1968), p. 30.

9 Chart, Register of Swayne, pp. 73-5; Murray, L. P. and Gwynn, A., ‘A Calendar of the Register of Archbishop Cromer’, Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, 8 (1933-6), p. 340, and 10 (1941-4), p. 121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stephens, A., Provincial Synod of Armagh: Opinion of Counsel on behalf of the Lord Primate (Dublin, 1864), pp. 34, 44 Google Scholar seq.

10 Stephens, Provincial Synod, pp. 45, 59.

11 See J. F. Lydon, “The Church and Taxation in Fourteenth-century Ireland’, Proceedings of the Irish Catholic Historical Committee (1964), pp. 3-10.

12 Clarke, M. V., Medieval Representation and Consent (London, 1936), pp. 57–8.Google Scholar

13 Nicholls, K., Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 1972), p. 92 Google Scholar; Gwynn, Medieval Province, pp. 165-6; Ellis, S. G., Tudor Ireland (London, 1985), p. 187 Google Scholar; Lynch, A., ‘Religion in Late Medieval Ireland’, Archivium Hibernicum, 36 (1981), p. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Gwynn, A., ‘Provincial and Diocesan Decrees of the Diocese of Dublin during the Anglo-Norman Period’, Archivium Hibernicum, 11 (1944), pp. 31–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 See note 5 above.

16 Wilkins.

17 See note 1 above.

18 Among H. J. Lawlor’s papers see especially ‘A Calendar of the Register of Archbishop Fleming’, PRIA 30, C (1912), pp. 04-100.

19 Fleming’s legislation is translated in Chart, Register of Swayne, pp. 8-18. For this constitution see pp. 12-13. I have discussed the question of the precise dating of sections of this legislation and considered the implications of the textual problems raised by it at some length in my thesis, ‘The Irish Episcopate and Pastoral Care, 1318-1534’ (Dublin University M.Litt, 1986), pp. 61 seq.

20 Chart, Register of Swayne, p. 12; Curtis, E., History of Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1923), pp. 283–4 Google Scholar. Curtis speaks of the spirit of the Kilkenny statutes as being ‘Anti-Gaelic’ and believes that they led to ‘a real outlawry of the mere Irish”. See also J. F. Lydon, The Lordship of Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 1972), pp. 221-2; also his Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Dublin, 1973), PP. 95-7.

21 The Cashel legislation is available in full in Wilkins, 3, pp. 565 sea.

22 H. J. Lawlor. ‘A Calendar of the Liber Ruber of the Diocese of Ossory’, PRL4 27. C (1908-9), p. 165.

23 Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelieised Ireland, p. 100; A. Gwynn, ‘The Origins of the Anglo-Irish Theatre’, Studies, 28 (1939), pp. 268-9.

24 Chart, Register of Swayne, p. 10; Lydon, Lordship, p. 107.

25 See Bishops: but What Kind?, ed. P. Moore (London, 1982), p. 31.

26 FitzRalph’s episcopal experience in this area in England in the 1340s is considered in Walsh, K., a Fourteenth-cenlury Scholar and Primate: Richard FitzRalph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford, 1981), pp. 230–1.Google Scholar

27 Chart, Register of Swayne, p. 12.

28 See Begley, J., The Diocese of Limerick (Dublin, 1906), 1, p. 294.Google Scholar

29 Watt, Church in Medieval Ireland, pp. 210-11;for the text of Ignorantia Sacerdotum, see Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the English Church, ed. C. R. Cheney (Oxford, 1964), 2, pt 2, pp. 900-5.

30 Chart, Register of Swayne, p. 13; Lynch, A., ‘The Province and Diocese of Armagh, 1417-1471’ (University College Dublin MA thesis, 1979), p. 40.Google Scholar

31 Lydon, Lordship, pp. 94-5, 115; Calendar of the Ancient Records of Dublin, ed. J. T. Gilbert (Dublin, 1889), 1, p. 383; H.J. Lawlor, ‘A Calendar of the Liber Niger and Liber Albus of Christ Church, Dublin’, PRIA, 27, C (1908-9), pp. 2$-6; ‘Calendar of Christ Church Deeds’, Appendix to 20th Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in Ireland, nos. 361-2; Reeves, Memoir of Octavian, p. 13; National Library of Ireland MS 98, fol. 98.

32 For further details regarding the Dublin council of 1494 (including the attendance levels at its various sessions), see Registrum Diócesis Dublinensis: A Sixteenth-Century Dublin Precedent Book, ed. N. White (Dublin, 1959), pp. v, 28 sea.

33 On Kite see Gwynn, Medieval Province, pp. 43 sea.; DNB; A New History ofIreland, ed. A. Cosgrove (Oxford, 1987), 2, pp. 658-9. Reformation strategy in Ireland is considered in B. Bradshaw, ‘Sword, Word and Strategy in the Reformation in Ireland’, HJ 21 (1978), pp. 475-502 and see especially pp. 480 sea.

34 Simms, ‘Archbishops of Armagh and the O’Neills’, passim; Watt, ‘“Ecclesia inter Anglicos et inter Hibernicos”’, pp. 52-5,61; K. Simms, ‘“The King’s Friend”: O’Neill, the Crown and the Earldom of Ulster’ in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. F. Lydon (Dublin, 1981), pp. 224-5.

35 Lawlor, ‘Calendar of the Register of Fleming’, pp. 131-2; cf. Simms, ‘Archbishops of Armagh and the O’Neills’, p. 42.

36 MacNeill, C., A Calendar of Archbishop Alen’s Register (Dublin, 1949), p. 260 Google Scholar; McGrath, F., Education in Ancient and Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 1979), pp. 221–2 Google Scholar; Mason, W. Monck, TheHistory and Antiquities of the Collegiate and Cathedral Church of Saint Patrick, near Dublin (Dublin, 1820), p. 101.Google Scholar

37 Gwynn, A., ‘The Medieval University of Saint Patrick’s, Dublin’, Studies, 27 (1938), pp. 199- 212, 437–54 Google Scholar; McGrath, Education, pp. 216 seq.; Walsh, RichardFiuRalph, pp. 10-13.

38 Emden (0), I, p. 351; St.Seymour, J., Pre-Reformation Archbishops of Cashel (Dublin, 1910), pp. 57–58.Google Scholar

39 Wilkins, 3, pp. 565 fF. See also McGrath, Education, pp. 170¿e<j. jNicholIs, Gaelic and Gaclicised Ireland, p. 99; Begley, Diocese of Limerick, p. 293.

40 Cf. Walsh, Richard FitzRalph, pp. 349 sea.

41 Chart, Register ofSwayne, pp. 8-9.

42 Walsh, Richard FitzRalph, pp. 332, 344, 371, 416, 423, 424, 429.

43 For Norreys and his anti-mendicant campaign see Walsh, Richard FitzRalph, p. 360; Bolster, E., History of lhe Diocese of Cork (Shannon, 1972), 1, p. 476 Google Scholar; Emden (0), 2, pp. 1365-6; E. Fitzmaurice and A. Little, Materiais for the History of the Franciscan Province of Ireland (Manchester, 1920), pp. xxix, 172 seq., 191; St. J. Seymour, Anglo-Irish Literature, 1200-IJ82 (Cambridge, 1929), p. 40; H.J. Lawlor, The Fasti of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (Dundalk, 1930), p. 43.

44 Cosgrove, A., Late Medieval Ireland, 1370-1541 (Dublin, 1981), p. 93 Google Scholar; C. T. Cairns, Irish Tower Houses—A Co. Tipperary Case Study (Athlone, 1987), pp. 3 sea.

45 Lawlor,‘Calendar of the Liber Ruber of Ossory’, p. 165.

46 This, of course, was no new problem in Ireland—see A. T. Lucas, ‘The Plundering and Burning of Churches in Ireland, 7th to 16th century’ in North Munster Studies, ed. E. Rynne (Limerick, 1967), pp. 172-229 for a wide-ranging discussion of the question of sanctuary, especially with regard to lay property.

47 Lydon, Lordship, p. 114.

48 ‘Watt, ‘“Ecclesia inter Anglicos et inter Hibernicos”’, pp. 51-3; also his Church in Medieval Ireland, pp. 204-5.

49 See especially Cosgrove, A., ‘Marriage in Medieval Ireland’ in Marriage in Ireland, ed. Cosgrove, A. (Dublin, 1985), pp. 25–50 Google Scholar; Simms, K., ‘The Legal Position of Irishwomen in the Later Middle Ages’, Irish Jurist, 10 (1975), pp. 96–111.Google Scholar

50 Corish, P.J., The Irish Catholic Experience (Dublin, 1985), p. viii.Google Scholar