CHURCH REFORM, TWELFTH CENTURY
the Irish church: He would do so through the agency of
the see of Dublin. It would be the metropolitan see for
the whole island of Ireland and owe allegiance directly
to Canterbury; its bishops would be consecrated by the
archbishop of Canterbury and profess obedience to him.
After his consecration, Bishop Patrick passed on
letters from Lanfranc to the king of Dublin and to
Tairrdelbach Ua Briain, then the most powerful king
in Ireland. In these, Lanfranc exhorted the kings to
act against certain abuses that he had heard occurred
in Ireland. In his letter to Ua Briain, however, he
urged him to convene an assembly of religious men
to eradicate what he calls “evil customs” from Ireland.
And it would appear that Ua Briain responded; a
synod, held in Dublin in 1080, was apparently convened
by him. Thus began a level of co-operation between
Ua Briain, together with certain Irish bishops, and
Canterbury—cooperation that continued after his
son, Muirchertach Ua Briain, succeeded him in 1086.
King and bishops took part in the election of succes-
sive bishops of Dublin, and of a bishop for the newly
erected see of Waterford in 1096—all of whom
openlyprofessed their obedience to the archbishop of
Canterbury, to whom the electors sent them for con-
secration. It is not clear, however, whether they
understood the exact nature of Canterbury’s enter-
prise in Ireland. In any case, their cooperation was
about to come to an end, as became apparent when
the first synod of Cashel met in 1101.
Muirchertach Ua Briain Exchanges
Canterbury for Armagh
Evidence for the change in Ua Briain’s attitude to Can-
terbury is found in a specific action he took at that synod.
He granted Cashel, the seat from ancient times of the
kings of Munster, to the church forever—not to some
local church, but to the whole of the church in Ireland.
The significance of this became clear ten years later,
when Cashel was chosen as the metropolitan see of the
southern province in a new diocesan structure set out at
the synod of Ráith Bressail. Already in 1101, therefore,
Ua Briain had a vision of this new structure that had an
important role for Cashel, but none for Canterbury.
Major problems, however, stood in the way of its
realization. The first of these was Armagh, the most
prestigious ecclesiastical establishment in Ireland; it
would have to be included in whatever new structure
was introduced. But the ecclesiastical organization there
at this time was traditional; the man with the highest
level of authority was the abbot, usually referred to as
thecomarbae(heir) of Patrick. Although a cleric, he
had no ecclesiastical orders and was married. In addition,
he belonged to a family that had controlled the office
since the middle of the tenth century. This obviously
presented a problem for Ua Briain, since Armagh, in
the new church structure then being envisaged, would
become a metropolitan see ruled ultimately by an arch-
bishop. The change required there was of such major
proportions that strong leverage was needed; that lever-
age was Dublin and the role that was mapped out for it
in Ireland by Canterbury. Should this be made a reality,
Dublin would usurp a position in the Irish church that
Armagh clearly saw as belonging to it. An opportunity
to apply this leverage was available to Ua Briain when
he visited Armagh in 1103, and it would appear that he
was successful, as subsequent events suggest. It is likely
that nothing could be done as long as the then-incumbent
of the abbacy lived, but the swift action of his successor,
Cellach, would indicate that a decision had been made
to go along with the plans for reform as envisaged by
Ua Briain. Within six weeks of his predecessor’s death
in 1105 Cellach assumed ecclesiastical orders, and in
the following year, perhaps only a few months later, he
was consecrated a bishop, significantly while on a visit
to the Ua Briain territory, Munster.
With Armagh won over to reform, Ua Briain was
now faced with the problem of finding an ecclesiastic
who would carry the project to its next stage. Although
there is no direct evidence to link him with the man
so chosen (Gille or Gilbert of Limerick), events sur-
rounding the selection clearly point to Ua Briain. The
most significant of these is Gille’s appointment to the
bishopric of a new Hiberno-Norse diocese in Limerick,
the town in which Ua Briain then had his headquarters.
Furthermore, his selection followed a pattern with
which Ua Briain and his father before him were famil-
iar. Just like bishops of Dublin and Waterford before
him, in the selection of whom the Uí Briain kings were
directly involved, Gille had been a monk in a Bene-
dictine abbey in England. However, unlike them, he
was not sent to the archbishop of Canterbury for con-
secration, thus reflecting the changed attitude of Ua
Briain we have noted as existing since 1101. After his
appointment, he set out to prepare the clergy for the
upcoming changes. He wrote a short tract, De statu
ecclesiae(Concerning the Constitution of the Church),
in which he set out the organizational structure of the
whole western church, from layman to pope, and a
short description of their various functions or duties.
This tract and an accompanying letter—in which he
expresses the wish that the diverse practices that he
says exist in Ireland would yield to a single, uniform
one in conformity with Rome—are extant in twelfth-
or thirteenth-century copies. Given that the tract is
mainly concerned with church structure, we can
already see what the main preoccupation of the reform-
ers was at this point. This would become even clearer
a few years later when the synod of Ráith Bressail met,
over which Gille presided as papal legate.