ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATION
the Bishopsand is, therefore, an early feature of
Church organization rather than the result of degener-
acy as lay ecclesiastical rulers were, say, in Carolingian
churches. Many of the churches, with their estates that
were ruled by an erenagh/princeps, were controlled by
ecclesiastical dynasties that acted like secular mag-
nates and, in some cases, were minor branches of the
secular ruling dynasties.
The most important churches, however, were still
defined by their episcopal status, and bishops remained
at the center of ecclesiastical organization; bishops
feature prominently in the Irish annals. In fact, from
the seventh century to the tenth, the evidence seems
to point to a large degree of continuity in Irish eccle-
siastical organization. We see not a Church dominated
by abbots, as was once thought, but the authority of
bishops, abbots, and coarbs existing side by side in an
apparently complicated ecclesiastical structure. We
find that the three types of authoritythat of bishop,
abbot, and coarbmight be exercised by one person
alone, by separate individuals, or be combined in dif-
ferent permutations. So, for example, we have Bishop
Crunnmáel, abbot of Cell Mór Enir (Annals of Ulster,
770.12). The coarb(Old Irish comarba; Latin heres),
or heir/successor of the founding saint, is found as
early as the seventh century in the Liber Angeliin
relation to Patrick. Indeed, Irish churchmen sometimes
described the pope as “coarbof Peter.” Therefore, from
the earliest period for which we can discern Irish
Church organization in any detail, the coarbial aspect
is part of the structure of authority, together with the
episcopal and the abbatial. This coexistence and com-
bination of offices seems to be the most distinctive
feature of early Irish ecclesiastical authority.
The great churchesthe cult centers of saints
might have had both a paruchiaand a familia. By the
middle of the twentieth century, scholarship had come
to understand the paruchiaas a group of daughter
monasteries controlled by the abbot of the mother
house in an ecclesiastical structure dominated by monas-
ticgovernment. The links between the mother house
and subordinate churches might extend beyond the
boundaries of any one túath, and the authority of the
abbots of the greater monasteries could thus over-
shadow that of the local bishops. However, the earlier
sense of paruchia(orparochiaas it was written in
Britain and Gaul) as the territory subject to, but distinct
from, the episcopal church is closer to the sense that
seems to be understood in Irish canon law. Thus, schol-
arship is now tending to view the paruchiaas a bishop’s
zone of pastoral jurisdiction, in principle territorially
cohesive. However, the person who presided over the
paruchianeed not always have been a bishop and may
have been a nonclerical princeps/erenagh, assisted by
clerical ministers. The term paruchia can be used to
mean both a basic sphere of jurisdiction (the paruchia
of a particular church) and an extended one, comprising
smaller units, some of which might be contiguous and
others not (such as the paruchiaof Armagh).
Thefamiliaof a saint comprised not only the people
who belonged to his principal church but also those of
the dependent churches and dependent kindreds. In
this respect, the term corresponds to the restricted and
extended senses in which paruchiais used. The occur-
rence in the sources of the terminology of plebsand
túath, in connection with ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
also emphasizes that the fundamental aspects of eccle-
siastical jurisdiction were territory and community.
Latin and vernacular prescriptive textsthe vernacular
laws, the Collectio Canonum Hibernensis, and the
RíagailPhátraic(Rule of Patrick) and hagiography
all bear witness to an ecclesiastical hierarchy in the
early eighth and ninth centuries, which is in principle
episcopal with a parallel between superior episcopal
jurisdiction and over kingship. The concept of hierar-
chy is adapted to that of nonclerical church rulers, with
the rank of an archbishop or metropolitan credited to
the nonclerical governor of a church of great eminence.
Entries in the Irish annals seem to refer to bishops
who enjoyed superior jurisdiction over spheres greater
than a basic episcopal diocese (e.g., Óengus of the
Ulstermen, who died in 665), and an eighth-century
legal tract (Uraicecht Becc) refers to “a supreme noble
bishop” who is equal in status to the king of a whole
province such as Munster. Thus, territorial bishoprics
and an episcopal hierarchy were realities in the early
medieval period, but spheres of jurisdiction were
unstable and probably altered in response to ecclesi-
astical and political change.The Nature of Irish Monasticism
The appearance of the monastic life among Patrick’s
converts was the culmination of his mission: Patrick
considered celibacy to be the highest form of religious
life. As well as the usual male and female celibates,
there were also widows and married people who had
taken a vow of sexual abstinence; he was particularly
concerned with the monastic vocation of women.
Patrick’s ambitions for the celibate life might make
the emergence of great monasteries in sixth-century
Ireland easier to understand. Palladius, too, had
monastic connections.
Patrick perceived the monastic vocation to be one
that may be lived in the world, outside a monastic enclo-
sure, and this unorganized approach to monasticism
may explain some of the odd features of the Irish
Church, such as the wide extension of monastic vocab-
ulary, which makes it difficult to distinguish religious
houses from secular churches or the head of a monastery