ECCLESIASTICAL ORGANIZATIONfrom the head of any other independent church. In the
seventh century, Tírechán talks frequently of “monks
of Patrick,” many of whom were female. The smaller
churches to which they belonged were often nunneries
combined with a male pastoral clergy. In some cases,
these nunneries could be episcopal churches, too, so
Patrick’s nuns could provide the bases from which
bishops worked. The cenobitic type of monasticism,
which formed the heart of all these communities, is
something that is attested throughout the early Middle
Ages.
The other type of monasticism, that of the hermit,
took two forms. There was the unregulated or solitary
holy man, usually poorly educated, who tended to be
viewed with disapproval; his counterpart was the
authorized anchorite, a well-educated person, conven-
tually trained, who was highly regarded. This second
variety usually lived with others who were devoted to
high levels of mortification, within or near an ecclesi-
astical community. Their dwelling was known as a
dísert(literally, a desert); by the ninth century, this
term was being applied to enclosures of female reli-
gious as well as to some prominent churches. There
was often interchange between the two communities;
the cenobitic monks might spend temporary periods in
the eremitic life, and the anchorite was sometimes
called to take on ecclesiastical office.
Church Reform
Until the twelfth century, the Irish Church was so
organized that it lacked the jurisdiction of a metropol-
itan archbishop; moreover, it had failed to embrace
developments that in the rest of Europe had seen a
separation between pastoral and monastic churches
two centuries earlier. In the ninth and tenth centuries,
major churches, as repositories of wealth and property,
were the natural targets for Viking attacks but suffered
no permanent damage. The establishment of Viking
settlements, especially Dublin, provided an opportu-
nity for change. In the eleventh century, the Scandinavian
settlers became Christian, and their churches sought
links with the English Church. This drew Ireland to
the attention of the reforming archbishops of Canterbury,
Lanfranc and Anselm. The first bishoprics to follow
the Roman modela compact territorial diocese
ruled from an episcopal seeappeared in the Scandi-
navian kingdoms on the coast: Dublin first, in 1074;
Waterford in 1096; and Limerick sometime later. The
influence of Canterbury on the reform of the Irish
Church was marked. Lanfranc certainly considered
the Irish Church to be subordinate to the English;
Goscelin of Canterbury presented St. Augustine as
the primate of England, Scotland, and Ireland in his
hagiographical works; and four successive bishops of
Dublin were consecrated by archbishops of Canterbury,
as was Malchus (a monk of Gloucester Abbey) as
bishop of Waterford.
The main problems for the reformers were that the
ecclesiastical rulersthe erenaghshad too much
power, bishops too little, and the Church was not orga-
nized into territorial dioceses along the Roman model.
Three national synods were held, at Cashel (1101),
Ráith Bressail (1111), and Kells-Mellifont (1152),
which established diocesan organization and absorbed
Dublin, the first of the reformed territorial bishoprics,
into a national Church under the primacy of Armagh.
The eventual consequence of Anglo-Norman inva-
sion in 1169, and the subsequent colonization of east-
ern Ireland, was the division of the Church into English
and Irish factions. This division was effected by the
Second Synod of Cashel (1172), the first ecclesiastical
council to be controlled by the English. Not only did
it promulgate reforming decrees concerning such mat-
ters as the payment of tithes, freedom of the Church
from lay control, and clerical privileges but it also
resolved that the Church in Ireland should adopt the
practices of the English Church in all matters. From
now on the system of ecclesiastical appointments,
ecclesiastical courts, clerical privilege, and so on,
would obtain in Ireland as they did in England. The
diocesan structure that was created in the twelfth cen-
tury survived largely unaltered through the Middle
Ages. In the cathedrals, the old monastic chapters
became canonical chapters and, in general, the Irish
Church more closely resembled the Church in England
and continental Europe. Many of the older churches,
however, came to lose their status, and though most
adopted the rule of St. Augustine, the thirteenth cen-
tury saw a rapid decline, as hereditary coarbs and
erenaghs now lived off estates that had once supported
great churches. The new dioceses, inadequately
endowed with assets taken from churches, did little
better, and the once-great institutions of Clonmacnoise
and Glendalough were too poor to survive as episcopal
sees. The reformers’ moral program, the imposition of
clerical celibacy, and the enforcement of canonical
marriage also largely failed.
During the thirteenth century, the dioceses were
subdivided into parishes; this process occurred more
extensively in the English colony, where arrangements
for the support of parish clergy differed from those
that continued to exist in Gaelic Ireland. Factional
considerations influenced episcopal nominations, so
that the bishops of Ireland were divided along lines of
nationality. There were attempts in the thirteenth cen-
tury, which were opposed by the papacy, to exclude
Irishmen from the episcopate. The provinces of
Armagh and Tuam were governed almost exclusively
by Irish bishops, while Dublin was the preserve of