RELIGIOUS ORDERSAnglo-Irish religious for hunting and killing the Gaelic
population without compunction. Separatist tendencies
on the part of the Anglo-Irish Augustinians, Dominicans,
and Knights Hospitaller were the cause of tension with
their English confreres. In 1380, the attempts of an
English Dominican, Friar John of Leicester, to assert his
authority as head of the Irish Dominican vicariate occa-
sioned an armed riot in Dublin during which the friars
on both sides were found to be wearing chain mail under
their habits.
The general decline in the fortunes of the colony
from the end of the thirteenth century in the face of
war, famine, and Gaelic revival also affected the reli-
gious life. No new houses of Cistercian or Augustinian
Canons were founded after 1272, and by 1300 the
first wave of mendicant expansion had peaked, with
only a small number of foundations made after that
date. The Black Death (1348−1349) had a devastating
effect on religious and monastic life in Ireland as else-
where in Europe. The Kilkenny chronicler, Friar John
Clyn, records the death of twenty-five Franciscans in
Drogheda and twenty-three in Dublin before Christ-
mas 1348. As well as devastating the monasteries
numerically the plague exacerbated the decline in
recruitment and morale that characterized fourteenth-
century Irish monasticism. Conventual life all but
collapsed in many Cistercian and Canons’ monasteries.
The disappearance of the lay brother from Cistercian
houses deprived them of their labor force and meant
that the land was rented out, while speculation on
the wool trade led some monasteries into financial
difficulties.
The Observant Reform and the Dissolution
of the Monasteries
The emergence of the Observant movement among the
mendicant friars at the end of the fourteenth century
brought the Irish friars into contact with one of the
most vibrant reform currents in the late medieval
church. Within each Order the Observants promoted
rigorous discipline and strict adherence to the rule and
constitutions as antidotes to the lax observance known
as “Conventualism.” To facilitate this, the continental
Observants received papal and conciliar permission to
elect their own superiors thus, forming a hierarchical
structure within each order, nominally subordinate to
the Conventual or unreformed authorities. In the Irish
context this mechanism proved politically attractive to
Gaelic friars who, by becoming Observants, could
withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Anglo-Irish and
English friars who had dominated each order since the
thirteenth century. Although this may have contributed
to the initial success of the reform in Gaelic areas, the
genuine religious zeal of the reformers was recog-
nized and many of the older foundations also adopted
the reform. The movement first emerged in Ireland in
1390 among the Dominicans of Drogheda and
increased in influence throughout the fifteenth cen-
tury, with a distinct Observant congregation emerging
by 1503. Franciscan reformers were active by 1417,
establishing an Irish Observant vicariate in 1460. The
Augustinian Observants made their first foundation at
Banada, County Sligo, in 1423 and by 1517 numbered
eight houses.
The Observants were highly regarded as confessors,
preachers, and moral authorities and attracted wide-
spread and influential patronage. The Franciscans in
particular were keen promoters of the “Third Order”
among their lay followers. Initially intended for zeal-
ous lay people who continued in their normal secular
occupations, the Third Order or Tertiary Rule also
provided the canonical basis for communities of pro-
fessed religious and between 1426 and 1540 forty-nine
communities of Franciscan tertiaries and one of
Dominicans were founded. These Third Order houses
were concentrated in the Gaelic areas of Connacht and
Ulster, and their members engaged in educational and
pastoral work.
Only the Franciscan movement had any impact on
women’s religious life, with six houses of the Order
of St. Clare being listed in 1316. A later list gives
three foundations tentatively identified as Carrick-on-
Suir (County Tipperary), Youghal (County Cork), and
Fooran (County Westmeath). The Franciscan nunnery
recorded in Galway in 1511 was probably a Third
Order house.
The late fifteenth century saw the establishment of
colleges of secular priests at Youghal (1464), Athenry
(1484), Galway (1484), and Kildare (1494) and the re-
emergence of the anchoritic vocation in parts of Gaelic
Ireland. Attempts at reform on the part of the Cister-
cians in the same period met with little success: in
approximately 1497 Abbot John Troy of Mellifont
asked to be excused from acting as visitator of the Irish
houses because of the difficulties this entailed. Another
report asserted that in only two of the monasteries,
Mellifont and Dublin, was the religious habit worn or
the Divine Office celebrated.
Owing to the incomplete nature of the Tudor con-
quest, the dissolution policy was administered
unevenly in Ireland. In areas under crown control most
religious houses were officially suppressed between
1536 and 1543. The earls of Thomond and Desmond
were allowed to run the suppression campaigns in their
own territories and their connivance ensured that some
monastic houses and many friaries remained unmo-
lested. In Gaelic Ireland the policy had little effect,
allowing the friars in particular to regroup and, through