Orphen, G. H., ed. The Song of Dermot and the Earl. London:
1892.
Scott, A. B. and F. X. Martin, eds. Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio
Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland. Dublin: 1978.
See also Anglo-Norman Invasion; Chief Governors;
Courcy, John de; Henry II; John, King of England;
Lacy, de; Marshal; Strongbow
FITZRALPH, RICHARD
Richard (Ar[d]machanus) FitzRalph, theologian,
Archbishop of Armagh, was born shortly before 1300
into a prosperous Anglo-Norman family in Dundalk,
County Louth, and died at the papal court in Avignon
around November 10 to 20, 1360. From approximately
1315 he studied arts and theology at Oxford, graduat-
ing with an M.A. in 1325 and a D. Theol. in 1331. At
Oxford FitzRalph acquired skills in logic and meta-
physics, impressive knowledge of the Bible, and a high
level of competence as a theologian and preacher.
From this period date his Quaestio biblica and his
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard,
which survives in revised form. He was the most
important secular theologian to lecture on the Sentences
in the later 1320s and was prepared to present both sides
of an argument without taking a personal decision.
FitzRalph gained the patronage of John Grandisson,
bishop of Exeter (1327–1369), and spent a year at the
university of Paris as mentor of Grandisson’s nephew,
John de Northwode. FitzRalph owed early ecclesiasti-
cal preferrment to Grandisson’s support and acquired
a number of benefices in the diocese of Exeter and,
possibly, also a canonry in Armagh.
In 1332, FitzRalph was elected chancellor of the
university of Oxford, and his term of office was
overshadowed by strife between the student popula-
tion and the townspeople as well as between the
northern and southern nations within the university
community. This resulted in the “Stamford Schism”
and the brief establishment of an alternative univer-
sity at Stamford in Lincolnshire. The matter was
brought before the pope in Avignon, where FitzRalph
represented the university. This was the first of four
lengthy visits to Avignon, where papal patronage and
curial contacts were to play an important part in his
subsequent career. At Avignon he gained a high rep-
utation as a preacher, and on December 17, 1335, he
became dean of Lichfield by papal provision.
FitzRalph’s second and longest stay in Avignon,
1337–1344, occasioned the work that guaranteed his
subsequent renown in ecclesiastical circles. His
Summa de Quaestionibus Armenorum arose out of
lengthy debates with representatives of the orthodox
churches, who were seeking papal support against the
Turkish threat. Here FitzRalph discussed questions of
papal primacy and ecclesiastical authority that were
taken up by participants at the councils of Basle
(1431–1438) and Ferrara-Florence (1439–1440), then
striving to unite the oriental churches with Rome. The
Summa documents FitzRalph’s approach to the Bible
and his emphasis on scriptural proof, sola scriptura.
It also reveals the beginning of his preoccupation with
dominion and its dependency on grace, which was
further developed by John Wyclif.
On the death of Archbishop David Mág Oireachtaigh
in 1346, the cathedral chapter of Armagh immedi-
ately elected FitzRalph as successor, and he received
papal confirmation on July 31, 1346. Early in 1347,
he did homage to King Edward III and received the
temporalities of his see before being consecrated
bishop by Grandisson in Exeter cathedral on July 8,- He traveled to Ireland early in 1348, where his
first recorded sermon was preached in Dundalk on
April 24, 1348. In his early sermons in Ireland
FitzRalph invited comparison between Christ’s com-
ing to the Jews and the archbishop’s return as pastor
to his own people, the citizens of Dundalk and
Drogheda. He was pastoral minded, concerned with
reform and visitation, and defended vigorously the
primatial rights of his see against the archbishop of
Dublin, but he spent much of his episcopate outside
Ireland. During his longest sojourn in Avignon as
dean of Lichfield he had acquired the status of an
“Irish expert” at the curia, and he returned there
again in 1349 on diocesan business. Preaching in
Avignon in August 1349 he painted a dramatic pic-
ture of Irish society, maintaining that violence was
conditioned by the cultural clash between the two
nations and lamenting the Irish reputation for theft
and dishonesty.
FitzRalph promoted interest in the cult of St.
Patrick, above all by giving publicity to the pilgrimage
of the Hungarian knight, George Grissaphan, to St.
Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Derg (County Donegal,
Diocese of Clogher). The visions allegedly experi-
enced there, Visiones Georgii, had a wide continental
circulation in Latin and in several vernaculars. Propa-
ganda for St. Patrick’s Purgatory was disseminated
from Avignon, presumably with the help of FitzRalph’s
nephew and representative there, Richard Radulphi,
and pilgrims were attracted from all over Europe.
FitzRalph’s attitude to the friars, whom he had ini-
tially respected, altered radically on becoming arch-
bishop. Now he identified the cause of tension between
the two nations with the ubiquitous presence of the
friars in confessional and pulpit, where he regarded
them as a disruption of parochial authority. He began
to examine the biblical and legal foundations, and con-
sequent justification, of their professsion and made the
first clear statement of his criticism while preaching
FITZHENRY, MEILER