58 FOURTH PERIOD. A.D. 590 TO 1049.
§ 16. Subjection of Ireland to English and Roman Rule.
The success of the Roman mission of Augustin among the Anglo-Saxons encouraged attempts to bring the Irish Church under the papal jurisdiction and to force upon, it the ritual observances of Rome. England owes a good deal of her Chris tianity to independent Irish and Scotch missionaries from Bangor and lona; but Ireland (as well as Germany) owes her Romanism, in great measure, to England. Pope Honorius (who was afterwards condemned by the sixth oecumenical council for holding the Monothelite heresy) addressed to the Irish clergy in 629 an exhortation — not, however, in the tone of authoritative dictation, but of superior wisdom and experience — to conform to the Roman mode of keeping Easter. This is the first known papal encyclical addressed to that country. A Synod was held at Magh-Lene, and a deputation sent to the Pope (and the three Eastern patriarchs) to ascertain the foreign usages on Easter. The deputation was treated with distinguished consideration in Rome, and, after three years' absence, reported in favor of the Roman cycle, which indeed rested on a better system of calculation. It was accordingly adopted in the South of Ireland, under the influence of the learned Irish ecclesiastic Cummian, who devoted a whole year to the study of the controversy. A few years afterwards, Thomian, archbishop and abbot of Armagh (from 623 to 661), and the best Irish scholar of his age, introduced, after correspondence with the Pope, the Roman custom in the North, and thereby promoted his authority in opposition to the power of the abbot of lona, which extended over a portion of Ireland, and strongly favored the old custom. But at last Abbot Adamnan likewise yielded to the Roman practice before his death (704).
The Norman conquest under "William I., with the sanction of the Pope, united the Irish Church still more closely to Rome (1066). Gregory VII., in an encyclical letter to the king, clergy and laity of Ireland (1084), boldly challenged their obe-
I 16. SUBJECTION OF IBELAXD. 59
dience to the Vicar of the blessed Peter, and invited them to appeal to him in all matters requiring arbitration.
The archbishops of Canterbury, Lanfranc and Ansel m, claimed and exercised a sort of supervision over the three most important sea-ports, Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, on the ground that the Norman settlers applied to them for bishops and priests. Their influence was exerted in favor of conformity to Rome. Clerical celibacy was more generally introduced, uniformity in ritual established, and the large number of bishoprics reduced to twenty-three under two archbishops, Armagh for the North and Cashel for the South; while the bishop of Dublin was permittee] to remain under the care of the archbishop of Canterbury. This reorganization of the polity in the interest of the aggrandizement of the hierarchy was effected about 1112 at the synod of Rathbreasail, which was attended bv 08 bishops, 317 priests, a large number of monks, and King \Turtogh O'Brien with his nobles.1
At last Ireland was invaded and conquered by England under Henry II., with the effectual aid of Pope Adrian IV. — the only Englishman that sat on the papal throne. In a curious bull of lloo, he justified and encouraged the intended invasion in the interest of the papacv, and sent the king the ring of investi ture as Lord of Ireland, calling upon that licentious monarch to "extirpate the nurseries of vice" in Ireland, to "enlarge the borders of the (Roman) Church," and to secure to St. Peter from each house "the annual pension of one penny" (equal in value in the twelfth century to at least two or three shillings of our present currency).* Henry carried out his design in 1171,
1 See details in Lanigan and Kilh-n fob., vii.).
2 Tills papal-Irish bull Is not found in the BuJJarium Romnnum, the editors of which were ashamed of it, and Is denounced bv some Irish Romanists as a mon- Ftrous and outrageous forgery, but it Is given by Matthew Paris lloo), was con firmed by Pope Alexander III. in a letter to Henry II. (A. D. 1 172 -, published in Ireland in 1175, printed in Baronius, Annals* ad A. D. 1159, who took his copy from a Codex Vaticanus, and is acknowledged as undoubtedly genuine by Dr. Lanigan, the Roman Catholic historian of Ireland (IV. 64), and other au thorities; comp. Killen I. 211 sqq. It Is as follows:
"Adrian, Bishop, Servant of the servants of God, to his deare-t son in Christ, the illustrious King of England, greeting and apostolic benediction.