Ireland and the Anglo-Norman Church : A
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Cornell University Library BR794.S87 A5 1892 Ireland and the Anglo-Norman church : a 3 1924 029 246 829 olln B9, SB7 AS IRELAND AND THE ANGLO-NORMAN CHURCH, §g % aawi ^ai^at. THE ACTS OF THK APOSTLES. VoL I. Crown BvOf cloth, price ys. 6cl. A volume of the Third Series of the Expositor's Bible. IRELAND AND THE CELTIC CHURCH. A History of Ireland from St. Patrick to the English Conquest in 1172. Second Edition, Crown Zvo, chth, price gs. "Any one who can make the dry bones of ancient Irish history live again may feel sure of finding- an audience sympathetic, intelligent, and ever-growing. Dr. Stokes has this faculty in a high degree. This book will be a boon to that large and growing number of persons who desire to have a trustworthy account of the beginning of Irish history, and cannot study it for themselves in the great but often dull works of the original investigators. It collects the scattered and often apparently insignificant results of original workers in this field, interprets them for us, and brings them into relation with the broader and better-known facts of European history."— Westminster Review. " London : Hodder & Stoughton, 27, Paternoster Row, IRELAND AND THE ANGLO-NORMAN CHURCH. S iM0rg 0f ^xilmii rair ^mlg Cj^mfewrtg from tlgi ^nQla- REV. G. T. STOKES, D.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Dublin j Keeper of St/ Sepulchre's Public Library, commonly called Archbishop Marsh's Library ; and Vicar of All Saints', Blackrock. SECOND EDITION. HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW, MDCCCXCII. A, Z 71 Printed by Hazell, Watson, <$• Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. PREFACE. THE present volume, which I designate Ireland and the Anglo-Norman Church, is designed as a companion volume to a previous one which I entitled Ireland and the Celtic Church. The origin of the book which I now submit to the public was the same as the origin of the previous volume. They both embody the lectures, for the most part identically, and in some few places only substantially, the same as those which I delivered to my classes in Trinity College. The title which I have chosen for this volume, Ireland and the Anglo-Norman Church, expresses the object of my lectures, which was to sketch the history of Ireland as well as of Irish Christianity till the dawn of the Reformation. A very considerable portion of this volume will b6 found, therefore, to deal with the purely secular side of our annals, the story of the Anglo-Norman Conquest, and of the anarchy which ruined Ireland as the natural consequence of the strife and division which held sway in England. I have treated the ecclesiastical side of my subject in connection with the , Anglo-Norman Church as I discussed the earlier history of Ireland in connection with the Celtic Church. I do not, indeed, believe that we can fix any hard and fast limit vi PREFACE. before which the Celtic Church system flourished, and after which the Anglo-Norman and Papal system prevailed. The process of change was a gradual one. The ecclesiastical revolution was effected by slow degrees, covering in its operations the whole of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. I have 'endeavoured, also, to prove in my concluding chapter, what might have been expected on a /nbn grounds, that the Celtic Church system did not expire at once, but left its marks deep printed on the manners and customs of the more Celtic portions of this country. Yet I consider the Anglo-Norman Church, with its canon law, its hier- archical and monastic organizations, the great force which shaped the religious life of Ireland during the ages which elapsed between the Anglo-Norman Con- quest and the Reformation. If we contrast the Ireland of the tenth century, as pictured in the Annals of the Four Masters, with the Ireland of the thirteenth century, as depicted in the Annals of Pembridge and of Friar Clyn, we shall require no further proof that Ireland and the Irish Church were Anglicised in the meantime. Conge d'e'lire and Writ of restitution of temporalities, to take two instances alone, were terms never found in the Celtic Church ; while they abound under the Anglo-Norman system. The original shape of this work explains two points which will strike the critical reader, the repetitions and the omissions thereof. In the course of my lectures I had perpetually to refer to certain documents, like the Liber Niger or the Repertorium Viride of PREFACE. VIE Archbishop Alan, which can only be consulted in manuscript, and are little known. I explained, with a frequency which may seem tiresome, what these and similar documents contain, and where they may be found. I might indeed have recast the whole shape of the' lectures, and thus have avoided the repetitions, but second thoughts are sometimes in literature by no means the best thoughts. When a man writes \vith a young audience vividly before his mind, the salient points of a story are seized,, the mere subsidiary details are avoided, and the historical picture is made clear because the canvas is not too much crowded with figures. This circum- stance is, in fact, my defence against one line of criticism to which I have been subjected. My volume on Ireland and the Celtic Church has indeed received, for the most part, a very kind and generous treat- ment at the hands of reviewers. But some critics have found fault with its tone. It treated Irish history, in their opinion, in a style very different from the great masters thereof in the past, and dis- cussed it in a very flippant spirit, as one stern censor put it. I must confess that I have suffered such critics and such criticism very gladly. There are some circles where obscurity is mistaken for profound thought, and pedantic dulness for surpassing learning^ But then, if a member of such circles tried his methods upon a young university audience, his lecture-room would be a howling wilderness, and himself but the voice of one crying therein. I am paid by the University yui PREFACE. of Dublin to teach Ecclesiastical History. I hold that be a a professor is just like a preacher,—he should teacher and an interpreter ; and if students avoid the professor's prelectidns, or a congregation flee from the preacher's sermons, as if his words carried the plague with them, then whatever else professor or preacher may be fitted for, he is not fitted for the office he has assumed. I did not submit my former volume, I do not submit my present volume, as exhaustive histories of the periods with which they deal, but I do submit them as attempts to redeem Irish history from its traditional dulness, and to show that it is not the pathless waste which some regard it. In doing so I have made it my object to interpret to young and eager minds the results attained by the great investigators, living and dead, whose works I have so frequently quoted, and have, therefore, systematically striven to make my narrative as interesting as I possibly could, a task at times by no means an easy one. The origin of this work accounts also for its many omissions. Everyone desires to know something about the Conquest of Ireland, the Wars of Bruce, the Statute of Kilkenny, and Poynings' Act. I have devoted my efforts to illustrate these and other leading features of my period. I could have filled lectures with the numberless incidents which occupied the intervals of Irish history, but I had to bring my book within a limit marked out by the publishers, and have therefore been compelled to omit even much which I ; PREFACE. delivered to my class. Another cause forced me in the same direction. It will strike the reader that I have treated the earlier portion of my period much more fully than the latter, and necessarily so. A vast quantity of new light has been shed upon Irish as well as English history by the publications of the Record Commissioners, and by the great Rolls Series. Every lecture almost, embodied in this volume, owes something to the Calendars of Irish Documents, edited by Mr. Sweetman. These ^ calendars deal with the thirteenth century, but go no farther. The last volume, including the taxation of Pope Nicholas, comes down to the year 1307, and stops there; and now, as I understand, the publication of these Irish calendars has been completely suspended, while the English work goes on as before. Until the production of these works is resumed, we cannot hope for any fresh light upon the troubled epochs of Irish history covered by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.* In conclusion I have to acknowledge my renewed ' The story of Anglo-Norman dominion in Ireland will never be fully known till the Rolls Series embody the docu- ments lying in MS. in Dublin, viz., the Liber Niger and the Re;pertorium Viride of Archbishop Alan, the Crede Mihi, the Liber Niger, and 'CciS Liber Albus of Christ Church. A sum of ;^3,ooo, I suppose, would print them all, yet the English Treasury and Record authorities have, on various petty pleas, withstood on this point the unanimous wish of the Irish representatives in Parliament of every type of politics. They are printing at present a volume of the Thomas-Court Registers, omitting the most valuable and interesting portion X PREFACE. obligations to the many original investigators into the sources of Irish history. I have used them as far as I have known them, and have endeavoured in every case to acknowledge my debt.