A Brief History of Irish Monasticism

A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRISH MONASTICISM

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

ST PATRICK was trained as a monk in Gaul.  Christian Gaul was under the influence of the old Greek colonies in south-eastern France and the monasticism of Gaul was of a similar character to the monasticism of Egypt - in the spirit of St Anthony.  The popularity of St Anthony is seen in the copies of St Athanasius' Life of St Anthony in the monastic libraries and more concretely in his image on many high crosses.

St Patrick was particularly influenced by his Gaulish monastic exemplar - St Martin of Tours.  Sulpicius' Life of St Martin was also widely available in Irish monasteries.  The Irish monastic communities followed the spirituality and practice of desert monasticism.  This was ascetic and altogether different from the monasticism that would develop on the continent under the Rule of St Benedict.  Benedictine monasticism paralleled the cenobitic  monasticim of Cappadocia influenced by St Basil.

Egyptian monasticism tended to be eremitic; this phenomenon, beloved of the Irish, was later common in Orthodox Russia.  The great Irish monasteries began as hermitagesw.  Anchorites such as St Enda attracted huge followings and thus laid the foundations of influential monasteries - St Kevin's in Glendalough was a good example of this.

When St Colmcille - whether voluntarily or otherwise - went to Iona in 563, he set a very important precedent in the development of the Irish church.  Ever after, Irish monks would seek to preach the Gospel overseas.

Very soon afterwards, Irish monks left their mark all over the continent.  St Columbanus was particularly influential in France and Italy, and his disciple St Gall established a monastery in a canton that still bears his name in Switzerland.  St Fiachra became particularly associated with Paris taxi-drivers.  All over the German-speaking world, the phenomenon of the Schottenklöster or "Scottish monastery" is indicative no of the Scots, but of the Irish.  Scotus was Latin for Gael.  There is a district in Vienna called Schottentor which is indicative of this Irish invasion.  Irish monks went as far east as Kiev and perhaps Novgorod.  St Brendan the Navigator may well have reached Newfoundland.

In time, the Irish monasteries in Europe adopted the Benedictine rule, but continued to be Irish in character until the Reformation.  The Schottenklöster were known for the asceticism of their monks; St Macarius was the prior of the Schottenkloster in Würzburg in the 1100s and he was said to have changed wine into water.  Würzburg is at the heart of the Franconian wine producing region along the Main.
Strict asceticism
Irish monasteries, as remarkable for their distinctive craftsmanship and scholarship as for their asceticism, fell into disarray due to the political instability of the following centuries.  The Viking raids maid a well-publicised impact; but many monasteries suffered at the hands of Irish nobles.

A reform movement was already in place at this time.  In around 800, the Céle Dé (Slaves of God) were established in Tallaght, Co Dublin, principally by the anchorite St Óengus.  The Céle Dé, also known as Culdees and currently fêted among New Agers, were an incredibly strict monastic movement, analogous to orders which developed later.  Their concept of stabilitas loci was very literal and they lived on a very meagre vegetarian diet - they seem to have anticipated the Carthusians.

The movement spread rapidly and soon had foundations all over Ireland - some more questionable than others.  The ninth century king-bishop of Munster and Cashel, Feilimid mac Crimthaind, was a Céle Dé.  Feilimid was both very able and politically astute.  He set about claiming the high kingship and nearly succeeded until he was killed in battle against the Uí Néill in 847.  During Feilimid's reign, the cause of reform had a momentum unlike at any other period.  Not many abbots would risk taking on his wrath at the time.
Malachy and Bernard
The political upheaval that began after the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 was damaging to the Church in Ireland.  Clontarf was no great victory; when Brian Boru died, the notion of a country under a single high king was established, but it was at least another century before a given dynasty established a claim to the high kingship.

In the late 11th century, the Irish Church faced another threat as the Archbishops of Canterbury began claiming jurisdiction over Ireland.  A movement of Irish Churchmen  saw it was important to for Irishmen to reform the Church here before others would come to reform it.  The star of this movement was St Malachy of Armagh - and the most significant element was the relationship of St Malachy to the most influential churchman of the day - St Bernard of Clairvaux.  The relics of Ss Malachy and Bernard are kept together before the high altar in the monastery of Clairvaux - and it is said they cannot be separated.

St Malachy introduced the Cistercians and the Augustinian canons regular into Ireland, and other orders followed.  When the Cistercian Pope Blessed Eugenius III was in exile, he asked St Bernard for advice and St Bernard told him to model his life on St Malachy.   Blessed Eugenius perhaps made the most significant contribution to the Irish Church in its whole history in 1152, when he sent John Cardinal Paparo as his legate to the Synod of Kells.

The embryonic Irish hierarchy erectic dioceses and petitioned for pallia for Armagh and Cashel.  This was not what Blessed Eugenius granted.  Cardinal Paparo delivered not two, but four pallia to Ireland - recognising Dublin and Tuam as metropolitian sees in addition to Armagh and Cashel.
English Pope's role
It is a tragedy of Irish history that there was rivalry between the Cistercians and Benedictines.  The more ascetic Cistercians held the upper hand in Ireland as they do today.  Blessed Eugenius had difficulties with King Stephen of England who retained the throne after a civil war against the Empress Matilda.  Eugenius was succeeded by the English Benedictine Adrian IV who had no sympathy for Cistercians and a better relationship with Matilda's son Henry II (who was later excommunicated for the murder of St Thomas Beckett).  Adrian issued the Bull Laudabiliter to Henry granting him Ireland as a papal fief, on the condition he would reform the Church.

So, within the space of a few years, a Cistercian pope saw the Irish church as being in such a good condition that it deserved four metropolitans, rather than just the two it had requested; and then a Benedictine pope came to the conclusion that the only hope for the Irish church was to entrust its reformation to a foreign monarch who happened to be a fellow countryman of his!

However, there is no doubt that the post-Norman invasion Irish Church maintained its vigour and continued to journey far afield.  To mention two examples, the tutor of the young St Thomas Aquinas was a teacher called Petrus de Hiberniae (Peter of Ireland).  One imagines he did a good job.  And when the Franciscans sent a mission to China in the mid-13th century, among the friars was Jacobus de Hiberniae (James of Ireland).  The Mongol dynasty was quite amenable to external ideas, including Christianity; and an archdiocese was erected in Beijing.  The Mongols were overthrown by the more inward looking Ming dynasty around the time the Black Death wreaked havoc with the Western Church.  And thus a tremendous opportunity was lost.
The Great Schism
In the later Middle Ages, the Irish Church suffered the decadence that was the lot of the Western Church after the Black Death.  Religious communities were particularly affected - and devastated.  The Great Schism of the West happened soon aftertwards.  It is well worth noting that two canonised saints of the Dominican Order, St Vincent Ferrer and St Catherine of Siena disagreed as to which purported Pope was legitimate.  Every order had at least two claimant superiors-general, based in Avignon and Rome.  And after the schism, there was still much disagreement as to the balance of power between a Council and a Pope.

The fifteenth century saw three of the mendicant orders - the Augustinians, Dominicans and Franciscans - develop reform movements within themselves.  These observantine congregations went back to their original rule, constitutions, spirituality and purposes, and also depended directly on the superior general rather than a local provincial who might have had political biases injurious to the interest of the order.  The observantine Augustinians particularly established themselves in the west of Ireland and principally among the Irish-speaking population.  This one bright spark offered a hope to the church which was standing on the brink of chaos.
Disaster on disaster
One immediate consequence of Henry VIII's schism was the suppression of religious houses in Ireland simply to gratify the avarice of the king's henchmen.  Some houses lasted as late as the reign of James I, but excepting a respite during Mary I's reign, the so-called Reformation led to one disaster after another for Ireland, culminating in the Penal Laws which lasted into the 19th century.

However, attempts were made to run religious houses in Ireland during penal times.  My favourite story relates to the presence of incognito Dominican nuns in Drogheda in the 17th century.  The local sheriff called to the house to discuss rumours of "Popish nuns" living there.  The prioress, an aristocratic Irishwoman, received him in her finest gown and put on all her airs and graces, dispelling the suggestion with the truthful statement: "Sir, the women in this house are no more Popish nuns than I am."
All over Europe
All this time, Irish religious houses were established all over the continent, many to parallel the Irish colleges there.  To this day, there is still an Irish Dominican convent in Lisbon and until the First World War there was an Irish Benedictine convent in Ypres (now Kylemore Abbey).  There were Irish religious houses in Paris, Louvain and Salamanca, all now tragically closed.  At one stage, there was an Irish college in Prague, associated with Charles University.

There were several other centres throughout the Catholic world which also provided Catholic gentlemen with education for vocations in the world.  A relative of Daniel O'Connell once said their clothes, their wine, their education and their religious were all contraband.  O'Connell and his brother were students at Douay at the time of the French Revolution and witnessed the bloodshed first hand - and the anti-religious nature of the revolution.  The Napoleonic era marked much upheaval for the church in Europe, so the relaxation of the penal laws afforded the Irish on the continent an opportunity to come home.

The 19th century was marked not only by the re-establishment of older religious orders in Ireland, or those founded on the continent in the interim, but by the foundation of new religious orders specifically for Irish needs: Blessed Ignatius Rice's Christian Brothers and Presentation Brothers; Nano Nagle's Presentation Sisters; Mother Catherine McCauley's Sisters of Mercy; and Mother Mary Aikenhead's Sisters of Charity.  As Cardinal Cullen dominated the Irish church in the mid-nineteenth century, convents and monasteries dotted the country.

Once again the Irish took to the missions, building up the Church throughout the English-speaking world, prior to moving into more difficult territories.  Three endeavours arose from Maynooth  alone in the early 20th century.  Following the failure of the Maynooth Mission to India, the Maynooth Mission to China and the Maynooth Mission to Africa became the Society of St Columban and the Society of St Patrick.
A sudden drought
Religious life continued to expand in Ireland until the late 20th century, when it suddenly slowed down and went into reverse.  Religious houses closed.  Religious were no longer visible.  Religious spokesmen and women sent out mixed messages in a confused age.  The source of religious vocations suddenly dried up where only a short time ago they had been plentiful.

This is not altogether new in the Irish church.  Religious life in Ireland had many dark and bleak periods.  These coincided with a general decline in the health of the Church.  When the Church recovered, religious life was strong - but such a strengthening was evident in the fervour of the religious; the pride in which they wore their distinctive habits, practiced the ascetic life, proclaimed the teaching of the Church  in and out of season, and stuck to the original intention of their founders.

The world is not without such religious houses - more in France than anywhere else.  So when are we going to look once again to continental Europe for guidance?

The Brandsma Review, Issue 65, March-April 2003

Oliver Plunkett: A Saint Betrayed by his own

OLIVER PLUNKETT: A SAINT BETRAYED BY HIS OWN

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

In proprio venit et sui eum non receperunt-St John, 1, 11

SEÁN Ó RIORDÁIN'S poem Fill Arís contains one memorable line: Dún do intinn ar a tharla ó bhualadh Chath Cionn tSáile (Close your mind to what happened since the defeat at Kinsale).  The Battle of Kinsale in 1602 marks the beginning of the end of the Gaelic Order in Ireland.  Gaeldom, at least in Ireland, was necessarily Catholic.  When Gregory XIII introduced the calendar reform in 1582, this was accepted throughout Catholic Europe, including the courts of the O'Neill and the O'Donnell.  So as Mountjoy's troops fought the Battle of Kinsale in December 1601 under the old style which England would continue to use until 1752, the more advanced Gaelic Irish and their Spanish allies engaged them in January 1602.  The fact that the Julian date of 1601 is impressed upon our minds indicates the extent of the Protestant victory.

In 1607, the Ulster princes left Gaelic Ireland leaderless.  From then on, most initiative would fall to the Sean Gall or Old English, the descendant of the Anglo- and Cambro-Norman who maintained Catholicism and as a result were only now coming to terms with the Irish identity.  These Hiberno-Normans were adept at the law and parliamentary procedure and used both quite well until they found themselves outwitted by Lord Deputy Thomas Wentworth.  However, Wentworth was deposed in 1641 due to a temporary coincidence between Irish Catholic and Presbyterian interest which suited an increasingly assertive English Parliament for the time being.  After Wentworth, things got worse.

Confederation of Kilkenny

The Gaels could not bear it and proceeded with the 1641 Rebellion, unfortunately missing their objective of taking Dublin Castle.  This was followed in 1642 by the inaugural meeting of the Confederate Catholics of Ireland, better known as the Confederation of Kilkenny.  The Catholic Confederacy was the most incredible gathering of Irish clergy and laity in modern Irish history.  It sat as a parliament, raised an army and even chartered a university in Limerick.  One could dream about the possibilities, but Gael and Norman clashed with each other and no one took the bigger picture of the civil wars raging in England and Scotland into account.  When Charles I was executed in 1649, the Confederacy was doomed.

In 1646, the original papal envoy  Father Scarampi left Ireland to make way for the incoming Nuncio, Archbishop Rinuccini.  This was shortly after the great victory of Owen Roe O'Neill at Benburb and Ireland was full of hope.  Scarampi took a number of young men with him to study for the priesthood in Rome.  One of these was Oliver Plunkett.

Oliver Plunkett was born in Meath in 1625.  He came from an old Norman family and many of his relatives were titled nobility, both Catholic and Protestant in persuasion. One of the 19th century Anglican Archbishops of Dublin was a relative, as was George Noble Count Plunkett, the first Foreign Minister and his better known son, the executed rebel Commandant Joseph Mary Plunkett. This was in the future.  The young man was tutored by his cousin, a Cistercian priest named Patrick Plunkett who held the title Abbot of St Mary's (Dublin) and who subsequently served a as Bishop of Clonmacnois and then Bishop of Meath.  At the age of 16, the student was judged to be ready to attend seminary in Rome.
Cromwellian Settlement
The Protestant ascendancy set up Trinity College in 1591 to provide for the education of young men of promise.  The Catholic recusants found the Counter-Reformation seminaries a lot more sympathetic and within a century, several Irish colleges sprung up on the continent.  Oliver Plunkett went to the Irish College in Rome, studying in the Roman Jesuit College, in Propaganda College and in the Sapienza.  His ability was recognised, and he spent most of his early priesthood teaching theology in Propaganda, while holding the office of a consultant on Ireland to the Roman Curia.  Ireland was going  through one of the worse periods in her history.  Cromwell laid waste to the country in his brief military campaign and his generals continued this.  The Cromwellian Settlement, colloquially summarised in the phrase "to hell or to Connaught" saw Catholic ownership of the land fall from 60% to about 20%.  For all that, the settlement was not nearly  as thorough as the Ulster Plantation of 1609.

Cromwell died in 1658 and the Commonwealth fell in 1660, but the restoration of Charles II was not to signal the return to the status quo ante.  In the words of Jonathan Swift:

Those who cut off the father's head, forced the son to fly for his life, and overturned  the whole ancient frame of government...gained by their rebellion what the Catholics lost by their loyalty.

There was to be no significant alteration in Ireland to what it had been under the Commonwealth.

In 1669, Oliver Plunkett was appointed to the vacant primacy.  He returned to Ireland on March 17, 1670 following a clandestine consecration to the episcopacy in Ghent.  The firs duty he had in Ireland was pastoral and over the next four years, he confirmed nearly 50,000 people of all ages - some as old as 60, and often in the open air.  He turned to the topic of education.  At a time when the Protestant establishment was all-powerful and no Catholic order was more despised than the Society of Jesus, he succeeded in establishing a Jesuit college in Drogheda.  Drogheda, notwithstanding the Cromwellian slaughter on 11 September 1649, was the second largest city in Ireland at the time.  Within a few months the school had an enrollment of  150, forty of whom were sons of Protestant gentlemen.  The school lasted a few years until its closure and destruction.

Though it was over a century after the Council of Trent, intermittent persecution in Ireland delayed the effective implementation of the Council decrees.  Archbishop Plunkett found this problem when he came to Ireland and set about correcting it.  This was his undoing.  Laxity in clerical discipline was subject to exaggeration, but nevertheless the conduct of some Irish priests left a lot to be desired.  Secondly, there was an age-old dispute between regular and secular clergy which made church government difficult.  Finally, a dispute arose between Dublin and Armagh in relation to the primacy.
Guerrilla warfare
Disciplinary problems within the Church took place in the background of one grave pastoral problem.  Many of the dispossessed Irish gentry took to the continent to join any of several armies.  Some stayed at home and conducted a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the British administration and those who now occupied their lands.  These Rapparees or Tories varied considerably between those who acted from the highest patriotic motives to those who degenerated into simple highwaymen.  However, they uniformly made the lot of the common people worse and present the Irish hierarchy with a problem.

Synod after synod condemned them, but Oliver Plunkett negotiated with the Tories in an effort to resolve the impasse.  Many priests working in the Armagh Archdiocese denounced the Primate for colluding with the authorities while the Archbishop of Dublin, Peter Talbot accused him of drawing too close to the felons.  The Primate had considerable success with his talks - many Tories left the country to join continental armies - but when a notable Rapparee, Patrick Fleming was killed by government agents in 1677 while travelling under Oliver Plunkett's safe conduct, many criticisms were made.

Oliver Plunkett sough to implement the Council of Trent reforms in Ireland.  A century of intermittent religious persecution made this difficult.  A proportion of the clergy led scandalous lives and the Primate went far beyond his diocese.  The Vicar Apostolic of Derry, Terence O'Kelly, was a notable offender, and he successfully used the civil processes to frustrate any attempt to bring him to book through the Praemunire clause.  Here, Archbishop Plunkett used his political skills to outmaneuver the wily prelate. At the same time, several priests - diocesan and religious - were censured for grave deficiencies in their ministry and personal lives.  This made the Primate many enemies.

The relationship between the members of religious orders and the diocesan clergy had been very difficult from the days of St Patrick and this was something Oliver Plunkett did his best to address.  However, there was a dispute between the friars of the Franciscan and Dominican Orders.  The Franciscans argued the Dominicans should not be invited into the Armagh Archdiocese.  The Primate disagreed and extended the invitation, earning him the enmity of the very powerful Franciscan order.

The contemporary Archbishop of Dublin, Peter Talbot, came from a noble family associated with Malahide Castle (his brother, Richard, was later Duke of Tyrconnell and would serve as James II's viceroy).  Archbishop Talbot was aware of the growing importance of Dublin in Ireland and proposed that the Archbishop of Dublin should be primate.  Archbishop Plunkett answered with a tract defending Armagh's position.  Talbot responded to this and both tracts were published on the continent.  This was the beginning of a long-standing dispute between the two metropolitans.
The Popish Plot
If we focus on the internal politics of Irish Catholicism in the 1670s, we should not forget that the overall position of the Church in Ireland was precarious to say the least.  Just how delicate the situation was became apparent when Titus Oates hatched the infamous "Popish Plot".  Oates was a former Anglican minister with a history of trouble-making who had briefly studied in the English Jesuit colleges oin Valladolid and St Omer.  In 1678, he hurled wild allegations against Catholics in Britain and Ireland.  Nothing might have happened had not certain prominent anti-Catholics chosen to use this material.

The Popish Plot unleashed a new persecution against Catholics with saw Archbishops Plunkett and Talbot thrown into prison, with many others.  At this point the two were reconciled as Oliver Plunkett defied the guards to administer the last sacraments to Peter Talbot, as he died a martyr's death.

The Successor of St Patrick was to follow.  It was alleged that Oliver Plunkett had plotted to bring a French fleet into Carlingford Lough with an army of 15,000 men as part of the general conspiracy to overthrow Charles II.  A trial in Dundalk collapsed as a Protestant jury refused to convict the archbishop, so he was brought to London.
Clemency refused
There is one point which must be commented upon in Oliver Plunkett's trial.  Four of the prosecution witnesses were priests active in the Armagh archdiocese, two of whom were Franciscans.  It is a mystery how the Primate did not challenge his accusers, but long incarceration seriously damaged his health.  Following the trial and conviction, it was said he was already dead before he might have suffered from the more brutal elements of execution by hanging, drawing and quartering.

The action of priests against the Primate is a testament of how unwilling many Catholics were to accept the Tridentine reform, particularly priests.  There is a contemporary satire, Comhairle Commissarius na Cléire, which is believed to mock Oliver Plunkett and his work (and the author is believed to have been a priest).  Also there were many demands for clemency which Charles II refused to heed, one coming from the Earl of Essex who originally arrested him.  Charles told Essex he would have done more good by testifying at his trial.

Oliver Plunkett was executed on 11 July 1681 and was canonised by Blessed Paul VI on 10 December 1975.  His shrine at St Peter's Church, Drogheda, Co Louth attracts a steady stream of visitors.  His life and work continue to have revelance to our own day.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 86, September-October 2006