Christianity in Ireland

The introduction of Christianity to Ireland dates to sometime before the 5th century, presumably through interactions with Roman Britain. A single documented event dates from 430, when Palladius, a bishop born in France, was sent by Pope Celestine I to minister to the "Scots believing in Christ". While this is evidence of Christianity existing in Ireland prior to 430, nothing more may be said for certain. The early Irish church developed a strong monastic tradition. Some Eastern Orthodox Christians argue that the Irish church also had an Apostolic connection and was effectively a provincial form of Eastern Orthodox Christianity up until the East-West Schism of 1054. Apostle of the Irish The traditional story of Saint Patrick says he was from Bannavem Taburniae, the location of which is unclear. His birthplace is not known with any certainty; some traditions place it in England—one identifying it as Glannoventa (modern Ravenglass in Cumbria)—but claims have also been advanced for locations in present-day Scotland or in Wales Missionaries abroad In the 6th and 7th centuries missionaries from Ireland to England and Continental Europe spread news of the flowering of learning, and scholars from other nations moved to Irish monasteries. The excellence and isolation of these monasteries helped preserve Latin learning during the Early Middle Ages. The period of Insular art - mainly in the fields of illuminated manuscripts, metalworking, and sculpture - flourished and produced such treasures as the Book of Kells (), the Ardagh Chalice, and the many carved stone crosses that dot the island of Ireland. that opens the Gospel of John These monasteries served as sanctuaries to many of the continent's great scholars and theologians. It was here that the lamp of Latin learning was preserved for the ages. During this age, the great illuminated manuscripts of Ireland were produced. Arguably the finest example of such works is The Book of Kells, now displayed at Trinity College, Dublin. The first significant renewal of learning in the West came with the Carolingian Renaissance of the Early Middle Ages. Charlemagne (), advised by Peter of Pisa (744-799) and by Alcuin of York ( | 804), attracted the scholars of England and Ireland, and by decree in AD 787 established schools in every abbey in his empire. These schools, from which the term scholasticism derives, became centres of medieval learning. During the early Scholastic period, knowledge of the Greek language had vanished in the west except in Ireland, where it was widely dispersed in the monastic schools. Irish scholars had a considerable presence in the Frankish court, where they were renowned for their learning. Among them was Johannes Scotus Eriugena (- ), one of the founders of scholasticism. Eriugena was the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period, and an outstanding philosopher in terms of originality. Cambro-Normans In the first year of his reign (1154), Henry II of England procured a Papal bull from the English-born Pope Adrian IV authorising him to proceed to Ireland "to check the torrent of wickedness to reform evil manners, to sow the seeds of virtue". The following year, Adrian authorised Henry II to invade Ireland in order "to proclaim the truths of the Christian religion to a rude and ignorant people"; on condition that a penny should be paid annually from each house to the See of Rome. In 1168 Macmurrogh, King of Leinster, driven from his kingdom, sought Henry's aid, and then Adrian's Bull was remembered. A contingent of Cambro-Norman knights went to Ireland in 1169. In 1171 Henry himself landed at Waterford. The king proceeded to Dublin where he spent the winter and received the submission of many Irish kings. In late 1171, an assembly of the Irish clergy gathered at Cashel and proclaimed Henry's title to the sovereign dominion of Ireland. The assembly took the oath of fidelity to him and his successors. Pope Alexander III, gratified with this extension of his dominion, issued in September 1172 a brief confirming the bull of Adrian and expressing a hope that "the barbarous nation" would attain under the government of Henry "to some decency of manners"; he also wrote three epistles—one to Henry II, one to the kings and nobles of Ireland, and one to its ecclesiastical hierarchy—enjoining obedience of Ireland to England, and of both to the see of Saint Peter. In some ways, the change was advantageous to the church hierarchy. Under the ancient system, the native chieftains were absolute masters over all their followers, including the clergy. According to the new order introduced by Henry II, the chieftains no longer had authority over the clergy. To maintain their sovereignty over the Irish clergy, the English kings filled the vacant sees mostly with Englishmen. The Irish clergy in turn appealed to Rome to confirm their nomination. Jealousy, hostility and disputes characterised the relations between the English and the Irish ecclesiastics; the latter sought to transfer their allegiance as churchmen from the sovereign of England to the pope of Rome, and so the struggle for supremacy lasted for centuries. The Crown of England did not gain full control of Ireland until the 16th and 17th centuries; the whole island was subjected to a number of military campaigns in the period from 1534 to 1691. During this period, the island was colonised by English and Scottish Protestant settlers. Most of the native Irish remained Catholic. Reformation In 1536 during the English Reformation, King Henry VIII of England arranged to be declared head of the Church in Ireland through the Act of Supreme Head of the Church in Ireland passed by the Irish Reformation Parliament.{ When the Church of England underwent reform under King Edward VI of England (), the Church of Ireland followed. All but two of the Irish bishops accepted the Elizabethan Settlement, although the vast majority of priests and the church membership remained Catholic. The Church of Ireland claims Apostolic succession because of the continuity in the hierarchy; however, this is disputed by the Catholic Church. During the Tudor conquest of Ireland by the Protestant state of England in the course of the 16th century, the Elizabethan state failed to convert the population to Protestantism. There was also a vigorous campaign of proselytising by Counter-Reformation Catholic clergy. The result was that Catholicism came to be identified with a sense of nativism and Protestantism came to be identified with the State. The established church in Ireland underwent a period of more radical Calvinist doctrine than occurred in England. James Ussher (later Archbishop of Armagh) authored the Irish Articles, adopted in 1615. In 1634, the Irish Convocation adopted the English Thirty-Nine Articles alongside the Irish Articles. After the Restoration of 1660, it seems that the Thirty-Nine Articles took precedence; they remain the official doctrine of the Church of Ireland even after disestablishment. The Penal Laws, first introduced in the early 17th century, were initially designed to force the native elite to conform to the state church by excluding Non-conformists and Catholics from public office, but were later, starting under Queen Elizabeth, also used to confiscate virtually all Catholic owned land and grant it to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. The Penal Laws had a lasting effect on the population, due to their severity (celebrating Catholicism in any form was punishable by death or enslavement under the laws), and the favouritism granted Irish Anglicans served to polarise the community in terms of religion. (see Anti-Protestantism in Early Modern Ireland 1536–1691) thus was also largely a form of hostility to the colonisation of Ireland. Irish poetry of this era shows a marked antipathy to Protestantism, one such poem reading, "The faith of Christ [Catholicism] with the faith of Luther is like ashes in the snow". The mixture of resistance to colonisation and religious disagreements led to widespread massacres of Protestant settlers in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Subsequent religious or sectarian antipathy was fuelled by the atrocities committed by both sides in the Irish Confederate Wars, especially the repression of Catholicism during and after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, when Irish Catholic land was confiscated en masse, clergy were executed and discriminatory legislation was passed against Catholics. The Church of Ireland undertook the first publication of Scripture in Irish. The first Irish translation of the New Testament was begun by Nicholas Walsh, Bishop of Ossory, who worked on it until his untimely death in 1585. The work was continued by John Kearny, his assistant, and Dr. Nehemiah Donellan, Archbishop of Tuam; it was finally completed by William O'Domhnuill (William Daniell, Archbishop of Tuam in succession to Donellan). Their work was printed in 1602. The work of translating the Old Testament was undertaken by William Bedel (1571–1642), Bishop of Kilmore, who completed his translation within the reign of Charles I, although it was not published until 1680 in a revised version by Narcissus Marsh (1638–1713), Archbishop of Dublin. William Bedell had undertaken a translation of the Book of Common Prayer in 1606. An Irish translation of the revised prayer book of 1662 was effected by John Richardson (1664–1747) and published in 1712. The English-speaking minority mostly adhered to the Church of Ireland or to Presbyterianism, while the Irish-speaking majority remained faithful to Catholicism, which remained by far the majority denomination in Ireland. Union with Great Britain during the 18th century. When Ireland was incorporated in 1801 into the new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Church of Ireland was also united with the Church of England to form the United Church of England and Ireland. At the same time, one archbishop and three bishops from Ireland (selected by rotation) were given seats in the House of Lords at Westminster, joining the two archbishops and twenty-four bishops from the Church of England. In 1833, the British Government proposed the Irish Church Measure to reduce the 22 archbishops and bishops who oversaw the Anglican minority in Ireland to a total of 12 by amalgamating sees and using the revenues saved for the use of parishes. This sparked the Oxford Movement, which was to have wide repercussions for the Anglican Communion. As the official established church, the Church of Ireland was funded partially by tithes imposed on all Irish citizens, irrespective of the fact that it counted only a minority of the populace among its adherents; these tithes were a source of much resentment which occasionally boiled over, as in the "Tithe War" of 1831/36. Eventually, the tithes were ended, replaced with a lower levy called the tithe rentcharge. The Irish Church Act 1869 (which took effect in 1871) finally ended the role of the Church of Ireland as the state church. This terminated both state support and parliament's role in its governance, but also took into government ownership much church property. Compensation was provided to clergy, but many parishes faced great difficulty in local financing after the loss of rent-generating lands and buildings. The Church of Ireland made provision in 1870 for its own government, led by a General Synod, and with financial management by a Representative Church Body. With disestablishment in 1869, the last remnants of tithes were abolished and the Church's representation in the House of Lords also ceased. ==Demographic statistics==