The Church in Early Irish Society

Kathleen Hughes

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367203412
• eBook ISBN: 9780429536595
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Originally published in 1966, The Church in Early Irish Society traces the history of the church right up until the twelfth century. It gives an account of the problems which arose when the organization of the Christian church, imported from the urban bureaucracy of the Roman Empire, had to be adapted to the society of early Ireland. The book also looks at the legal texts of the sixth seventh and eighth centuries and attempts through them, to trace the gradual process of modification which culminated in the eighth century, when the church now fully adjusted to Irish society, reached a so-far unprecedented height of power and influence. The book also examines the issues faced in the ninth century by the Viking raids and settlements.

II. GROWTH

CHAPTER 5

The problems of the sixth-century church

The problems of the sixth-century church in Britain¹ and Ireland were by no means identical. The British church was an old-established institution, while the Irish church was still struggling towards maturity. In both countries the church represented Latin civilization, but while this had been naturalized in Britain, it was completely foreign to Ireland: thus, the church in Ireland found none of the administrative structure which was its normal foundation elsewhere in Europe. Moreover, although Irish political life was superficially troubled by frequent minor battles, her society was fundamentally secure and intensely conservative: Britain, on the other hand, had recently been almost overturned by a hostile invasion, for in the second half of the fifth century heathen Germanic barbarians had settled in the eastern half of the island, where they had massacred, expelled, or enslaved the civilian population. Under Aurelianus a British army had fought its way to victory, and at Badon Hill (led by Arthur, according to a tradition recorded by Nennius) it held the Saxon advance, so that after fifty years of fighting for survival the Britons experienced the relief of a respite. For the first two generations of the sixth century Britons and Saxons each occupied their own parts of the country. The majority of Britons alive in 550 had experienced only such conditions, and Gildas, the contemporary writer, implies that, lulled into a false security, they had given themselves up to relaxation. Yet there must have been many others, like himself, who understood how imminent was the danger.

Gildas is our chief authority for the state of the British church in this period of comparative peace before the barbarians closed in.The inaccuracy of his account of Britain’ s early history is notorious, and his philosophy of events does not permit a balanced survey. He saw the disasters of the preceding century as a judgement, and writes as a prophet calling men to repentance from the sins and sloth of his own day. Nevertheless, his indictment of princes and priesthood gives us, incidentally, some reliable sidelights on the British church. Further contemporary illustration comes from the inscribed stones, evidence of much in little. We are thus fairly well informed about the sixth-century British church.

The British princes of this period were Christian. One, Maelgwn of Gwynnedd, had entered a monastery, which he later abandoned, and had been taught by a distinguished Christian master.¹ They were professedly pious, making their oaths on Christian altars, though prepared to break them without scruple:² they were almsgivers, like Maelgwn, though largior in dando, profusior in peccato.³ They exercised some control over ecclesiastical appointments, for Gildas complains bitterly that unsuitable persons bought episcopal office from the tyranni,⁴ and that princes were prepared to use their influence in the church to further political intrigues.⁵ The bishops were well-to-do men who commanded prestige. Episcopal office was worth buying; indeed, there was so much competition that would-be purchasers were sometimes disappointed.⁶ Bishops were not withdrawn, but were active in the world, and did not expect to pursue the ascetic life. Gildas’ strictures on the hollowness of their profession serves to emphasize the fact that they were a socially acceptable class.

The position of the fifth-century church in Gaul provides conditions in many ways parallel with those of sixth-century Britain. The Gallo-Roman bishops were often aristocrats with private means, representing a Latin culture, trying to maintain order in a disturbed society. Sees were rich, and men of the world were needed to administer them.¹ The bishops were not only responsible for all the clergy in their dioceses; they had to hold courts for the laity,² negotiate with the invaders,³ buy back captives.⁴ Detractors complained that they were proud and worldly, taken up with the state they kept;⁵ the procedure for the election of bishops in fifth-century Gaul was ambiguous, and was sometimes abused by intrigue and the purchase of ecclesiastical office.⁶ These criticisms of the fifth-century church during the first generations of the barbarian invasions are similar to those which Gildas makes of the British church in his day, but the clergy he describes do not compare in debauchery and dishonesty with the Merovingian clergy a few decades later, after Gaul had suffered a century of barbarization.⁷

Gildas and the contemporary inscriptions provide evidence on the practice of celibacy among British clergy, but their evidence is controversial. Up to the fourth century the church had accepted that married men who took orders should continue to live with their wives. Celibacy began as a voluntary practice of asceticism and, though it came to be much admired, it was not regarded as obligatory. From the fourth century onwards a movement within the church attempted to make celibacy binding on the higher grades of clergy. The provincial Council of Elvira in Spain, held c. 300, required bishops, priests, and deacons abstinere se a conjugibus suis et non generare filios. Similar prohibitions, passed at a Roman Council held in 386, were conveyed to the bishops of Spain and Africa, and Leo the Great (440–61) extended the practice to subdeacons. During the fifth century Gaulish custom was diverse. But as early as the fourth century Gaulish bishops had begun to separate from their wives on consecration. By the sixth century a custom was established by which the wife of a married man gave her consent to his consecration as a bishop, and after this, though she continued to be recognized as his wife, she lived apart from him.¹ She might take part in charitable works within the diocese, and was sometimes known as episcopa. All the same, complete continence was required from both husband and wife, though lapses are not infrequently recorded. Priests and deacons, and according to some legislation subdeacons, were also expected to live in continence, but these grades were allowed to keep their wives in their houses. Suspicion often attached to such relationships, and the Council of Lyons in 583 found it necessary to forbid domestic contacts between all the higher clergy and their wives.²

British evidence shows clearly that the higher clergy were married and their wives recognized. One inscription at Llantrisant in Anglesey records the burial place of a lady ‘who was the very loving wife of Bivatig(irnus), servant of God, sacerdos and disciple of Paulinus’. It goes on to name the people to whom the husband belonged, possibly the Gaulish Andecavi, whose territory was on the Loire, and to say that he was ‘an example to all his fellow citizens and relatives both in character (and) in rule of life’.³ If we bear in mind the practice required by canon law in contemporary Gaul the British inscription would suggest (though not conclusively) that Bivatigirnus and his wife lived in continence. Yet the implication to be drawn from Gildas may be that a bishop and his wife were part of the same household. Gildas repeats the Pauline injunction that the bishop must be the husband of one wife and that he must rule his own house well, having his children in subjection with all chastity.⁴ This seems to suggest a joint household, but it would be dangerous to attach too literal a meaning to Gildas’ comments. He also points out that the Britons too often behave as if they had heard Paul require them to be ‘the husband of wives’, though some, he admits, are continent,⁵ Others, perhaps under the guise of piety, ‘drive out of the house a religious mother maybe, or sisters, and unbecomingly make light of strange women’.⁶ We may conclude that in Britain a number of the higher clergy were married, and that at least monogamy was demanded. The crucial...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• I. Birth
• II. Growth
• III. Maturity
• IV. Adversity and Recovery
• V. Transmutation
• Appendix Liber Angeli
• Abbreviations
• Select Bibliography
• Index