The ancient Irish church/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
CONVERSION OF THE DANES.
By the middle of the ninth century the Danes had established themselves permanently in settlements along the coast, and had founded the seaport towns of Dublin, Waterford and Limerick. From that time they maintained a continuous warfare with the natives, and had varying success. Sometimes they penetrated into the interior of the country, at other times they were driven from their own strongholds; but notwithstanding these vicissitudes, their position remained practically unchanged. They never extended their dominions beyond the few cities at first occupied, and from these positions the Irish were never able permanently to dislodge them. Before long they took their place to all intents and purposes as one of the tribes of Ireland. They formed treaties with the different kings, and fought side by side with the natives in the tribal disputes which form so large a part of the history of the country at that time. After defeat, they were quite ready to give hostages, pay tribute, and acknowledge the supremacy of the Irish kings; but they held their ground, and as soon as they felt strong enough, they renewed the contest, and shook off the yoke that had been placed on them. This state of things continued down to the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion.
The Norsemen who thus made a settlement in the land were at the first all pagans, and as far as we can learn, there was no serious effort made on the part of the Irish for their conversion. It was through the influence of their own compatriots in England that they were at length brought to the knowledge of the truth.
The Danes who landed in England found no insurmountable obstacle to prevent their coalescing with the Angles. They were of the same race, and spoke alosmt the same language; they had the same forms of government, and very nearly the same code of laws. When at one time the Danes became rulers of the nation, the transference of power was scarcely perceived by the people in general—the same laws and usages continued in force; it caused no break in the national life. It was more like a mere change of dynasty than the subjugation of the country by a foreign power. The political result was that Danes and Saxons became in the end one homogeneous people. The religious result was that the paganism of the Danes imperceptibly faded away, and that by degrees they accepted the religion of Christ, which was established all around them.
During all this time the Danes of Ireland did not forget their kinsmen beyond the Channel. Though settled in Dublin, or Waterford, or Limerick, they were not Irish. Just as in an earlier age the inhabitants of the south-west of Scotland belonged to the Irish, and not to the Pictish people, so these Danes were really Englishmen living in Ireland. In times of defeat they sent to England for help; and when some of their warriors could be spared from the defence of their possessions, they went across the water and took their part in the contests with Saxons and Britons which were being continually carried on. When the Danes of England became Christian, the conversion of their brethren in Ireland followed as a matter of course. The change was very gradual, and the Christianity which they at first professed was very little removed from the paganism which they abandoned. Eventually, however, idolatry became quite extinct amongst them; they founded churches more imposing in proportions than any others to be found in Ireland, and they established a ritual and liturgy similar to that which was followed at the time by the Churches of England. It is not easy to assign dates to these events, but speaking generally, we may say that the conversion of the Danes was being accomplished from the middle of the tenth to the middle of the eleventh century. Ireland was thus brought for a second time in contact with the Church of England.
We have seen how in England the missionaries from Iona were forced to retreat before the paramount influence of Rome, and how the English Church thus became subject to the Pope. It was easier, however, to banish the teachers and abolish the ceremonies of the Irish than to alter the tone which they had given to the Church. Of course this, too, would have been changed in time, if the advantage gained by the Romanists had been vigorously followed up; but the unsettled state of the country, consequent on the Danish invasions, cut off England to some extent from intercourse with the Continent; and the result was that the Anglo-Saxon Church drifted into a state of quasi-independence. In theory it acknowledged the Pope, and was in communion with the other Churches on the Continent, but practically it was independent. 'It was to an extraordinary degree a national church: national in its comprehensiveness, as well as in its exclusiveness. … The interference of foreign Churches was scarcely, if at all, felt. There was no Roman legation from the days of Theodore to those of Offa, and there are only scanty vestiges of such interference for the next three centuries; Dunstan boldly refused to obey a papal sentence. Until the eve of the Conquest, therefore, the development of the system was free and spontaneous, although its sphere was a small one.'[1]
This independence was far from being an unmixed blessing. The fighting bishop became as well known in England as he had been in Ireland. 'Two West-Saxon prelates fell in the battle of Charmouth in A.D. 835; and Bishop Ealhstan of Sherborne acted as Egbert's general in Lent in A.D. 825, and was one of the commanders who defeated the Danes on the Parret in A.D. 845.'[2] Despite the efforts of reformers such as Dunstan, the Church had become secularized, and sorely needed an infusion of new life. Such was its condition when both Church and State were revolutionized by the Norman conquest.
One of the first acts of William the Conqueror was to place men of his own nation in all the most important bishoprics. These foreign ecclesiastics—men of ability and energy—set themselves to reproduce in England the state of things to which they had been accustomed on the Continent. Thus, when the realm of England was brought under the sway of the Conqueror, the Church of England was brought under the sway of the Pope.
With the exception of Donat, first Bishop of Dublin, who was consecrated in 1038, all the Danish bishops of Ireland were appointed subsequently to the advent of William the Conqueror. They were therefore, to all intents and purposes, Romish bishops. They all of them went to Canterbury for consecration, and regarded themselves as suffragans of the Primate of England. Some historians have seen in this submission 'a wholesale betrayal of the liberties of the Irish Church.' This, however, is a mistake. That it paved the way for the subjection of the Irish Church is true enough; but there was no betrayal. The case was exactly analogous to the case of Gibraltar at present. The Bishop of Gibraltar is subject to the Archbishop of Canterbury, not because he wishes to bring the Spanish Church into subjection to the Anglican metropolitan, but simply because Gibraltar is English, and not Spanish. In the same way the Danish bishops of Dublin were subject to Canterbury, because Dublin was an English and not an Irish city.
In the pontificate of Alexander II. it was ordered that no bishop should exercise his functions until he had received the confirmation of the Holy See. Possibly it was in pursuance of this edict that Patrick, second Bishop of Dublin, proceeded to Rome, after he had been consecrated by Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury. Hildebrand, the actual framer of the decree, was then the occupant of the papal chair; and as he was always watchful for opportunities of extending the sway of that 'city of God,' which it was the one object of his life to establish, we can well believe that he gave directions to the Danish bishop to use his influence for the bringing of the Irish Church into a state of canonical obedience. At the same time he himself wrote to Turlogh O'Brien, King of Ireland, telling him that the Holy Church is placed above all the kingdoms of the earth, the Lord having put into subjection unto her principalities and powers and all that seems possessed of grandeur and dignity in the world, and that the Universal Church owes to Peter and to his vicars a debt of obedience, as well as of reverence. He then exhorts that this debt of obedience should be discharged by the Irish, and that they should cherish and maintain the Catholic peace of the Church. A few years afterwards Gilbert, Danish Bishop of Limerick, was appointed Papal Legate—the first that Ireland had ever seen. Waterford, too, had its Danish bishop consecrated at Canterbury. Thus the Church of Rome obtained a footing in the country. We shall see that it was not long before the whole Irish Church was brought under its power.
- ↑ Stubbs, Constitutional Hist. of England, 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 245.
- ↑ Ib., vol. i. p. 237.