Download PDF | Marie Therese Flanagan - The Transformation of the Irish Church in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries-The Boydell Press (2010).
312 Pages
The twelfth century saw a wide-ranging transformation of the Irish church, a regional manifestation of a wider pan-European reform movement. This book, the first to offer a full account of this change, moves away from the previous concentration on the restructuring of Irish dioceses and episcopal authority, and the introduction of Continental monastic observances, to widen the discussion.
It charts changes in the religious culture experienced by the laity as well as the clergy and takes account of the particular Irish experience within the broader context of Continental reform. The universal ideals that were defined with increasing clarity by Continental advocates of reform generated a series of responses from Irish churchmen aimed at disseminating reform ideology within clerical circles and transmitting it also to lay society, even if, as elsewhere, it often proved difficult to implement in practice.
Whatever the obstacles faced by reformist clergy, their genuine concern to transform the Irish church and society is attested in a range of hitherto unexploited sources this volume draws upon. Marie Therese Flanagan is Professor of Medieval History at Queen’s University, Belfast.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been completed without the support and cooperation of colleagues in the School of History and Anthropology at the Queen’s University of Belfast who so graciously carried an additional workload during my period of sabbatical leave. I am grateful also to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for providing research leave funding and to All Souls College, Oxford, for a visiting fellowship that enabled me to exploit the splendid library resources of the College and the Bodleian Library.
The staff of the Interlibrary Loans desk at Queen’s University dealt very patiently and efficiently with numerous requests for material. My colleague and neighbour, Dr Evelyn Mullally, obligingly proofread the original typescript, saving me from many errors and inconsistencies. I also wish to thank the editors of the Series for their helpful and encouraging comments and the production team in Boydell & Brewer with whom it has been an especial pleasure to collaborate.
INTRODUCTION
This study offers an account of the Irish church during the twelfth century, a time of institutional restructuring and religious renewal associated with a reform movement that was a regional manifestation of a much wider European phenomenon. The sources for such an undertaking are problematic, with serious gaps in the evidence, making a comprehensive portrayal difficult to achieve for a time when elsewhere in medieval Europe there was a widespread increase in the quantity and quality of written sources.
Although the focus is the pre-AngloNorman twelfth century it has sometimes proved necessary, in light of evidentiary problems, to extend the chronological parameters back before the twelfth century, or forward into the post-Anglo-Norman period. Anglo-Norman intrusion into Ireland from 1167 onwards undoubtedly had a major impact on the Irish church, but it merits separate treatment and is not attempted here. Nonetheless, it has cast a retrospective shadow over the twelfth-century Irish church as a moral imperative for external intervention was advanced on the basis of an urgent need for reform.
The decadence and the general backwardness, even barbarity, of Irish society, as well as its imputed nominal practice of Christianity, were used to justify Anglo-Norman engagement with Ireland, most notably in the propagandist writings of its principal apologist, Gerald of Wales. Gerald’s case relied on drawing a deliberately sharp contrast between natives and newcomers, leading to exaggerated portraits of Irish degeneracy. In that way, the AngloNormans could be portrayed as both agents of divine retribution for the moral lapses of the Irish people and instruments for ameliorative change.
Historians of the Irish church reform movement have been compelled to concentrate on those aspects for which the most substantial evidence has survived; this has led to a particular emphasis on structural changes in dioceses and episcopal authority, on relations with the church of Canterbury, and on the introduction of Continental monastic observances, most especially of Cistercian monasticism. This is an inevitable consequence of the bias of the extant source material, a problem which remains difficult to surmount and has largely dictated that there have been surprisingly few attempts at a broader survey of the twelfth-century transformation of the Irish church.
The foundations for such a study were laid by Aubrey Gwynn in an extensive series of articles between 1940 and 1980, the most important of which were gathered into a single volume and published posthumously as The Irish Church in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Blackrock, co. Dublin, 1992).
A more recent scholarly landmark was the publication of Ireland and Europe in the Twelfth Century: Reform and Renewal, ed. D. Bracken and D. O Riain-Raedel (Dublin, 2006), a volume of twelve essays arising out of a conference held in 2001 to mark the thousandth anniversary of the synod of Cashel, 1101, which has conventionally been regarded as inaugurating a systematic programme of church reform. That collection contains important contributions, notably in the art-historical sphere and on the Irish monastic communities that were founded in southern Germany and Austria in the first half of the twelfth century.
Ultimately, historians can only work with the evidence to hand; yet this book aims to draw on a wider range of texts than has hitherto been employed, including the problematic genre of hagiography, so as to try to move beyond the predominant focus on institutional restructuring. It seeks to chart changes in religious culture experienced by laity as well as clergy and to take account of the particular Irish experience within the broader European context of reform.
It does not consider any one individual career or any one church in detail; nor is it concerned with underlying political changes, although those undoubtedly had an important bearing on ecclesiastical developments and particularly on the establishment of territorially fixed bishoprics and dioceses, the boundaries of which were drawn to be coterminous with contemporary political kingdoms.
Each diocese merits individual consideration within the local political context, but this has not been attempted here, since it would have resulted in a series of heavily regionalised discussions. The aim is rather to broaden coverage to take account of aspects that have hitherto attracted less attention, such as the impact of the reform agenda on the ideology of episcopal leadership and on lay society.
This account does not make claims to comprehensive coverage. Much work still remains to be done, particularly in the specialist fields of sermon literature, liturgy, canon law, eschatological and apocryphal material, the distinctiveness and complexity of which warrant separate treatment. I hope, however, that the book opens paths for future discussion.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق