Ireland, Christianity in

Ireland, Christianity in. Christianity spread to Ireland from Gaul and Britain in the 4th cent. The first firm date is the statement in the Chronicle of Prosper Tiro for 431 that Celestine I sent Palladius ‘as their first bishop to the Irish believing in Christ’. The second 5th-cent. source, the writings of St Patrick, provide no clear picture of the Church in Ireland. Until the 7th cent. relations between Ireland and the other Celtic Churches were close, and for another 500 years the Irish Church retained a structure that lacked metropolitan jurisdiction. Some of the monastic foundations grew into great self-governing communities. Places such as Armagh and Cork became towns under the jurisdiction of the head of the church, often a layman, and many such churches and their estates were controlled by ecclesiastical dynasties. The establishment of Viking towns, especially Dublin, opened a way for change. In the 11th cent. the Norse settlers became Christian, and their Churches sought links with the English Church. Three national synods in the 12th cent. established diocesan organization, and new religious orders flourished, especially the Cistercians. However, many of the older churches declined, and the attempt to impose clerical celibacy and canonical marriage largely failed. The Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169, and the colonial occupation of much of eastern Ireland, gave rise to a divided Church. In the 15th cent. the clergy were lax, secular control of churches far advanced, and pastoral care was poor.

Under Henry VIII most of the clergy and laity in contact with the government gave nominal assent to the Irish Act of Supremacy 1537 and in 1560 the Church of Ireland was established by the Irish Parliament, but the Reformation at first made little headway outside the areas controlled by Dublin or recently settled from England or Scotland. In the early 17th cent. the strength of Protestantism increased, aided by the influx of English and Scottish clergy, the establishment in 1592 of Trinity College, Dublin, and the promulgation of the Irish Articles (1615). At the same time, a revitalized Catholicism strengthened its hold on the indigenous population. In 1618 a resident RC hierarchy for a time replaced the vicars apostolic who had been appointed since 1591. Thereafter Catholicism has remained the religion of the majority in Ireland, increasingly linked with ethnicity and cultural identity. The apparent links between Catholicism and rebellion in Ireland, demonstrated in the uprising of 1641, led to measures specifically directed against RCs; the Catholic revival under James II and his subsequent defeat prompted the extension of discriminatory measures which after 1704 hit Protestant dissenters as well as RCs and tried to confine political office and ownership of land to members of the Church of Ireland.

Scottish settlers in east Ulster had spread Presbyterianism in the 17th cent., and in 1690 they organized themselves under the Synod of Ulster. There were also groups of English Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Quakers arriving from England in the 1650s, followed by refugees from France and the Rhineland. In the 18th cent. the Church of Ireland felt equally threatened by the RC majority and the Protestant dissenters. The rebellion of 1798 deepened religious distrust. The Act of Union of 1800 confirmed the position of the Church of Ireland as the established Church and the success of D. O'Connell in mobilizing the RC masses in demanding Catholic emancipation (granted in 1829) united Anglicans and Dissenters in support of the Union. Famine and emigration radically reduced the RC population in the 19th cent., but a series of reforming bishops revitalized Catholicism and built up a vigorous Ultramontane Church.

The Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1869. The General Synod became the governing body of the Church. The BCP was revised in 1878 and in 1924–6, and an Alternative Prayer Book was authorized in 1984.

After the partition of Ireland in 1922, the legislation of the Free State (later Republic) reflected the ethos of the RC majority. The Constitution of 1938 recognized both the Protestant and the Jewish communities, even though until 1972 it acknowledged the special position of the RC Church as the guardian of the faith of the majority. In Northern Ireland the RCs, who comprised over a third of the population, were never reconciled to the partition and their discontent over discrimination was one of the causes of the conflict that erupted in 1968/9. Despite underlying distrust between the Churches, the length and violence of that conflict pushed them to co-operation in seeking a solution to it.