Armagh [Ir.
Ard Macha, height of Macha]. City and district in Northern Ireland, home of the (papal) primate of Ireland, who bears the title Comharba Phádraig [successor of Patrick], the claimed antiquity of which has recently been challenged; it is also the residence of the head of the Church of Ireland. Although the site has been Christian in all of recorded history, its name in Irish, ‘Height of Macha’, acknowledges a pre-Christian past. According to the pseudo-history
Lebor Gabála [Book of Invasions], Ard Macha was named for
Macha (1), wife of the mythical invader
Nemed. It is on high ground, 2 miles E of
Emain Macha [Ir. fortress of Macha], an important settlement in early Ireland, widely celebrated in Irish heroic literature. The excavations for St Patrick's (Protestant) Cathedral in 1840 uncovered many early carvings, especially figures of
bears.
In pre-conquest Ireland Armagh was the site of a centre of learning, sometimes described as a university, established by Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair [Rory O'Connor]. Following the Synod of Clane (1162), no one who was not an alumnus of Armagh could be
fer léiginn [Ir., master of studies] in any Irish monastic school. The advent of the Anglo-Normans in 1169, and their plundering of the school in 1184, 1185, and 1189, ended the tradition of learning at Armagh. The former (until 1974) county of Armagh, just south of
Lough Neagh, was the smallest of the six in Northern Ireland. Within its borders are several sites often mentioned in Irish narrative, including
Sliab Cuillinn [Slieve Gullion], a hill 5 miles SW of Newry, and
Sliab Fúait [Slieve Fuad], sometimes thought to be the residence of
Lir, near Newtown Abbott. See also
Book of Armagh [
Liber Ardmachanus]. Richard Sharpe, ‘St. Patrick and the See of Armagh’,
Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 4 (Winter 1982), 33–59; cf. B. K. Lambkin, ‘Patrick, Armagh, and Emain Macha’,
Emania (Belfast), 2 (1987), 29–31.
