Religious Orders

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religious orders. Though St Patrick in his Confession mentions the presence of monks and virgins among his converts nothing is known about their lifestyle. From the 6th and 7th centuries monasticism came to occupy a central position in the Irish church and surviving monastic rules, along with the evidence of hagiography, give the impression of a very austere lifestyle which made few allowances for human frailty. The monastic legislation of St Columbanus (d. 615), though intended for continental houses, particularly illustrates this. Later reformers, such as the Céile Dé in the 8th and 9th centuries, tended to stress this ascetic dimension. This form of monasticism remained influential until the 12th century with communities lingering in some areas until the 16th.

Unlike the rest of western Europe, Ireland was relatively uninfluenced by Benedictine monasticism and the number of Benedictine houses in medieval Ireland was small. A number of Irish Benedictine monasteries (Schottenklöster) were, however, established in German‐speaking territories in the 11th and 12th centuries and survived until the 16th.

The 12th‐century reform of the church led to the introduction of the Cistercians and various branches of the Augustinian canons. The presence of the Anglo‐Normans after 1169 and the establishment and patronage of their own religious houses introduced the problem of the ‘two nations’ and racial tension was one of the chief problems of all forms of religious life in the medieval period.

In the 13th century the Franciscan, Dominican, Augustinian, and Carmelite friars were introduced. Their arrival corresponded with a period of prosperity and expansion in the Anglo‐Irish colony and most of their houses were established in its towns and boroughs, though with a significant number in Gaelic areas as well. Racial antipathy also divided the friars, and their respective administrative units in Ireland remained subject to either English or Anglo‐Irish superiors until the 15th and 16th centuries. The decline of the colony and the effects of the Black Death seem to have affected Anglo‐Irish communities more severely and the resurgence of religious life in the 15th century was almost exclusively a Gaelic phenomenon. Among the Cistercians and the Augustinian canons standards and numbers had reached a low ebb, though there were unsuccessful attempts to reform the former between 1435 and 1531. The mendicants were revitalized by the emergence of the Observant reform whose structures facilitated the separatist leanings of the Gaelic friars but whose sincerity commanded the respect and support of both Anglo‐Irish and Gaelic patrons.

The effects of the Reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries were felt unevenly in Ireland. Most of the religious houses in areas under government control were suppressed between 1536 and 1543 while the rest were nearly all suppressed during the reigns of Edward VI (1547–53) and Elizabeth I (1558–1603). In many areas stratagems were devised to allow the religious to reoccupy their old sites or others in the vicinity. The monastic orders, dependent on their lands for support, were more severely affected than the mendicants. The friars were also able to establish colleges on the Continent for the training of new members in which they were exposed to post‐Tridentine Catholicism (see counter‐reformation).

The newer orders also began to appear in Ireland in the 17th century; the Jesuits, after an initial mission in 1542, had nineteen members by 1609, the Capuchins were established in 1615, and the Discalced Carmelites in 1625. The newer groups initially drew their recruits from the Old English and gravitated towards the towns and there was frequent tension between them and the older orders over rights, privileges, and the occupation of sites. A short‐lived attempt was made to revive Cistercian life in the first half of the century. The 17th century also saw the establishment of houses of Augustinian, Dominican, and Poor Clare nuns in Ireland and an Irish Benedictine convent was established in Ypres in 1665.

The friars, particularly the Franciscans and Dominicans, continued to be the largest and most influential group among the regular clergy. Conditions in Ireland made it very difficult to conduct religious life along the lines approved by the post‐Tridentine church and throughout the 17th and 18th centuries there were occasional complaints about the running of novitiates in Ireland. In 1751, in reaction to a number of unfavourable visitation reports, Propaganda Fide ordered the closure of the Irish novitiates. This led to a rapid decline in numbers as only a small number of candidates could afford to enter novitiates in the continental colleges. The closure of most of these colleges by secular authorities at the end of the century excluded even this possibility and the process of decline continued until the revivals of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Bibliography

Cotter, F. , The Friars Minor in Ireland (1994)
Fenning, H. , The Undoing of the Friars in Ireland (1972)
Gwynn, A. , and Hadcock, R. N. , Medieval Religious Houses: Ireland (repr. 1988)

Colmán N. Ó Clabaigh

Religious Orders. The organization of groups of men or women living in accordance with a common rule, and owing obedience to a single superior. In W. Christianity such orders are distinct from monastic congregations, which are associations of independent monasteries, although the earliest orders were those of Cluny and Citeaux (the Cistercians), groups of monks living a particular interpretation of the Rule of St Benedict, who recognized a common abbot general and met in general congregations to determine matters of common policy. Although outside the RC Church religious orders disappeared at the Reformation, they were revived to some extent in Anglicanism in the 19th cent.

The phrase is also used, by application, for organized communities in other religions, e.g. tarīqa among Sūfīs, saṃpradāya among Hindus, saṅgha among Buddhists.