In the absence of a substantial body of episcopal legislation, acta or treatises testifying to a discourse of reform, some insight into the conception of the exemplary way of life and pastoral responsibilities of a bishop, as formulated in an Irish reformist context, is afforded by hagiographical sources. Of these, Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of Malachy and the anonymous Life of Flannán are especially useful because their composition may be dated reasonably accurately. The Life of Flannán can be assigned to 1162×67, a date-range determined by an allusion to the recent (noviter) capture of Milan by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, which occurred in 1162, and the account of a dispute between two Munster kings. While it has been argued that the two major themes of this life are ‘kingship and the rights and privileges of the church’, an even more persuasive case can be made for the portrayal of an exemplary bishop as its overriding concern. St Flannán was the patron of the church of Killaloe and of its appurtenant twelfth-century diocese, which was coterminous with the Dál Cais political heartland of the Ua Briain dynasty, whose kings were leading supporters of reformist change. The Life was redacted from earlier materials, possibly by a member of the episcopal household, but at any rate by someone who described Flannán as his patronus, to whom he was attached by a vow of service.

One of the most distinctive features of the religious revival that gathered pace throughout Europe from the eleventh century onwards was the great variety of interpretations of the religious life that emerged in a relatively short time-span. The proliferation of diverse interpretations of the monastic life had initially created, in the words of Pope Urban II, ‘a schism in the house of God’. Although, at first, there had been tensions between old and new monks, a gradual acceptance of variety emerged and the positive value of ‘diversity but not adversity’ had come to be accepted by the mid twelfth century, by which time both Augustinian and Cistercian monasticism had been introduced to the Irish church, each promoted in equal measure by Malachy, whose interest in more than one Continental monastic observance reflects that twelfth-century engagement with different interpretations of the monastic life.

Malachy's first encounter with the religious life had been under his spiritual mentor, Imar Ua hÁedacáin, at Armagh, to whose ‘pattern of life (forma vitae)’ he submitted himself and from whom he learnt ascetic discipline and humility. Following his ordination as a priest Malachy then went to study under Bishop Máel Ísu (Malchus) Ua hAinmire at Lismore, so as to ensure that he would be properly informed ‘regarding divine ritual and the veneration of the sacraments’ lest he should teach anything that went counter to the universal church, and to learn from Máel Ísu his ‘way of life and his teaching (vita et doctrina)’.

The Irish church underwent a radical transformation during a ‘long twelfth century’, but the sources of inspiration, as well as the modes of implementation of change, remain frustratingly obscure. There is no substantial or coherent body of material bearing on the movement for renewal, and, consequently, evidence has to be pieced together from a wide variety of disparate and often fragmentary sources. The annals, originating within monastic institutions, constitute an important source, although their value for the twelfth century is greatly reduced by gaps in the principal collections. There are lacunae in the Annals of Ulster between 1131 and 1155, the Annals of Inisfallen between 1131 and 1158 and the Annals of Loch Cé between 1139 and 1169, while Chronicum Scotorum terminates in 1150 (the entries between 1136 and 1140 are also missing), and coverage in the Annals of Tigernach ends in 1176.2 In any case, annals generally provide only unconnected notices, such as the deaths of important ecclesiastics and kings, attacks on churches and monasteries, and reports of royal assemblies, councils and synods, but little elaborated information. They are usually devoid of elements such as causation, motivation, and character development, the kind of narrative evidence upon which historians typically depend. All manner of events from weather conditions to death-notices, military engagements and the burning of churches – often recorded without any indication of whether a fire was accidental or deliberate – are juxtaposed as if equal in importance and without causal connections or the subordination of one element to another.

What churchmen by the twelfth century generally expected from the laity by way of regular religious practice can be summarised as: observance of Sunday rest from labour and attendance at Mass; proper and timely recourse to the sacraments of baptism, the eucharist and penance; the celebration of the liturgical seasons, especially the various periods of fasting and abstinence; almsgiving, and the regular payment of tithes on all income; compliance with the canon law of marriage and specified periods of sexual abstinence. Religious observances on the part of the laity should not, of course, necessarily be taken to imply religious understanding. In practice, the difficulties attendant on instructing the laity must have been immense. Only a minority, such as kings and high-status families, received personal guidance from clerical advisers. In the ninth-century Rule of Patrick bishops are presented as having a particular responsibility for the spiritual direction of rulers. A personal spiritual adviser was a natural adjunct of rank, as in the case of Diarmait Mac Murchada, king of Leinster (ob. 1171), who acknowledged Áed Ua Cáellaide, bishop of Louth, as his ‘spiritual father and confessor’. When Cormac Mac Carthaig was forced from the kingship of Munster in 1127 and retired to the monastery of Lismore, he placed himself under the spiritual tutelage of Malachy; and even after his restoration to royal power he continued to revere Malachy.

Few questions are more essential, yet more difficult to answer, than the impact that reformist ideology may have had on lay society. It is well-nigh impossible to penetrate the religious aspirations, beliefs and responses to clerical teaching of lay people in twelfth-century Ireland since most were illiterate. The very term laity obscures the fact that there may have been a wide spectrum of different viewpoints among the varied social gradations. It is equally difficult to discern the points of contact and the differences between lay and clerical attitudes. Educated clergy might issue instructions: how the teachings of the church and its prescriptions for the laity were received is less clear. Even among clergy there may have been substantial differences between the educated – some abroad, or with experience of Continental travel – the half-educated or the outright ignorant. At the most learned end of the spectrum were individuals like Flann (Florint) Ua Gormáin, who died in 1174 as chief scholar of the church of Armagh, having previously spent twenty-one years studying among the Franks and the English and a further twenty-one years ‘directing the schools of Ireland’. The Annals of Tigernach described him as ardmaighistir (‘chief master’). That title, derived from Latin magister, rather than the more ubiquitous fer léigind (‘man of [ecclesiastical] reading’), is suggestive of an education in a Continental cathedral school or embryonic university and mastery of a useful discipline. Laity and clergy are thus convenient labels that obscure gradations and differences within and between the two groups; and, in addition, it is not possible to penetrate the minds of those who were alienated: the anti-clerical, dissenters or heretics.

A radical restructuring of episcopal jurisdiction is conventionally attributed to two landmark synods of the twelfth-century Irish church, the synod of Ráith Bressail (1111) and the synod of Kells (1152). According to the seventeenth-century historian Geoffrey Keating, who preserved in Irish translation a version of its acts, the synod of Ráith Bressail ‘regulated the faircheadha or dioceses of the bishops of Ireland’. It delimited territorially cohesive diocesan boundaries by naming four compass points, while within each diocese a specific church was designated as episcopal see. It also determined an archiepiscopal and primatial hierarchy: two archiepiscopal provinces with metropolitan sees located at Armagh and at Cashel were recognised, under each of which there were to be twelve episcopal sees, with primacy accorded to Armagh. A number of local assemblies, such as that held later in the same year at Uisnech in the provincial kingdom of Mide, subsequently altered the locations of sees but did not significantly modify the overall number.

The archiepiscopal provinces of Armagh and Cashel that had been agreed at Ráith Bressail were augmented in 1152 at the synod of Kells by the creation of the two additional archdioceses of Dublin and Tuam. Furthermore, that amended scheme was accorded formal papal approval by Cardinal John Paparo, who presided as papal legate and distributed pallia – symbols of a papally delegated metropolitan authority – for the four archbishops.

By the time Anglo-Norman infiltration into Ireland began in 1167 the Irish church had acquired structures that were broadly in line with those in the rest of Latin Christendom, which itself had undergone rapid and radical transformation in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Personal and intellectual contacts had been formed with ecclesiastics on the Continent and in England that were highly influential in informing the self-understanding of Irish churchmen in a wider European context. The Irish church was now led by the archbishop of Armagh, who was not only acknowledged as the venerable comarba Pátraic (‘successor of Patrick’) but also accorded an honorial primatial authority that was accepted by the archbishops of Cashel, Dublin and Tuam, and their suffragans, who were responsible for the provision of pastoral care, for jurisdiction over ecclesiastical property and for the oversight of monasteries within their dioceses. Localised churches that may previously have functioned as semi-autonomous units with their own customs and practices were now deemed to be under the authority of a restructured episcopate. A native papal legate in the person of Gillebertus, bishop of Limerick, was in residence from the early decades of the twelfth century and a papal legation under Cardinal John Paparo had presided over a national synod at Kells in 1152, at which pallia for the four archbishops of Armagh, Cashel, Dublin and Tuam had been distributed.

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-Anglo-Norman 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.