Armagh

“ While other churches were being burned and plundered, it remained in peace; and when, at length, it began also to taste the horrors of war, the struggle had become a national one, the whole country had been already aroused, and Armagh came to be regarded as a centre of national life. In the early years of the ninth century she had a succession of ambitious and able prelates, whose aim was not merely to uphold her ancient prestige, but to extend her influence all over the land. ”

“ We see that the position of Abbot of Armagh had become so important that for years members of the royal families contended for its possession. We see, too, its influence becoming more and more widely extended, until the ruler at Armagh becomes ruler throughout the whole of Munster and Connaught, as well as of course Ulster, the province in which it is itself situated. An extension of power like this would be sure to arouse still greater ambitions. ”

“ How much is legend, sheer invention, none can say: the great earthworks at Armagh, Cuchulain's fort at Dundealgan, and a hundred other things testify to a truth behind the tale. And it is fairly well established that the race which had its centre at Armagh was not the race which governed from Tara: the Red Branch was Pictish, Tara was Milesian. How distinct the racial types show where they have survived tolerably pure is hardly realized, save by some such chance as befell me, when, at an exhibition in Limerick, I was summoned to look at a strange foreign folk from the north. ”

“ It alludes to the erection in Armagh of the ‘Drelincourt Charity School’ by the dean's widow, who endowed it with 90l. per annum. To their daughter, Viscountess Primrose, the citizens of Armagh are chiefly indebted for a plentiful supply of water. ”

“ Armagh, and Mary, his wife, was born at Armagh on 8 March 1770. He began life as an Irish volunteer in 1780, and was afterwards educated at the endowed classical school at Armagh, and then at a private school. ”

“ Mr. Botfield might have informed us. In fact, where is any effectual intelligence of the fugitive to be found?
J.M.
Feb. 8. 1850.
REPLIES. ETYMOLOGY OF "ARMAGH."
Some of your correspondents have taken up the not unnatural idea, that the last syllable of the word "Armagh" is identical with the Celtic word magh, a plain. But there are two objections to this. In the first place, the name is never spelt in Irish Armagh, nor even Ardmagh, but always ARDMACHA. Ardmagh or Armagh is only the anglicised spelling, adapted to English tongues and ears. ”

“ There was already the beginning of a university in the ancient school of Armagh lying on the famous hill where for long ages the royal tombs of the O'Neills had been preserved. "The strong burh of Tara has died," they said, "while Armagh lives filled with learned champions." It now rose to a great position. With its three thousand scholars, famous for its teachers, under its high-ollave Gorman who spent twenty-one years of study, from 1133 to 1154, in England and France, it became in fact the national university for the Irish race in Ireland and Scotland. ”

“ The country between Newry and Armagh is very beautiful from a pastoral point of view. After the savage deserts of the West it "Comes o'er my soul like the sweet south That breathes upon a bank of violets." Every yard of ground is going at its best pace. The valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing. Immense vistas of highly cultivated country unroll themselves in every direction. The land is richly timbered, and tall green hedges spring up everywhere. ”

“ Although the eighth century was in one sense uneventful, we are not to suppose that it was without its important changes. Foremost among them was the bringing of Armagh into prominence, and the decline of the influence of Iona and the Columban monasteries. Up to the present, when we have spoken of Church life, of missionary labour, of religious controversy, it has been mostly in connection with Iona and its dependent establishments. Armagh has not played the same important part. All this was reversed by the time that the eighth century had drawn to a close. ”

“ In 1175 he became archbishop of Armagh, and held office during the visitation of Cardinal Vivianus, sent to Ireland as apostolic legate by Pope Alexander III in 1177. The ‘Annals of Inisfallen’ (Dublin copy) state that he was with O'Lochlainn, bearing the ‘Canoin Phatraic,’ believed to be the present ‘Book of Armagh,’ in a battle near Downpatrick in 1177, in which John de Courcy defeated the Cinel Eoghain and the Ulidians. In the last year of his episcopate Armagh and most of its churches were burnt. He gave Bailebachuill, co. Dublin, to St. Mary's Abbey, near Dublin (Ware) . He died in 1180. ”

“ Patrick was accompanied to Ireland by a very considerable number of clerics of every order to aid him in his great task of the conversion of Ireland, still he must have found it difficult, as new churches were founded and the foreign clergy died out, to supply labourers for the ripening vineyard. As yet there were no Christian Schools in Erin. Armagh was probably the first, but Armagh was not founded until A.D. 445, when the site of a cathedral was granted by Daire to Patrick on Macha’s Height. ”

“ On 26 June 1634 the long-pending dispute between the sees of Armagh and Dublin, for the primacy of all Ireland, was decided by Strafford in favour of Armagh (Ussher's paper on the controversy is printed in Elrington's Life, App. vi.) . Ussher preached at the opening of the Irish parliament on 14 July. In the Irish convocation, which met simultaneously, the main question was that of the adoption of the Anglican articles and canons. ”

“ And, at the city of Armagh again, we have an incidental notice of a stone oratory in the eighth century; for, in the Ulster Annals, under the year 788, there is reported "Contentio in Ardmacae in qua jugulatur vir in hostio [ostio] Oratorii lapidei."— (Dr. O'Conor's Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores, tom. iv. p. 113.) Dr. Petrie believes that all the churches at Armagh erected by St. Patrick and his immediate successors were built of stone, as well indeed as all the early abbey and cathedral churches throughout Ireland.— (Ecclesiastical Architecture, p. 159.) ”

“ Pope Clement V wrote to the clergy of Armagh recommending submission to Jorz in 1307. Jorz became involved in a controversy concerning the jurisdiction which archbishops of Armagh endeavoured to assert in the province of Dublin. He resigned the see in 1307, and is stated to have been buried at Genoa. A second brother, Roland, was promoted by the pope to the see of Armagh in 1311, and resigned the office on 20 March 1321. ”

“ After the Reformation the few Roman Catholic residents of Armagh who remained true to the church of Rome worshiped in “the old chapel,” as it is called, a humble structure erected in the seventeenth century to mark the site of the house where St. Malachi was born in 1094. And when the primatial see was revived at Armagh by the pope that old church was made the cathedral of Ireland. ”

“ The King's and Queen's College of Physicians in Dublin elected him a fellow in 1864. In 1875 he was made dean of Armagh, and on 18 March 1886 was elected by the clergy and laity of the diocese bishop of Armagh and Clogher. The archbishop of Armagh, under the regulations made after the disestablishment, was to be elected by the bishops, and the bishop of Armagh and Clogher, if not appointed archbishop, was to succeed immediately to the diocese made vacant by the appointment. ”

“ The primacy of all Ireland, with metropolitical authority over Ulster and Meath, was assigned to Armagh; Tuam became the metropolis of Connaught, Cashel of Munster; while the rivalry of Armagh and Canterbury for the spiritual obedience of the Ostmen was settled by the grant of a fourth pallium, with metropolitical jurisdiction over the whole of Leinster, to Bishop Gregory of Dublin himself. ”

“ Sailing up the Shannon they built strongholds on Lough Ree and devastated Connaught and Meath. Eventually Turgeis established himself in Armagh, whilst his wife Ota settled at Clonmacnoise and profaned the monastery church with pagan rites. Indeed, the numerous ecclesiastical establishments appear to have been quite as much the object of the invaders’ fury as the civil authorities. The monastery of Armagh was rebuilt ten times, and as often destroyed. It was sacked three times in one month. Turgeis himself is reported to have usurped the abbacy of Armagh. ”

“ The name of Armagh, or Ard Macha, the Hill of Macha, enshrines the memory of the Fairy Bride and her heroic sacrifice, while the grassy rampart can still be traced where the war-goddess in the earlier legend drew its outline with the pin of her brooch when she founded the royal fortress of Ulster. Many pages might be filled with these instances. Perhaps no modern country has place-names so charged with legendary associations as are those of Ireland. ”

“ Cellach, duly elected coarb of Patrick, and consecrated bishop, had no doubt been able to organize the diocese of Armagh in accordance with the Rathbreasail scheme. In like manner such a man as Malachy, enjoying the prestige which belonged to the coarb of Comgall, if consecrated bishop, would probably succeed in organizing the diocese of Connor. So in 1124 Malachy journeyed to Bangor, was installed as abbot, and was made bishop by Cellach.74 He administered his diocese with the same vigour which had already characterized his work at Armagh. ”

“ It is probable that St Patrick established Armagh as a metropolitan see, but the history of the primacy, which during a long period can only have been a shadow, is involved in obscurity. Its supremacy was undoubtedly recognized by Brian Boruma in 1004, when he laid 20 oz. of gold upon the high altar. In the 11th century a competitor arose in the see of Dublin. The Norse rulers were bound to come under the influence of Christianity at an early date. For instance, Amlaib Cuarán was formally converted in England in 942 and was baptized by Wulfhelm of Canterbury. ”

“ MALACHY, ST (c. 1094–1148) , otherwise known as Maol-Maodhog (or Maelmaedhog) Ua Morgair, archbishop of Armagh and papal legate in Ireland, was born at Armagh. His father, an Irish clergyman, the Fearleighlinn, or lector, at the university, was said to have been of noble family. Having been ordained to the priesthood, he for some time acted as vicar of Archbishop Celsus or Ceallach of Armagh, and carried out many reforms tending to increase conformity with the usage of the Church of Rome. ”

“ The rath of Armagh was evidently a very large enclosure in 1166, containing several streets, houses, and churches, so it was certainly not a motte. [1046] It is of course not impossible that the Normans may sometimes have occupied an ancient fortified site, but we may be sure from the considerations already urged that the fortifications which they erected were of a wholly different character to the previous ones, even if they utilised a portion for their bailey. ”

“ The Companies of Skinners, Fishmongers, Haberdashers, Vintners and the like thereupon became Absentee Proprietors, and have guzzled Irish rents in city feasts and holiday excursions to Ireland from that day to this. Six counties in Ulster were confiscated, and not merely the chiefs, but the entire population dispossessed. The fruitful plains of Armagh, the deep pastoral glens that lie between the sheltering hills of Donegal, the undulating meadow lands stretching by the noble lakes and rivers of Fermanagh, passed from the race which had possessed them since before the redemption of mankind. ”

“ St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in his ‘Life of Maelmogue or Malachy, Primate of Armagh’ (1134–7) , refers in severe terms to the usage ‘whereby the holy see [Armagh] came to be obtained by hereditary succession,’ and adds, ‘there had already been before the time of Celsus (d. 1129) eight individuals who were married and without orders, yet men of education.’ One of these must have been Dubhdalethe, but St. Bernard was in error in viewing the influence of the hereditary principle at Armagh as unusual. ”

“ Armagh, and in 1730 he was nominated to the archdeaconry of Armagh and the rectories of Aghallow, Killeshill, and Caranteal. In 1733 he resigned these appointments for the chancellorship of Armagh and the rectory of Kilmore, on which living he expended a large sum of money. ”

“ Bernard, also, in reference to the Irish, having mentioned that Malachy O’Morgan, archbishop of Armagh, was the first (of the Scythian race) who had erected a stone house in the island, introduces a native upbraiding him with it, in these terms: “What wonderful work is this? why this innovation in our country? we are Scots, and not Gauls, what necessity have we for such durable edifices?” ”

“ Rom. xv. 13 (vg.) .—The success of Malachy in establishing peace in the latter years of his rule at Armagh may be attributed in part to the influence of a prince who is not mentioned in the text. Donough O'Carroll first appears in the Annals as chieftain of the men of Fearnmaigh (now represented by the barony of Farney, co. Monaghan) , whom he led in an expedition against Fingal (the district north of Dublin) in 1133. He seems to have succeeded to the kingdom or lordship of Oriel (which included the present counties of Armagh, Monaghan and Louth) on the death of Conor O'Loughlin (May 1136) ”

“ By the ninth century Armagh could boast of 7000 students, and the schools of Cashel, Dindaleathglass, and Lismore vied with it in renown. This extraordinary multiplication of monastic seminaries and scholars may be explained partly by the constant immigration of British refugees who brought with them the learning and religious observances of their native cloisters, and partly by that sacred and irresistible impulse which animates a newly converted people to heroic acts of sacrifice. In Ireland the infant church was not, as elsewhere, watered with the blood of martyrs ”