1 Somerville, Robert and Brasington, Bruce C., trans., Prefaces to Canon Law Books in Latin Christianity: Selected Translations, 500–1245 (New Haven, 1998), 235; cf. Hugoni, G., ed., Corpus Juris Canonici (Leipzig, 1839), 1.Google Scholar

2 Sweteman was archbishop of the archdiocese of Armagh, which had its cathedral in the town of Armagh, and which was the metropolitan see of the ecclesiastical province of Armagh. In this paper, “Armagh” means the province unless otherwise specified. The suffragan dioceses of Armagh included Meath, Down, Connor, Dromore, Clonmacnois, Ardagh, Kilmore, Clogher, Derry, and Raphoe. Although focused on a later period, Gwynn, Aubrey ( The Medieval Province of Armagh, 1470–1545: An Account of Diocesan Life in the Northern Province of Armagh during the Late Medieval Period [Dundalke, 1946]) is the only comprehensive study of the ecclesiastical organization of the medieval province.Google Scholar

3 Smith, Brendan, ed., The Register of Milo Sweteman, Archbishop of Armagh, 1361–1380 (Dublin, 1996). Hereafter, , RMS. Items in the register are cited by document number, not page number. RMS 133: “Nosque a tempore adventus nostri ad nostrum ecclesiam Ardmachanam contra Malachiam Ohanloyn regem de Erthir plures plures processus ecclesie fecissemus tanquam contra destructorem ecclesie cleri et populi eiusdem ipsum et suos malefactores et bonorum ecclesie usurpatores spoliatores et detentores excommunicando in forma ecclesie et … terram adquam declinaverint diversis vicibus supponendo ecclesiastico interdicto. Ipse nihilominus et nonnulli de suis huiusmodi malefactoribus frequentes correctiones subeundo nobisque promittendo de derestituendo ablata juramenta sua super prestando absolucionem et relaxacionem sententiarum huiusmodi excommunicationis et interdicti de facto obtinuerunt ex tunc pejora prioribus contra nos ecclesiam nostram clerum Ardmachanum et populam committendo et in easdem censuras sive sententias revicidendo.” Google Scholar

4 Sweteman's fifteenth-century successors would even note that he was the first archbishop to decree that each of his bishops “should work to the best of his ability to bring about, maintain and conserve the peace between the English and Irish of our province of Armagh and preach peace between them and must compel their subjects by all ecclesiastical censures to keep the peace.” See Smith, , “Introduction,” RMS , xvi. For an example in which Anglo-Irish elites were made the unwilling subjects of Sweteman's judgment in a matrimonial case, consult Smith, Brendan, “Lionel of Clarence and the English of Meath,” Peritia 10 (1996): 297–302.Google Scholar

5 Helmholz, Richard provides a concise summary of the historiographic trends on excommunication in The Spirit of Classical Canon Law (Athens, GA, 1996), 369–70.Google Scholar

6 Studies of marriage have been at the forefront in illuminating lay navigation of the canon law; see Pedersen, Frederik, Marriage Disputes in Medieval England (London, 2000); Helmholz, Richard, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (New York, 1975), 165–89; Donahue, Charles, “The Canon Law On the Formation of Marriage and Social Practice in the Later Middle Ages,” Journal of Family History 8 (1983): 144–58. These sources have shown that although courts and lay people were attentive to the same technical details of marital law, different patterns of practice emerged out of different social contexts. Mean-while, historians concerned with heresy and inquisition have also touched on lay navigation of inquisitorial procedure; see for instance Given, James, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca, NY, 1997), 91–165.Google Scholar

7 For the known facts of Sweteman's career, consult Smith's, “Introduction” to RMS , xiii–xvi. Emden, A. B. includes Sweteman on his list of people probably present at Oxford (A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols. [Oxford, 1957–59], 3:2220). For the international norms underlying the canon law and medieval European legal culture generally, see Kuttner's, Stephan Harmony from Dissonance: An Interpretation of Medieval Canon Law (Latrobe, PA, 1961); Bellomo, Manlio, The Common Legal Past of Europe, 1000–1800 , trans. Lydia, G. Cochrane (Washington, DC, 1994); and the essays collected in Brundage, James, The Profession and Practice of Medieval Canon Law (Aldershot, 2004).Google Scholar

8 While certainly acknowledging that the English settlers in Ireland considered themselves “English,” in this paper I will sometimes use the anachronistic term “Anglo-Irish” when seeking to clearly distinguish people and communities long settled in Ireland from English people visiting or newly arrived in Ireland. For the recent debate over the appropriateness of this terminology, see Ellis, Steven G., “More Irish than the Irish Themselves? The ‘Anglo-Irish’ in Tudor Ireland,” History Ireland 1:1 (1999): 22–26, and Nicholls, Kenneth, “Worlds Apart? The Ellis Two-Nation Theory on Late Medieval Ireland,” History Ireland 1:2 (1999): 22–26. For English settlement and society in and near the province of Armagh, see Frame, Robin, English Lordship in Ireland, 1318–1361 (Oxford, 1982); Smith, Brendan, Colonisation and Conquest in Medieval Ireland: The English in Louth, 1170–1330 (Cambridge, 1997); McNeill, T. E., Anglo-Norman Ulster: The History and Archaeology of an Irish Barony, 1177–1400 (Edinburgh, 1980). Nicholls, Kenneth, Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 2003) remains the standard overview on Gaelic society and culture. O'sullivan, Catherine, Hospitality in Medieval Ireland, 900–1500 (Dublin, 2004), also covers many aspects of Gaelic social life.Google Scholar

9 The standard study for ecclesiastical administration and ethnic politics in pre-Reformation Ireland remains Watt, John, The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland , (Cambridge, 1970). For Armagh specifically, see Watt, John, “Ecclesia Inter Anglicos et Inter Hibernicos: Confrontation and Coexistence in the Medieval Diocese of Armagh,” in The English in Medieval Ireland , ed. Lydon, John (Dublin, 1984), 46–64, and Simms, Katherine, “Frontiers in the Irish Church — Regional and Cultural,” in Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland , ed. Barry, Terry, Frame, Robin, and Simms, Katherine (London, 1995), 177–200.Google Scholar

10 The evidence in RMS (e.g., RMS 6, 158, 247) itself suggests the degree of difference between Gaelic and Anglo-Irish integration into archiepiscopal justice: the two marriage cases, the formal invocations of the secular arm against heretics, the one record of an ordinary visitation with its terse list of fornicators and adulterers, and the sole instance in which Sweteman personally presides over the examination and judgment of a lay defendant all concern the Anglo-Irish. Since Sweteman did not regularly travel to the Gaelic reaches of his province, appointing Gaelic clerics as proxies, it is possible similar legal records may have existed for Gaelic lay people.Google Scholar

11 The Register of Milo Sweteman is not properly a “register” at all, but rather an eighteenth-century compilation of records primarily originating from that archbishop's chancery. Despite the absence of a court book, however, its scattered letters, administrative memoranda, and fiscal documents contain evidence that illuminates the interaction of an elite sector of the Gaelic laity with the canon law outside an immediate courtroom setting. On the history and utility of the Armagh registers generally, consult Art Cosgrove, “The Armagh Registers: An Underexplored Source for Medieval Ireland,” Peritia 6–7 (1987–88): 307. For the Sweteman Register specifically, Lawlor, H. J., ed., “A Calendar of the Register of Archbishop Sweteman,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 29 (1910–11): 213, and Smith's, Introduction to The Register of Milo Sweteman, 1361–1380 which provides an overview of textual issues.Google Scholar

12 The absence of matrimonial cases is probably closely related to the divergences between Gaelic marriage practices and canonical norms. See Kenny, Gillian, “Anglo-Irish and Gaelic Marriage Laws and Traditions in Late Medieval Ireland,” Journal of Medieval History 32 (2006): 27–42.Google Scholar

13 Lydon, James, “The Problem of the Frontier in Medieval Ireland,” Topic: A Journal of the Liberal Arts 13 (1967): 5–22. Barry, et al., Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland, has extensive relevant bibliography. For an introduction to approaches to medieval frontiers, see Bartlett, Robert and MacKay, Angus, eds., Introduction to Medieval Frontier Societies (Oxford, 1989), and Abulafia's, David “Introduction: Seven Types of Ambiguity, ca. 1100–ca. 1500,” in Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices , ed. Abulafia, David and Berend, Nora (Aldershot, 2002), 1–34. Abulafia's case that the frontier in the Middle Ages should be understood not as a spatial zone, but as a set of often-confrontational relationships among people who viewed each other as alien has been invaluable to this paper's understanding of Armagh as frontier.Google Scholar

14 In one of the strongest examples, military exigencies on the Irish frontier militated against strict definitions of legitimacy and primogeniture, promoting extended familial and quasi-familial lineages in which leadership qualities and military prowess could propel legally ineligible men into positions of power (Frame, Robin, “Military Service in the Lordship of Ireland, 1290–1360: Institutions and Society on the Anglo-Gaelic Frontier,” in Medieval Frontier Societies , 101–26, and Simms, Katherine, “Bards and Barons: The Anglo-Irish Aristocracy and the Native Culture,” Medieval Frontier Societies, 177–97).Google Scholar

15 RMS 138 (n. 3 above). Of course, it should be noted that Sweteman's complaint comes in the context of petitioning the pope for a dispensation from visiting the Gaelic regions of his province in person: “In primis concipiatur supplicatio fienda domino pape cameraliter si fieri potest allioquin in publico consistorio proponenda continens in materia quod cum ne dum ecclesia Ardmachana a tempore adventus dicti M. ad ipsam fuisset primo per pestilentiam continuam et postea per continuam guerram verum etiam tota provincia Ardmachane pro majori parte tam in clero quam populo destructa et precipue istis duobus annis jam proximo preteritis. Adeo quod idem archiepiscopus non potuit dictam suam provinciam commode nec plene potest vistare nec procurationes debitas et consuetas percipere nec esculenta seu potulenta pro se et sua familia communiter in locis visitatis invenire sed quamplures dioceses sibi jure metropolitico subjectas visitando proprias suas et ecclesie sue facere oportuit sumptus ac expensus.” Google Scholar

16 Anthony Lynch seems to express the consensus by writing “The primates were frequently in contact with the Gaelic chiefs in efforts to control their attacks and promote peace. Given the weakness of the Dublin government and the archbishops' own avowed policy of peacemaking, they were confined exclusively to the use of spiritual weapons: the invocation of ecclesiastical sanctions of excommunication and interdict. Unfortunately, overuse of these spiritual weapons meant that they yielded increasingly diminishing results” (“Religion in Late Medieval Ireland,” Archivium Hibernicum 36 [1981]: 1–15, at 5). See also, Smith, Brendan, “The Adventures of Milo Sweteman Archbishop of Armagh 1361–1380,” History Ireland 4:4 (1996): 18–21, and Jones, W. R., “Violence, Criminality, and Culture Disjunction on the Anglo-Irish Frontier: The Example of Armagh, 1350–1550,” Criminal Justice History 1 (1980): 29–47.Google Scholar

17 Frame, , “Military Service,” 125–26.Google Scholar

18 Frame, Robin, “The Justiciarship of Ralph Ufford: Warfare and Politics in Fourteenth-Century Ireland,” Studia Hibernica 13 (1973): 7–47, at 41. His analysis of “degeneracy” was first laid out in Frame, Robin, “Power and Society in the Lordship of Ireland 1272–1377,” Past and Present 76 (1977): 3–33.Google Scholar

19 Frame, , “Defence of the Lordship,” 88–91, discusses some political, diplomatic, social, and performative aspects of frontier contest on the Anglo-Irish side. Simms, , From Kings to Warlords: The Changing Political Structure of Gaelic Ireland in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1987), covers similar issues for the Gaels.Google Scholar

20 Helmholz, Richard, “Excommunication as a Legal Sanction: The Attitudes of Medieval Canonists,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschicthe 99 (= Kanonistische Abteilung 68) (1982): 204–12, and Vodola, Elisabeth, Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1986), cover the development of the canon law of excommunication across the period.Google Scholar

21 Little, Lester ( Benedictine Maledictions [Ithaca, NY, 1993], 154–85) considers the tradition of Irish cursing. Smith, , “Adventures of Milo Sweteman,” 18–21, outlines similar practices in use during Sweteman's tenure at Armagh, including fasting and the ringing of sacred bells.Google Scholar

22 Helmholz describes how the very elements that gave excommunication its force (e.g., total ostracism, disruption of social bonds, inexorability of the sentence for certain grave crimes), also raised concerns about the injustice of a wrongful sentence and the dangers of the penalty's socially disruptive consequences ( Spirit [see n. 5 above], 374–383).Google Scholar

23 Helmholz, Richard, ”Si quis suadente (C.17 q.4 c.29): Theory and Practice,” in Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Medieval Canon Law (Vatican City, 1988), 425–38, at 438.Google Scholar

24 For instance, a document from late fourteenth-century York lists forty-six crimes incurring excommunication and includes instructions for it to be published three times a year “as is the practice of the Holy Church throughout Christendom.” See “The Great Cursing,” in Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England , ed. Shinners, John and Dohar, William J. (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), 198–201. Ryan, Salvador describes the evidence of “personal engagement with a body of doctrine received from a teaching authority” among the Gaelic Irish in the fifteenth century and suggests some vehicles for the transmission of these ideas (“The Most Traversed Bridge: A Reconsideration of Elite and Popular Religion in Late Medieval Ireland,” in Elite and Popular Religion , ed. Cooper, Kate and Gregory, Jeremy [Woodbridge, 2006], 120–29).Google Scholar

25 Vodola, , Excommunication , 48–67, describes some of the relevant legal concerns and notes a pervasive social anxiety around the possibility of pollution by contact with an excommunicate.Google Scholar

26 Frederik Pedersen does not speak directly to excommunication, but does suggest some of the ways lay people might acquire and use a “rough and ready” technical legal knowledge concerning topics that interested them (“Did the Medieval Laity Know the Canon Law Rules on Marriage? Some Evidence from Fourteenth-Century York Cause Papers,” Mediaeval Studies 56 [1994]: 111–52).Google Scholar

27 Helmholz cites Hostiensis' warning in relation to creditors seeking the excommunication of their debtors: “Excommunication is medicine for the person excommunicated, not the right of any [other] person” ( Spirit , 376). On the role of excommunication in adversarial legal processes, see Hyland, Francis Edward, Excommunication, Its Nature, Development, and Historical Effects (D.C.L. Thesis, Catholic University, 1928), 123, and Vodola, , Excommunication, 3–37, 159–90.Google Scholar

28 Brundage, , Medieval Canon Law (n. 7 above), 131.Google Scholar

29 McNeill, concisely describes the complex events leading to the collapse of the de Burgh family in Ulster, including a civil war among de Burgh factions which led to the fragmentation of the family and left the infant de Burgh, Elizabeth (Clarence's future wife) heir to the Earldom (Anglo-Norman Ulster [n. 8 above]). For the extent of English settlement in Ulster, see McNeill, , 33–36.Google Scholar

30 The main details of O'Neill's, Niall rise to preeminence are included in essentially the same form in several Irish annals; e.g., Hennessy, W. M. and Mac Carthy, B., Annala Uladh: Annals of Ulster otherwise Annala Senait, Annals of Senat: A Chronicle of Irish Affairs from A.D. 431 to A.D. 1540 , 2 vols. (Dublin, 1887–1901), and Hennessy, W. M., The Annals of Loch Cé, Rolls Series 54 (London, 1871), vol. 2. Key events are the death of his father Aodh O'Neill (1364), his brother Domnall's attack (1366), Domnall's submission (1370), his victories against the English (1374/75), a second defeat of Domnall (1379), and, by 1380, his presence at the head of a delegation of Irish chiefs to the newly arrived Earl of Ulster, Edmund Mortimer. Katherine Simms provides a longer range view of the O'Neill expansion (“‘The King's Friend:’ O'Neill, , the Crown, and the Earldom of Ulster,” in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages , ed. Lydon, James [Dublin, 1981], 214–36).Google Scholar

31 RMS 232 (n. 3 above): “Quod cum alias pax inter dictum ducem et Oneyll fuisset reformata ad tempus in usque ad festum apostolorum Philippi et Jacobi prout indentura inde confecta inter eosdem plenius testator infra quem terminum dictus Oneyll cepit de Galfrido Whyte constabulario dicti domini ducis de Viridi Castro suum equicium.” Google Scholar

32 Ibid.: “Dux dictis literis suis nobis specialiter et ex corde supplicavit in quantum potest quatenus dictum Oneyll et suos complices in hac parte velimus in forma ecclesie canonicis monicionibus alias secundum eum premissis et propter eorum contumacia in hac parte contractas excommunicare et excommunicatos publice denunciare quousque dicto Galfrido de dicto suo equicio realiter et integritaliter sit satisfactum.” For ecclesiastical jurisdiction over oaths (including the role of excommunication in debt cases), see Vodola, , Excommunication (n. 20 above), 36–40. Helmholz also discusses “oaths as the source of obligations” (Spirit, 161–64).Google Scholar

33 RMS 232.Google Scholar

34 The laws of England, to which all Anglo-Irish were subject, did include a mechanism for bishops to request the imprisonment of recalcitrant excommunicates until they complied with the authority of the church courts; for instance, RMS 59 instructs the bailiff to capture and imprison suspected John Brodok of Carlingford “until it is established by us and by the church whether he walks in light or in darkness,” and RMS 30 is a writ of significavit, requesting the king's aid against an excommunicate. The details of this procedure at all stages from the ecclesiastical court through the royal chancery are described by Donald Logan, F. (Excommunication and the Secular Arm: A Study in Legal Procedure from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century [Toronto, 1968], 72–112). The brehon tradition which most Gaels and, at least in some contexts, some Anglo-Irish employed does not seem to have had a procedure for aiding the church against excommunicates at all, and Katherine Simms has observed that whom the archbishop considered to head the secular arm among the Gaels varied widely depending on the relative position of the possible candidates at any given time (Simms, Katherine, “The Archbishops of Armagh and the O'Neills 1347–1471,” Irish Historical Studies 19 [1974]: 38–55).Google Scholar

35 This reading owes much to Daniel Lord Smail who argues that the lay people of medieval Marseille invested in civil litigation in order to perpetuate hostile relationships with neighbors through public displays of animosity, status, and allegiance ( The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–1423 [Ithaca, NY, 2003]).Google Scholar

36 See Frame, Robin, “The Defence of the English Lordship, 1250–1450,” in A Military History of Ireland , ed. Bartlett, Thomas and Jeffery, Keith (Cambridge, 1996), 76–98, and Simms, Katherine, “Gaelic Warfare in the Middle Ages,” in A Military History of Ireland, 99–115.Google Scholar

37 For instance, Hennessey, , Annals of Loch Cé, includes this entry for the year 1365. (However, the text in question is from the Annals of Connacht, used by Hennessey to fill in lacunae in the Loch Cé manuscripts.) Google Scholar

38 “Statutes of Kilkenny,” Statutes and Ordinances, and Acts of the Parliament of Ireland: King John to Henry V , ed. Berry, H. F. (Dublin, 1907), 430–69. On the complex patchwork of jurisdictions and legal cultures in Ireland, see Hand, Geoffrey, English Law in Ireland, 1290–1324 (Cambridge, 1967), 187–213; Mac Niocaill, G., “The Interaction of the Laws,” The English in Medieval Ireland , ed. Lydon, John (Dublin, 1984), 105–18; Simms, Katherine, “The Brehons of Later Medieval Ireland,” in Brehons, Sarjeants, and Attorneys: Studies in the History of the Irish Legal Profession , ed. Hogan, Daire and Osborough, W. N. (Dublin, 1990), 51–76.Google Scholar

39 RMS 232: “Eosdem extunc in ecclesiis tam nostra cathedrali Armachana quam omnibus aliis ecclesiis nostre diocesis inter Hibernicos diebus dominicis et festivis infra missarum solempnia cum major cleri et populi multitude venerit ad audiendum officia divina palam publice nominaliter et expresse excommunicetis.” Google Scholar

40 On the political capital to be earned by allying with the archbishops during succession disputes, see Watt, , “Ecclesia” (n. 9 above), 55–56, and Simms, , “Archbishops and the O'Neills,” 42–43.Google Scholar

41 RMS 7 (n. 3 above): “Ego Nelanus Oneyl tactis hiis sacrosanctis evvangeliis et per me deosculatis juro quod ego defendam vos archiepiscopum Ardmacanum Hibernie primatem contra omnes clericos vestros de capitulo omnibus viis et modis quibus potero.” Google Scholar

42 Ibid.: “Et extunc intelleximus quod dictus Nelanus per quosdam falsos clericos nostros fuit informatus nos fuisse excommunicatos in curia Romana propter quod dictus Nelanus non audebet ut asseritur nobis respondere de dictis redditibus nostris nobis sic excommunicato manente.” Google Scholar

43 The circumstances of Sweteman's excommunication are unclear; the list of offenses for which he may have been excommunicated is extensive. A document from 1378, RMS 252, finds Sweteman appointing his kinsman proctor to carry out his defense at the papal court in Rome, where someone, probably among his clerical enemies, has accused him of murder, heresy, adultery, and incest (“homicidium heresiem adulterium et incestum”). Again, ecclesiastical law is being used against the archbishop instead of by him.Google Scholar

44 Vodola notes that excommunicated clerics were deprived of their benefices ( Excommunication , 58). For the legal consequences of excommunication generally, consult Vodola, , Excommunication 70–111, and Helmholz, , Spirit (n. 5 above), 381–83.Google Scholar

45 Vodola, , Excommunication , 34.Google Scholar

46 For annalistic accounts of this conflict, see n. 29 above. For general background, consult Simms, Katharine, “Medieval Armagh: The Kingdom of Oirthir (Orior) and Its Rulers the Ui Annluain (O'Hanlons),” in Armagh: History and Society , ed. Hughes, A. J. (Dublin, 2001), 187–216.Google Scholar

47 RMS 123: “Et homines Eugenii Ohanloyn in eiusdem Eugenii absencia apud Armachiam receptarum que se indubitanter extendunt ad minimum centum sexaginta vaccarum.” Google Scholar

48 RMS 133.Google Scholar

49 RMS 133: “Propositurus quare contra eosdem omnes et singulos propter eorum contumacia manifestas ac rebelliones et notorias spoliaciones bonorum nostrorum ac cleri et tenentium nostre ecclesie antedicte per censuras ecclesiasticas videlicet sententias excommunicationis et interdicti et invocacionem brachii secularis ex omni parte jejunia et maledictiones Christi ecclesie et nostras procedere dictis die et loco non debeamus.” Google Scholar

50 Logan describes citation causam quare non as a flexible tool in the hands of English judges (Excommunication and the Secular Arm [n. 34 above], 77–79). The citation could delay the invocation of the secular arm by giving the excommunicated person a final chance to submit. However, the citation could also hasten secular involvement by providing an occasion for the excommunicated person to prove him or herself contumacious through failure to appear, instead of by remaining excommunicated over a lengthy period of time.Google Scholar

51 RMS 100: “Quod sua laicali potentia Gylchalmyn Mcrory Mcgingussa subditum suum compellat.” Google Scholar

52 RMS 96 (n. 3 above).Google Scholar

53 RMS 100: “Intimantes eidem Malachie per ipsum Eugenium filium suum et Odonem filium Petri licit sententiam potuissemus gravi contra eosdem processisse …” Google Scholar

54 RMS 55.Google Scholar

55 RMS 94, 96, 205.Google Scholar

56 The Céli Dé were an eighth-century Irish monastic movement largely subsumed or supplanted by other orders after the tenth century, although the name continued to make scattered appearances in Irish records until the dissolution of the monasteries. There remains controversy on the nature of the early Céli Dé, with O'Dwyer, Peter ( Céli Dé: Spiritual Reform in Ireland, 750–900 [Dublin, 1981]) and Follet, Westley (Céli Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages [Woodbridge, 2006]) strong representatives of the opposing camps. A small college of Céli Dé was still associated with Armagh as late as the sixteenth century, apparently as choir, with their prior the second ranking member of the cathedral chapter. See Gwynn, , The Medieval Province of Armagh (n. 2 above), 76–78.Google Scholar

57 RMS 94: “Idcirco cum consilio dictorum clericorum nostrorum et aliorum magnatum de terra Hibernie de dicto negocio consultius deliberare intendimus ad vestrum exterminium faciendum quod facere nollemus Deo teste nisi per vos et vestros compellamur pacem enim Christi et ecclesie affectamus veram et non fictam quam si obtinere crederemus que decanus nobis pro vobis scribit libenter pro tunc et non citius adimpleremus.” Google Scholar

58 Ibid.: “Et quia multoties decepti sumus per huiusmodi vobis factas absoluciones et subsequentes recalcitraciones.” Google Scholar

59 RMS 205: “Quibus perlectis et intellectis multum dolentes compatimur perturbationi et miserie ecclesie nostre Ardmachane nostre et vestre super eo autem quod scribitis pro absolutione Ohandeloyn et Donaldi per nos fienda et committenda taliter respondemus quod hoc facere adhuc non poterimus et hoc volumus quod ex parte nostra dicatis eisdem tum quia post frequentes absolutiones eorundem per nos factas et juramenta prestita de stando mandatis ecclesie et pignora Ohandeloyn data pejora prioribus commiserunt.” Google Scholar

60 Ibid.: “Quo ad facta Nelani vellemus sibi scribere satis comminatore et processus facere contra eundem in forma ecclesie sed propter tyrannidem Ohandeloyn et Donaldi non poterimus invenire nunciam qui audebit iter arripere cum nuncii nostri fuissent continue in via spoliati et male tractati.” Google Scholar

61 RMS 96: “Literis vestris nobis directis … intellectis de dato diei lune infra octobas na … Mmo CCCmo super eo quod miramur non modicum et ita.” And, “Et aliter respondemus quod absolucio eorundem Ohandeloyn et Donaldi ab excommunicationis sententia et relaxacione interdicti petita tangit nos et ecclesiam nostram principaliter et Ardmachanos quasi secundario.” Google Scholar

62 Walsh, Katharine, in A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard Fitzralph at Oxford, Avignon, and Armagh (New York, 1981), a study on Sweteman's immediate predecessor at Armagh, Richard Fitzralph, notes that Fitzralph's theological emphasis on the importance of restitution was likely sharpened by his experience with border warfare in Ireland. While Fitzralph believed restitution was strong evidence of a true change of heart, Sweteman here prioritizes other signs of submission to his ecclesiastical authority.Google Scholar

63 RMS 96 (n. 3 above): “Et emendis prestitis pro manifestis offensis vel pignoraticia cautione competenti prestita in forma ecclesie erit absolucio facta ut petitur.” Google Scholar

64 Helmholz, , Spirit (n. 5 above), 377.Google Scholar

65 RMS 68, a memorandum from 1368, notes that Bishop O'Reilly had relationships with two women named Edina: one his (previously?) married cousin, another “Edina Mc Gauueran,” also a relation, but unmarried. Unfortunately, this entry does not illuminate whether Bishop O'Reilly was particularly romantically active, or merely entered into two successive quasi-marital relationships, as were common and widely acceptable among clergy in Gaelic regions.Google Scholar

66 RMS 70: “excommunicationem ac denunciationem contempnebatis ac in presenti viliter horribiliter et scandalose contempnitis volentes vero dictos processus propter vestri cordis duraciam in contumacia ac rebelione continuatis persistentes.” Google Scholar

67 RMS 73, 74, 75, 76, 77.Google Scholar

68 RMS 78: “Ac tandem ipsum ad gremium ecclesie revertentem in forma ecclesie jure absolverimus sub modo aut forma que sequitur ipsius episcopi ad hoc consensu concurrente. Scilicet quod si contingeret ipsum residivaret in futurum cum ipsa peccando aut ipsam in qua cura aut curia aut terra tenuerit seu accessum suspectum ad ipsam quovis modo faciendo aut accessum ipsius Edine ad.” Google Scholar

69 RMS 121. In his notes on the text, Brendan Smith conjectures that the mandate in question was the citation for metropolitan visitation issued just after Bishop O'Reilly's absolution.Google Scholar

70 RMS 70.Google Scholar

71 Statutes (n. 38 above), XIX.Google Scholar

72 RMS 71: “Pro quo citando unam literam mittimus quam per vos volumus sibi presentari aut unum de vestris et certificari die et loco in ipsis literis contentis de eius traditione ipsi facta. Et volumus quod aliquos clericos de terra oriundos et promotos nobis nominetis qui huiusmodi sequestrationem valeant executioni.” Google Scholar

73 Beyond family connections, the O'Reilly clan had a history of engagement with the Anglo-Irish and English beginning with their strategic alliance with the first wave of English adventurers. Katharine Simms has traced how over two centuries of inter-clan competition, the O'Reillys' primary “relations in peace and war” were their near Gaelic neighbors, and especially the Anglo-Irish in Meath and Louth (Simms, Katharine, “The O Reillys and the Kingdom of East Breifne,” Breifne 5 [1979], at 317).Google Scholar

74 RMS 56, 57 (n. 3 above).Google Scholar

75 RMS 120: “Deputaverimus clericos certos pro collectione huiusmodi fructuum eorum custodiam denegando ipsi Philippo et cuicunque layco propter majus bonum ut credimus.” Google Scholar

76 For instance, RMS 79 is an undated list of rents received, including various denominations of money, beer (cervisia), and geese (anca).Google Scholar

77 RMS 99: “Quia a tempore adventus nostri ad vos et citra semper invenimus vos contra Deum salvatorem nostrum recalcitrantem et nobis inobedientem et diabolo sua suggestione deceptum voluntarie per plures annos ministrantem peccata mortalissima notorie et effronter contra nostra precepta et decreta minis voluntarie perpetrantem et pluries taliter qualiter per nos correctum turpissime recidivantem et ideo, mirari non oportet de vestris variis tribulacionibus et bonorum ecclesie et vestris spoliationibus etiam per malivolos et inimicos crucis Christi factis quia merito hec patimini.” Google Scholar

78 The Annals of Ulster (n. 30 above), among others, reports that Bishop O'Reilly died in 1369.Google Scholar

79 RMS 68: “Quod cum Philippo Oraigill rege Breffinie et cum aliis clericis dicte diocesis Triburnensis pro custodia dicti sequestri ecclesiastici per nos communiter electis et deputatis tractatum habeatis quid et qualiter de fructibus dicti episcopatus suquestratis per nos actum fuerit. Et utrum ad alienos usus quam ecclesie bona ipsius ecclesie sunt distracta vel dissipata.” Google Scholar

80 RMS 115.Google Scholar

81 RMS 8: “Item quod omnia terras et tenementa beati Patricii Ardmachani et nostra vendicat falso tum esse sua. Et quod nec nos nec clerici nostri quicquam ibidem habebimus nisi ecclesiam tantummodo cathedralem.” Google Scholar

82 RMS 8: “Quia multa Deo et beato Patricio patrono nostro et nobis enormia ac nimis prejudicialia de Nelano Oneyll a quampluribus Christi fidelibus in secreto quasi confessionis nobis referuntur qui nobis aliter exponere non audebant.” Google Scholar

83 Reichel, Oswald J., A Complete Manual of Canon Law , vol. 2 (London, 1896), 249–54, cites a variety of the medieval sources on denunciation.Google Scholar

84 Brundage, , Medieval Canon Law (n. 7 above), 143. Brundage also notes that procedure by denunciation was rarely used in practice, suggesting that if denunciation was indeed deployed in this case, whoever levied the charge against O'Neill had a high level of canonistic literacy.Google Scholar

85 Howard Kaminksy explores the history and historiography of the judicialization of heresy and the canonists' increasing emphasis on the link between heresy and contumacy (“The Problematics of ‘Heresy’ and ‘Reformation,’” in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter , ed. Šmahel, František and Müller-Luckner, Elisabeth [Munich, 1998], 1–22).Google Scholar

86 See Vodola, , Excommunication (n. 20 above), 32–33. The principle that a persistent excommunicate should be suspected of heresy was not made an official element of the universal canon law until the Council of Trent in 1563.Google Scholar

87 On the consequences of Ad abolendam, the decretal that set forth these requirements, consult Helmholz, , Spirit (n. 5 above), 360–65.Google Scholar

88 A distinction should be drawn between this case in which Thomas de Verdon is declared a heretic on the grounds of his crime against the body of Christ, and other cases, such as Niall O'Neill's, in which a person is suspected of heresy on the grounds of disregard for judicial authority, and thus required to appear before the archbishop for additional questioning and correction.Google Scholar

89 RMS 247 (n. 3 above): “Noverit cum Thoma de Verdon quod ex premisso errore in corpus Christi et ipsius vilipendum per te factum et ob fracturam dicte ecclesie tum per te eronie factam et cum pertinacia in dictis erroribus te defensantem juste et sancte te pro-nuntiavimus hereticum cum talia tibis disissemus.” And “Et ego Thomas de Verdon te pro-nuncio et denuncio hereticum.” Google Scholar

90 RMS 13, 68, 101, 102, 109 are just a few examples.Google Scholar

91 Nicholls outlines this phenomenon, noting that benefices were usually hereditary within the family but not along strict father-to-son lines ( Gaelic and Gaelicized Ireland [n. 8 above], 106–8).Google Scholar

92 Walsh discusses a case in which Archbishop Fitzralph received papal permission to dispense twenty sons of priests or married men to become priests to combat the shortage of clergy in the wake of the plague ( Richard Fitzralph [n. 62 above], 282–83).Google Scholar

93 Watt describes the growing fear among the Anglo-Irish/English administration that Gaelic clerics would conspire with Gaelic chiefs to harm the lordship ( Church and Two Nations [n. 9 above], 174).Google Scholar

94 RMS 7, dated May 1376, refers to the time just previously when the canons at Armagh had risen against Sweteman with all their men, “clerici capituli ecclesie nostre Ardmacane insurgerent contra nos cum omnibus viribus eorum.” For a different viewpoint which emphasizes Sweteman's close working relationships with some of his canons, see Watt, James, “The Medieval Chapter of Armagh Cathedral,” in Church and City, 1000–1500 , ed. Abulafia, David, Franklin, Michael J., and Rubin, Miri (Cambridge, 1992), 219–48.Google Scholar

95 RMS 8.Google Scholar