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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Note on Conventions
- Titles in the Series
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Handmaid’ of the English Church: the diocese of Dublin on the eve of the Reformation
- 2 Faithful Catholics of the English nation: patriotism, canon law and the corporate clergy
- 3 Rebellion and supremacy: Archbishop Browne, clerical opposition and the enforcement of the early Reformation, 1534–40
- 4 ‘God's laws and ours together’: Archbishop Browne, political reform and the emergence of a new religious settlement, 1540–2
- 5 The rise and fall of the viceroy's settlement: property, canon law and politics during the St Leger era, 1542–53
- 6 Archbishop Dowdall and the restoration of Catholicism in Dublin, 1553–5
- 7 Rejuvenation and survival: the old religion during the episcopacy of Hugh Curwen, 1555–67
- 8 Archbishop Loftus and the drive to protestantise Dublin, 1567–90
- Afterword
- Appendix 1 The division of administrative responsibilities between the two Dublin cathedrals
- Appendix 2 The parishes of the diocese of Dublin, 1530–1600
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - ‘Handmaid’ of the English Church: the diocese of Dublin on the eve of the Reformation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Note on Conventions
- Titles in the Series
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Handmaid’ of the English Church: the diocese of Dublin on the eve of the Reformation
- 2 Faithful Catholics of the English nation: patriotism, canon law and the corporate clergy
- 3 Rebellion and supremacy: Archbishop Browne, clerical opposition and the enforcement of the early Reformation, 1534–40
- 4 ‘God's laws and ours together’: Archbishop Browne, political reform and the emergence of a new religious settlement, 1540–2
- 5 The rise and fall of the viceroy's settlement: property, canon law and politics during the St Leger era, 1542–53
- 6 Archbishop Dowdall and the restoration of Catholicism in Dublin, 1553–5
- 7 Rejuvenation and survival: the old religion during the episcopacy of Hugh Curwen, 1555–67
- 8 Archbishop Loftus and the drive to protestantise Dublin, 1567–90
- Afterword
- Appendix 1 The division of administrative responsibilities between the two Dublin cathedrals
- Appendix 2 The parishes of the diocese of Dublin, 1530–1600
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The metropolitan see of Dublin was one of thirty-two territorial units through which the church in Ireland was administered during the sixteenth century. Although Armagh had long maintained its title to the ecclesiastical primacy of all Ireland, Dublin was regarded by most observers as the premier see on the island, because it surpassed the other dioceses either in terms of its financial resources, or the relative order and sophistication of its institutional fabric. Many aspects of this construct – including the political and social authority attached to the archbishop's office, the recruitment and training of his leading officials and the constitutional and liturgical forms adopted by his secular cathedral, St Patrick's – were, by the sixteenth century, long established expressions of the political and socio-cultural heritage of English Ireland, having originated and evolved through conscious imitation of English church structures, and their societal contexts, throughout the Middle Ages. Thus, on the eve of the Reformation, the ecclesiastical landscape of the heartland of the diocese – effectively, the modern county of Dublin – would have presented a generally recognisable picture to those familiar with the pattern of ecclesiastical life in Tudor England and, as such, it is arguable that it fitted broadly within the mainstream of the Western Church.
Throughout most of Ireland, however, the church operated in a markedly divergent political and socio-cultural milieu, the Ireland of independent Gaelic and ‘degenerate’ English lordships. The prevailing conditions in the independent lordships – they were highly militarised, economically underdeveloped and culturally self-assured – created very considerable difficulties for the institutional church.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Enforcing the English Reformation in IrelandClerical Resistance and Political Conflict in the Diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590, pp. 20 - 47Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009