The accepted date of Oliver Plunkett’s birth is 1 November, 1625. He belonged to the Co. Meath branch of the Plunkett family of Norman lineage but by the time of Oliver’s birth the Plunketts had been at least three centuries in Ireland. The Plunketts were much involved in the Confederation of Kilkenny and presumably the young Oliver came into contact with the papal representative, Father Scarampi, and travelled to Rome with him in 1647. Here he entered the Irish College and after seven years study he was ordained priest on 1 January, 1654. He asked to be excused from immediate fulfilment of his student oath to return to Ireland to serve as a priest. He became a chaplain in Rome with the Oratorian Fathers and devoted himself to the study of law at the university of Sapienza. In November, 1657, he was appointed professor of theology at Propaganda College and held this position until his appointment to the See of Armagh in 1669. Having being ordained bishop in Ghent in December 1669 he arrived in his diocese in March 1670. When he returned from Rome as archbishop of Armagh he found the Church here shattered by Cromwell’s persecution, bishops had been put to death or driven into exile, churches and schools destroyed, priests deprived of education and demoralised, the people like sheep without a shepherd.

Oliver Plunkett’s episcopate lasted nine years and nine months. A change in Viceroy within a few months of his arrival back in Ireland resulted in his having an almost completely free hand and being a zealous courageous bishop he was in a hurry to reorganise the Irish Church after the Cromwellian devastation and confiscations. Although there was some opposition from the Armagh clergy to Oliver as a Meath man and the cleaveage between Old Irish and Anglo-Irish was still wide after the bitter divisions that arose during the Confederate war he was on the whole well received in his archdiocese.

His immediate pastoral activities included ordinations, the administration of the sacrament of Confirmation to more than 10,000, young and old, in his first year as archbishop and the deposition of the vicar-apostolic in Derry. He held two diocesan synods, founded the Jesuit schools at Drogheda for the education of youth and the training of priests.

He worked hard to remedy the defective education of many of his priests and set a high value on learning for leadership among the clergy. The schools he had established at Drogheda, though short-lived, were among the more important achievements of his ministry.

Peace making was a notable part of his mission. To diocese after diocese in the north he brought peace where before there had been discord. One difficult task for the archbishop was to persuade the tories (the now landless Catholics waging a war of revenge against the new social order created by the confiscations of the 1640s and 1650s who often brought trouble on their local districts) to make their peace and be reconciled. He won for himself the respect of non-Catholic brethren, lay and ecclesiastical, not by any sacrifice of principle but by being patently a man of God and a man of peace. The governor of the province of Ulster invited him to come into his courtyard at Dungannon to give Confirmation. At heart Oliver had sympathy for the plight of the old noble Gaelic families. He could write of them: “It would break your heart to see the great families ….. who were great princes until the time of Elizabeth and King James …. to see them and their children deprived of their property and the means of supporting their children or of giving them an education”. But his compassion for them, however, did not extend to helping them politically or temporally and from the beginning had resolved to shun involvement in temporal affairs.

Courage and fortitude in the face of adversity Oliver practised in a high degree and is perhaps the outstanding trait of his character which appears in his letters. He was a man of principle, and having accepted the burden of episcopal office he did not see how he could shrink from the reforms which were so necessary in the Ireland to which he had returned. He is described by his best friend, Bishop Brenan, (later archbishop of Cashel) as touchy and hot-tempered. Perhaps it was this hasty temperament, a combination of his zeal and notion of discipline and authority, and some lack of appreciation on his part of the human problems of people who were the victims of situations in difficult times before he arrived, that led him into disputes. There was resentment towards him from some vicious clergy with tory associations whom he disciplined. He and his compatriot, Archbishop Talbot of Dublin, engaged in an unseemly personal dispute on primatial rights. The Franciscans and their many laity friends were openly hostile to him when, on the question of respective rights of questing as between the Franciscans and the Dominicans, he decided uncompromisingly in favour of the Dominicans.

Oliver’s friendly relationship with Viceroy Berkeley, Henry More, First Earl of Drogheda, Archbishop Margetson of Armagh, and the Earl of Charlemont helped him to discreetly pursue his pastoral work. Peace alternated with oppression depending on the general political situation in Britain. A wave of persecution followed the edict of expulsion from Ireland of all prelates and religious in 1673. The schools in Drogheda were closed. The archbishop himself had to go into hiding and suffered many privations. In a letter of 15 December 1673 he wrote: “I count myself fortunate now and again to obtain a little barley bread, and the house where Bishop Brenan (of Waterford) and I are is made of straw and is roofed in such a way that from the bed we can see the stars and at the head of the bed every small shower of rain refreshes us; but we would rather die of hunger and cold than abandon our flocks”.

Gradually the persecution abated but in 1679 the primate fell victim to the political intriguing of the Earl of Shaftesbury and the false revelations of Titus Oates of a Catholic conspiracy to kill the King and overthrow Protestant power in England. He was arrested on the orders of Viceroy Ormond and brought to Dundalk to stand trial on a charge of treason. False witnesses, who sought their own release from jail on promise of pardon, failed to appear at the trial and it was unfairly transferred to London. The sham trial there, tarnished by false witnesses did not allow enough time for Oliver to bring his witnesses from Ireland. On 8 June, six days before their arrival, he was put on trial and found guilty of high treason. A week later he was sentenced to die by being hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 11 July, 1681.

In 1920 Oliver Plunkett was beatified by Pope Benedict XV and on 12 October 1975 he was canonised by Pope Paul VI. His feast is celebrated on 1 July.

Two close friends of the martyr took possession of his remains. The head was placed in a “round tin box” and the two forearms were disjointed and placed in a “long tin box”. The rest of his body was buried in St Giles Cemetery. These remains were afterwards exhumed in 1683 and sent to the Benedictine Monastery in Lambspring, Germany. Two hundred years later they were transferred to the Benedictine Monastery of Downside, England.

In 1683 Fr Corker, a fellow prisoner of Oliver’s who became his spiritual director and executor, was released from prison and brought the head to Rome where he gave it into the care of the Dominican Cardinal Howard, who finally, sometime after 1722, gave it to Hugh McMahon on his appointment in Rome to the diocese of Armagh. Dr McMahon on his arrival in his diocese gave the “precious relic” into the safe keeping of the Sienna nuns in Drogheda. The Sisters looked after it for about 200 years until Cardinal Logue, after Oliver’s beatification in 1920, sought Rome’s permission to have it transferred to the new parish church of St Peter’s – with the secondary title of “Oliver Plunkett Memorial Church”. The Relic was installed in St Peter’s Church on 29 June, 1921 and has remained there since. It was carried in public procession on 30 September, 1979, for the visit of Pope John Paul II to Killineer, just outside Drogheda. A beautiful new shrine in honour of Saint Oliver Plunkett was unveiled and dedicated by Cahal B. Cardinal Daly on Sunday 7 May, 1995.

Dermot McDermott, CFC, May 2001

The Church in Ireland in the 12th century was radically changed by a number of reforms. Among the abuses that existed was that whereby the hereditary secularised ecclesiastical dynasty of the Clann Sínaigh had asserted monopoly of clerical office at Armagh for almost 200 years. Two key figures in this reform were Ceallach (St Celsus) comharba Phádraig (1105-1129) and Maolmhaodhóg Ua Morgair (St Malachy).

The turning point for the Armagh reform was the emergence of the reformer Ceallach who belonged to the usurpers, the Clann Sínaigh. Ceallach, Abbot at the Armagh Abbey, took the first step towards canonical correctness by being ordained priest and bishop.

Maolmhaodhóg, whose birthplace in Armagh city is marked by a plaque, was educated by Imhar who was later to become Abbot of the newly founded Abbey of SS Peter and Paul. Ceallach groomed the talented student by ordaining him five years younger than was the norm then and had him act as his vicar during Ceallach’s absence. Malachy was trained for a short period in Lismore monastery which had close links with Britain and the continent and thus with the on-going reform movement in Europe initiated by Pope Gregory VII (1073-85).

Malachy was appointed bishop of Down and Connor in 1124 and as Abbot undertook the rebuilding of the illustrious abbey of Bangor. As bishop he began a programme of reform but met with such opposition that he was forced to flee with his monks to Munster.

Before he died in 1129 Ceallach requested that Malachy should be his successor and sent him his crozier. Earlier, having taken the first step to break the hereditary succession of the coarbs of Armagh from within the Clann Sínaigh this singling out a successor outside the family hegemony dealt a death blow to the Clann Sínaigh.

Malachy hesitated to accept the onerous responsibility but after 3 years, on the insistence of the papal legate, Bishop Gilbert of Limerick, and of the bishop of Lismore accepted the appointment. Even so he faced great opposition from the traditionalists in Armagh who elected Muircheartach of the Clann Sínaigh, lay abbot and coarb to succeed Ceallach. Malachy did not return to Armagh until after Muircheartach’s death in 1134 when the support of Cinél Eoghain ensured his superiority over Niall of the Clann Sínaigh as Muircheartach’s successor. With peace now restored and the reform assured Malachy appointed as his own successor in Armagh, Gilla Mac Líag, abbot of Derry, member of the Cinél Eoghain and a reformer to boot.

In the interest of his reform movement Malachy transferred the territory of the present-day Co. Louth, which was then part of Ua Cearbhall’s Kingdom of Aírghialla, to the diocese of Clogher and appointed his own brother, Gilla Críst, bishop. For the next 60 years the bishops of Clogher styled themselves bishops of Louth. The diocesan See was moved from Clogher to St Mary’s Abbey at Louth and its Augustinian Canons formed the cathedral chapter. In this rather drastic alienation of diocesan territory Malachy was recognising a political fact as well as winning the support of the warrior king, Donnchadh Ua Cearbhaill.

Having returned to Bangor Malachy decided to separate the dioceses of Down and Connor and had another bishop ordained for Connor but himself retained Down. His first act on returning to his former diocese was to re-establish the abbey at Bangor and set about a reform of the community where his earlier reforms came to an abrupt end and led to his flight to Munster.

Though he was no longer bishop of Armagh Malachy was accepted as leader of the reform movement and travelled throughout the country promoting church reform. He realised that his hand would be strengthened considerably in his cherished reforms if the new diocesan arrangements made by the national synod of Rath Breasail in 1111 which decreed there be two archbishoprics for the country – one at Cashel for the southern part of the country and the other at Armagh – were to receive the official recognition and backing of Rome. This would entail travelling to Rome and formally requesting the pallia.

Setting out late 1139 or early 1140 Malachy and his entourage visited the Cistercian abbey at Clairvaux where he first met the abbot, St Bernard. They became firm friends and Malachy was greatly enamoured with the Cistercian way of life. Pope Innocent II received him graciously in Rome but refused to grant him permission to spend the remainder of his life at Clairvaux. Instead, Innocent appointed him successor to Gilbert, the papal legate for Ireland, confirmed the status of Cashel as an archbishopric but did not confer the pallia on either Armagh or Cashel, but urged that a national synod be held to formally petition the pallia.

On his return journey Malachy and his party called again at Clairvaux and left four of his retinue there to be trained as Cistercians. On his return to Ireland he sent others to Clairvaux. From these two groups, with the addition of Clairvaux monks, Mellifont Abbey near Drogheda was founded in 1142. Malachy also visited the monastery at Arrouaise in Flanders whence he introduced the Augustinian Canons into Ireland at St Mary’s Abbey, Louth, also in 1142. Both Mellifont and Louth Abbey were situated in the Kingdom of Airghialla, the protection and patronage of whose king, Donnchadh Ua Cearbhaill, enabled Malachy to introduce these continental monastic observances.

As papal legate he spent the next six years holding synods, making new church laws and generally renewing the life of the Church in Ireland. In 1145 a former Clairvaux monk was elected Pope – Eugene III – and Malachy thought it was now opportune for him to again request the pallia. In 1148, availing of the fact that the Pope had summoned a church council at Reims, Malachy undertook a second journey to the continent, having first convened a synod near Skerries for the purpose of making a formal request for the pallia.

On his journey to France he was prevented, by King Stephen of England, from crossing the English Channel immediately because of the latter’s dispute with the papacy and by the time he reached France the Pope was on his way back to Rome. Malachy now decided to visit St Bernard at Clairvaux again, arriving there mid-October. A few days later he was prostrated with a fever but the monks were not unduly alarmed even though Malachy insisted he was on his death-bed and asked for the last rites. He became suddenly critically ill on All Saints Day and in the presence of the assembled community and, in the arms of St Bernard, died on All Souls Day, 1148.

The monks of Clairvaux initiated proceedings for his canonisation, which Pope Clement III confirmed in 1190. St Bernard’s biography of Malachy, as well as letters written to him during his lifetime, are the most important sources for his life.

The bones of St Malachy remained in France until in 1982 for the most recent renovation of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, the return of a portion of his remains was negotiated and part of which was placed in the new altar during the ceremony of re-dedication. And so the mortal remains of two of Armagh’s most celebrated archbishops to follow Patrick, one of whom, Malachy, guided the Church in Ireland through the tensions of reform and the other, Oliver Plunkett, through the rigours of persecution, to the scene of their labours for peace in Armagh.

St Malachy’s feast day is celebrated on All Souls Day.

Dermot McDermott, CFC.

The record of the coming of Christianity to Ireland is obscure, even confusing. Traditionally, St Patrick was credited with converting the entire Irish race from paganism in the years 432-461. However, modern research has shown us that there were Christians in Ireland before the advent of St Patrick and that by the time our national apostle had begun his mission here the foundations of the Celtic Church had already been laid. The dates of his birth and death are disputed but it is agreed that he flourished in the fifth century.

Two Latin texts written by Patrick himself, neither of them autobiographical, are the sole contemporary witness to his life and few scholars today question the authenticity of the Confession and the Epistola. The first named gets its title from a sentence in its final chapter – “This is my confession before I die” – and was composed before the end of the author’s life. The second named, the Epistola probably predates the Confession and its composition was occasioned by a raid made by Coroticus and his soldiers on a group of Patrick’s neophyte Christians in Ireland.

What do these sources tell us about Patrick? We are given some family details in the Confession: “My father was Calpurnius who was a deacon and a son of the priest Potitus. He ministered in a suburb of Bannaven Taberniae where he had a country residence nearby. It was there I was taken captive. I was about sixteen years of age and I did not know the true God”. He elaborates only to mention his enslavement for six years in Ireland, his escape from the country and his eventual decision to return. Patrick tells us of a dream in which people living beside Silva Vocluti near the “western sea” besought him ‘to come and walk once more’ among them. He answered that call, returned to Ireland, and never seems to have left. His ambit, apparently, was the northern half of Ireland.

“To the honour and glory of God and in loving memory of St Patrick”

The fifth century Ireland to which Patrick returned had a sparse and widely scattered population of perhaps half a million with no towns or cities. It was an agglomeration of numerous independent small kingdoms and almost totally agrarian. Tribal chiefs, subject to an intricate legal system, ruled these petty kingdoms while groups of these confederations of local kingdoms allied themselves with one another to form provincial kingdoms. In the northern half of the country one of the great kingdoms was that of the Ulaid whose capital was Eamhain Macha close to the modern city of Armagh.

Patrick’s six years of captivity in Ireland would have given him an insight and awareness of the socio-political structures. Wherever possible he would have attempted to adapt the religious values and practices of the Celts to Christianity and to fit into the society in which he was converting from paganism. As an outsider, kinless and without status he had also to seek the protection of the powerful in each local kingdom. Though he often bought the goodwill of kings and their legal advisers, the Druids, this did not guarantee him freedom from danger and persecution. He tells us in his Confession that his life was twelve times at risk, that he was beaten up often and that he daily faced the possibility of robbery, renewed slavery and even death.

Among the saints’ cults of medieval Ireland that of Patrick is paramount. The oldest relevant document, perhaps as early as the 7th century, is “Audite omnes amantes”, a hymn in Patrick’s praise. Three texts in the Book of Armagh are more explicitly devoted to his cult: the Book of the Angel c. 640 is the oldest witness to a claim on the part of Armagh to be the See of St Patrick and Ireland’s primatial church; a life by Muirchú and a “memoir” by Tíreachán (both of whom used written sources) belong to the later 7th century and form the oldest extant horizon of the Patrician legend. The 9th century Bethu Pátraic or Tripartite Life (the first in the vernacular) built upon its predecessors and represents the apogee of Patrician hagiography. Armagh had by now monopolised the cult of Patrick in liaison with the Uí Néill, kings of the north. Some scholars deny Patrick’s association with Armagh pointing out the propaganda motives of his 7th century biographers: Muirchú stressing the founding of the See of Armagh by Patrick, Tíreachán emphasising its primacy over local churches. Patrick does not mention his seat and we are left to reconcile an active travelling bishop with a resident churchman.

Dermot McDermott, CFC, May 2001