The earliest reference to papal contact with Ireland occurs in 431 when the Chronicle of Prosper of Aquita-ine recorded the sending of Palladius as bishop to “the Irish believing in Christ” by Pope Celestine I (d. 432) as part of a wider papal mission to the church in the British Isles. The Irish church developed distinctive structures and practices and the Irish method of calculating Easter was a particular cause of controversy. The Venerable Bede (d. 735) makes reference to two seventh- century papal letters to Irish ecclesiastics concerning this paschal controversy. The Irish peregrinus Columbanus (d. 615) corresponded with Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) and forcefully reminded Pope Boniface IV (d. 615) of his responsibility to exercise the Petrine ministry to stamp out error. A similar respect for papal primacy is evident in some eighth-century Brehon law texts.
Increased contacts between Ireland, England, and the Continent from the mid-eleventh century brought the Irish Church into contact with the Gregorian reform movement. There were a number of Irish royal pilgrimages to Rome during this period and an Irish monastery was established on the Celian hill. Pope Gregory VII (d. 1085) corresponded with King Tairrdelbach Ua Briain encouraging his efforts at church reform. This momentum culminated in a series of synods; Cashel I (1101), Rath Breassail (1111), and Kells-Mellifont (1152), presided over by papal legates, in which a diocesan structure was established, sacramental and liturgical life renewed, and attempts made to reform sexual mores and ensure the payment of tithes. Irish prelates were well represented at both the great reform councils of the Middle Ages: Lateran III (1179) and Lateran IV (1215).
The Anglo-Norman presence in Ireland from 1169 was a complicating factor in Irish-papal relations. Much academic controversy has been generated over the significance of the 1155 bull Laudabiliter of the Pope Alexander IV by which Ireland was granted to Henry II of England. While its authenticity is now generally accepted, in many respects the attitude of the papacy after the invasion is more significant as the English right to the lordship of Ireland was never challenged by the popes before the Reformation, particularly after King John agreed to hold Ireland as a papal fief from Innocent III in 1213.
The decline in the English colony that became evident in the latter half of the thirteenth century continued into the fourteenth. Tension between the two nations became particularly pronounced in the wake of the Bruce invasion (1315-1317) and King Edward II enlisted papal support for the correction of clergy and religious who sided with the rebels. The grievances of the Irish population found expression in the 1317 Remonstrance addressed to Pope John XXII by Domnall Ua Neill in which he claimed that as the English had failed to fulfill the conditions of Laudabiliter, they should be deprived of their Lordship. Though John XXII did not concede this he did urge Edward II and Edward III to attend more carefully to the rights of their Irish subjects.
The transfer of the papal court to Avignon in 1315 brought the papacy closer to Ireland and there is a corresponding rise in the volume of Irish material preserved in the various series of papal records. Unlike England, where recourse to the papacy in legal matters was strictly controlled by statute, Gaelic Ireland was under no such strictures and the papal records abound in references to disputes relating to appointments to benefices, elections to bishoprics, matrimonial cases and dispensations from illegitimacy, and other canonical impediments to ordination. While papal intervention in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was generally on the side of church reform these later involvements were less edifying and more mercenary as an impoverished papal curia exploited every avenue of financial opportunity. This was particularly pronounced during the Great Schism (1378-1418). Like England, the Irish church sided with Urban VI and his successors in the Roman obedience, though there is some evidence for support for Clement VII and the Avignon line in Connacht and amongst the friars in the early stages of the controversy.
Ireland remained largely untouched by the con-ciliar movement and any impetus towards reform came through the Observant movement among the mendicant friars, which emerged at the end of the fourteenth century. The Observance brought the friars into close contact with the papacy and they emerged as its chief champions when the challenge to papal authority arose after 1536 when the Irish parliament recognized Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church in Ireland.
