Centuries have rolled on since we last looked at the state of things in the sister island. St. Patrick left behind him at his death in 492, a band of well-educated, devoted men, who greatly venerated their master and sought to follow in his footsteps. The fame of Ireland for its monasteries, missionary schools, and as the seat of pure scriptural teaching, rose so high, that it received the honorable appellation of "The isle of saints." On the testimony of Bede we learn that, about the middle of the seventh century, many of the Anglo-Saxon nobles and clergy repaired to Ireland, either for instruction, or for an opportunity of living in monasteries of a stricter discipline.
We have already noticed the labors of the Irish clergy as missionaries. The Culdees of Iona owed their origin as a christian community to the preaching of the Irish apostle Columba. Britain, France, Germany, the low countries, and different parts of the continent of Europe, were mainly indebted to Irish missionaries for their first acquaintance with divine truth. Charlemagne, himself a man of letters, invited to his court various eminent scholars from different countries, but especially from Ireland. For many ages she maintained her independence of Rome, rejected all foreign control, and acknowledged Christ only as Head of the church. But the invasion of the Danes about the beginning of the ninth century, and their occupation of the country, quenched the light, and changed the character of "the isle of saints." These piratical and predatory hordes wasted her fields, slew her sons, or dispossessed them of their inheritance, demolished her colleges, and maintained themselves in the country with the cruelty and arrogance of usurpers. Moral, spiritual, and literary darkness followed, and prepared the way for Romanism. Up till this time religious institutions, and the labors of the ecclesiastics, form the chief subjects of her history; but since then, intestine wars, turbulence, crime, and desolation.
Various attempts had been made by Roman pontiffs to subject the Irish church to the See of Rome, but without success until the reign of Pope Adrian IV. He was an Englishman, known by the name of Nicolas Breakspear; born in poverty and obscurity, he became a monk of St. Alban's, and was afterward elevated in the revolution of human affairs, to the pontifical dignity. Though suddenly raised from indigence to opulence, his pride and arrogance were extreme. He took great offense at the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa for omitting to hold his stirrup, and refused to give him the kiss of peace. Frederic declared that the omission was the result of ignorance, and, submitting to the service as equerry to his Holiness, was forgiven, and received the kiss.
Amongst the earliest acts of this modest pontiff, was the assumption of authority over Ireland, and making a grant of it to Henry II., king of England. The ground on which the pope rested his right to make this grant was thus expressed:
"For it is undeniable, and your majesty acknowledges it, that all islands on which Christ the sun of righteousness hath shined, and which have received the Christian faith, belong of right to St. Peter and the most holy Roman church." In virtue of this right, he authorizes Henry to invade Ireland with a view to the extension of the church, the increase of religion and virtue, and eradicating the tares of vice from the garden of the Lord; on condition that a penny shall be yearly paid from each house to the See of Rome.
From this period, 1155, the Irish church came to be essentially Romish in its doctrines, constitution, and discipline. Long before the Reformation, "Nearly six hundred monastic establishments, belonging to eighteen different orders, were scattered over the entire face of the country. Ghostly friars, black, white and gray, swarmed in countless multitudes, practicing upon an ignorant and deluded people." In 1172, Henry completed his conquest of the country; an assembly of the Irish clergy convened at Waterford, submitted to the papal dictation, proclaimed Henry's title to the sovereign dominion of Ireland, and took the oath of fidelity to himself and his successors. Rapid declension now marked the church in Ireland. Her far-famed spirituality and intelligence were gone. At one time she had about three hundred bishops; at the dawn of the Reformation, we believe the number was under thirty. Jealousies, contentions, and rebellions, have blotted almost every page of her history, both civil and ecclesiastical, from the ninth to the present century.