From Life of St. Laurence O’Toole, Archbishop of Dublin (1128-1180), by M. L’Abbé Legris, English Translation, Dublin: Catholic Truth Society of Ireland, 1914; pp. 32-40.
Life of . . . .
St. Laurence O’Toole
Archbishop of Dublin (1128-1180)
by
M. L’Abbé Legris
English Translation
CHAPTER V
ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN (1162-1170)
The death of Archbishop Gregory on the 8th October, 1161, rendered vacant the archiepiscopal See of Dublin. The principal city of the Danish colonies on the east coast, Dublin was the first erected to a bishopric under the protection of Canterbury, to which See, until the Synod of 1152, presided over by Cardinal Paparo, it had remained dependent. From Canterbury, at the very beginning, had come the relics to be placed in the cathedral, amongst which was a stone from the tomb of St. Audoen, Bishop of Rouen.1 Later, Lanfanc had generously supplied all the requisites for divine worship. The letters of St. Anselm show him to us engrossed in the task of having the books, vestments, and church ornaments presented by Lanfranc restored to the Dublin cathedral, Bishop Samuel having too lavishly distributed these amongst his own people.2
At the Synod of Kells in 1152, when the Church in Ireland and its Hierarchy was brought more into harmony with universal custom, Dublin became one of the four archiepiscopal Sees, having as suffragans the Bishops of Glendalough, Ferns, Ossory, and Kildare and Leighlin. This arrangement, however, of the Synod which changed the diocesan boundaries and suppressed a number of small bishoprics did not come into full effect until after the Anglo-Norman conquest. Up to that time the septs and their petty kings were too much interested in maintaining the ancient order of things to submit forthwith to the mandates of the 33 Synod. To the archdiocese of Dublin, which as yet only comprised the city and some strongholds along the coast towards the south, was assigned half of the country within the jurisdiction of the See of Glendalough.3 But in reality it was not until the coming of Henry II., who interfered in the matter, that this arrangement was carried out.
The noblest families strove with the most illustrious members of the clergy for the honour of giving an Archbishop to the See of Dublin, now become one of the greatest in Ireland. Some happy influence seems to have guided the election. Left wholly free, the electors following their inclinations resolved to choose their Bishop from amongst the members of some religious community. For they rightly regarded monastic training as the best preparation for the episcopate. Now the monastery at Glendalough was nearer than any other to Dublin, and the charity and priestly virtues of the Abbot Laurence were long well known in the city.4 The son of a king, he was by birth the equal of the proudest families. Therefore, after some hesitation, he was unanimously chosen as Archbishop.
Frightened at such a heavy charge the Saint would fain have refused. But how could he oppose the will of God so clearly manifest in the unanimity of the electors? The ceremony of consecration was carried out with more than usual splendour. It was, indeed, the first time that a Bishop of Dublin had received consecration at the hands of an Irish prelate. To the people’s great joy the new Archbishop of Dublin, Laurence O’Toole, was consecrated in the cathedral 34 by the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, surrounded by many Bishops.
Situated at the mouth of the Liffey, about midway on the coast facing England, Dublin afforded easy access to all parts of Ireland, and consequently was pre-eminently fitted to become the emporium for all the trading of the interior of the island with foreign parts. The Danes, a practical people, possessed of remarkable aptitude for commerce, had grasped this fact. Several times driven by the inhabitants out of Dublin, they had on each occasion returned, and at last succeeded in taking the city in which they settled permanently. Under their rule Dublin rapidly attained such size and importance that a contemporary writer does not hesitate to place it on a parallel with London.5
But if the prosperity of the city had developed so quickly, the same cannot be said of the influence of religion amongst a floating population and one wholly immersed in business. The stir and bustle of a great seaport, the continual anxieties of commercial enterprise, and the free and easy manner of living of a purely mercantile population, were so many obstacles to any effective influence of Christian teaching on their minds and morals.
We know nothing concerning the labours of Laurence’s predecessors amidst such unpromising surroundings. Owing to its growth, the city would seem to have been wanting in places of worship. Throughout the whole of his episcopate, the building of churches and the organising of parishes constituted one of the most anxious labours of the new Archibishop.
Above all things, Laurence desired the assistance of coadjutors, animated with his own spirit. His first care 35 was for the reform of the clergy. The Cathedral was served by Canons, who lived the life of secular priests. Inspired by an idea which St. Malachi had wished to see carried out everywhere in Ireland, Laurence induced his Canons to lead a community life and to follow the Rule of Arrouaise. The movement for reform inaugurated in the eleventh century in France, by degrees had won to it the Cathedral Chapters and those of collegiate churches. The Canons had resumed a kind of community life, based on the Rule of St. Augustine, and closely resembling monastic life. A small abbey in the diocese of Arras was the first centre whence the reform spread over the whole of the North. At the time of his first journey to Rome, St. Malachi, attracted by the renown of this abbey which the austerity of its first Abbot and the encouragement of the Popes had already rendered famous, tarried there. He studied its customs, and, when leaving, took with him the book of rules and other liturgical manuscripts, which he proposed to make known amongst the Irish clergy.6 The ascendancy gained over him afterwards by the Abbot of Clairvaux did not efface the impression made upon him by Arrouaise. And in the decision made by Laurence at the beginning of his episcopate, we can recognise the effect of the propaganda which St. Malachi had resolved to undertake in favour of the reform.
Yielding to the exhortations of their Archbishop, the Canons of the Dublin Cathedral accepted this Rule, and in the cloister adjoining the Cathedral Chapter began once more to live in community, observing the regular practices of a religious community. Conformably to the custom at Arrouaise, two of the Canons were sent as delegates to Rome to lay their resolution at the feet of the Pope.
36It is not known if some of the French Canons came to Ireland to initiate these Canons of the Dublin Cathedral into the observance of the Rule. But the most ancient liturgical books of the Cathedral which remain to us indicate an origin which closely connects them with that quarter.7 This is the more remarkable, inasmuch as the Church in Dublin must have received in the beginning from the See of Canterbury a liturgy closely resembling that of Rome.
Henceforth, the daily chanting of the Divine Office in public, that official function assigned to Cathedral Chapters, took place with a regularity and a solemnity hitherto unknown. The trained voices of the Canons Regular did full justice to the Georgian melodies, rendering them in all their sweetness, and thus contributing not a little to the beauty and solemnity of the Divine Office.
Laurence, delighted to find the reformed Canons practising all the observances of monastic life, laboured to live as one of them, setting them in all things an example of holiness, sharing their meals in the common refectory, like them observing silence at the times and in the places prescribed; still more effectually to mark the closeness of his association with them, he wore the white habit of the Canons of St. Augustine under his episcopal robes. Assiduous in his attendance at the night Office, when at dawn the Canons left the choir and returned to their cells, the Archbishop, kneeling at the foot of a crucifix, much venerated by the people of Dublin and the surrounding neighbourhood, would remain in prolonged prayer; then, with the advent of morning, he rose and walking to and fro in the churchyard, 37 would recite the Office of the Dead for the souls of those buried therein.
This tender piety, this habit of prayer, never was allowed to interfere with the discharge of his duties as Archbishop nor the obligations imposed upon him by his exalted dignity. Like the Bishops of those times who were accustomed to manage the property of their dioceses and to sit in the assemblies of the great, his household consisted of his clergy, a seneschal, bailiffs, and the other officers of his suite. But the poor were the first to profit by the revenues of his diocese. Apart from the help which he gave with his own hands or through the medium of his bailiffs, a number of poor men, never less than thirty, often sixty, were fed daily in his presence.
At public ceremonies he appeared in costly vestments, as befitted his rank, but beneath the Canon’s robe he wore a hair-shirt, which, for greater mortification he never changed, in that resembling his illustrious contemporary, Thomas à Becket, whom Bossuet has styled “the martyr to penance.” Accustomed as he was, from the time that he adopted the Rule of Arrouaise, to perpetual abstinence, on Fridays his only sustenance consisted of bread and water. But no trace of this austerity was ever apparent in his intercourse with the diocesans. He received them with kindly courtesy and when he entertained them, “he knew,” says his biographer, “how to offer to his guests splendid hospitality, placing before them viands and wines of every kind.” But, retaining in the midst of all this abundance his mortified habits, he chose for himself the plainest dishes, whilst his wine was so copiously diluted with water as to have none of the qualities of wine save the colour.
For those clergy admitted to close intimacy with him, his society was as a school of exalted virtue. It is not surprising that from opposite parts of Ireland they came 38 to seek their Bishops from amongst them. Of the Bishops thus chosen, Albin of Ferns and Marianus of Cork will bear testimony later at the process for his canonisation how deeply they had been edified by the example of the sainted Archbishop. Laurence’s nephew, Thomas, who had followed him from Glendalough to Dublin, was called to rule over a monastery. In the appointment of a successor to the Saint at Glendalough, the canonical rules had been disregarded. The rightful electors, the monks and dependants of the Abbey, found themselves thrust aside, and their claim to choose their Abbot ignored. Dermot, King of Leinster, with his customary violence, interfered with the election, and forced the electors to accept a protégé of his own, a cleric named Benignus. Compelled to yield, they gave the Abbot thus thrust upon them but half-hearted, unwilling obedience. For some years Benignus continued to rule over the monastery. We find his signature as Abbot appended to the deed of endowment of the Priory of All Saints, near Dublin, bearing date 1166. But, already, a formidable coalition against Dermot was being effected. All the hatred which, throughout the course of his long life, he had excited by his quarrelsome disposition, his brutality, his deeds of violence, was now about to be let loose upon him with accumulated force.
Amongst the most implacable of his enemies ranked the tribe of the O’Tooles, burning as they were to avenge the wrong done to the daughter of their chieftain. During one of those brief truces, which occasionally caused a temporary cessation of hostilities, Dermot had taken as his wife, Mor, the only daughter of Maurice.8 Some time afterwards he abducted the wife of O’Rourke, one of the lesser kings, and carried her off to his stronghold at Ferns. Mor, whom he then repudiated, withdrew 39 to Dublin, taking up her abode at St. Mary of Hoggis, near her brother, Laurence.9
The men of Imaile, realizing the deadly blow which had been given to Dermot’s influence, seized the opportunity for the redress of their grievances. They had never ceased to regard Benignus as an intruder, to be driven from the monastery at the first possible moment. Free at last to exercise their right of election, clergy and people united in giving their suffrage to Laurence’s nephew. All things combined to recommend him to their choice. The few years spent under Dermot’s protégé had caused them to regret the beneficent rule of Laurence. Thomas was Laurence’s most faithful disciple, and they had seen him trained to monastic life under the Saint’s firm direction. He belonged to the neighbouring clan of the O’Tooles, and in such troublous times the support of this sept was not to be despised. To see the monastery of Glendalough ruled by one whom he had trained, and whom he still would continue to direct, was a joy to St. Laurence. He had never ceased to love that solitude to which it was his delight to return; to it he was wont to retire during the holy season of Lent, and there, withdrawn from the world, once more engage in those practices of solitary prayer and penance of which he had learned the habit during the last years of his religious training.
On a spur of the cliff which overhangs the Upper Lake there is a cave said to have been excavated in the rock by St. Kevin. To reach this cave or recess the Lake must be crossed, after which the visitor ascends to the rock by means of rough steps cut in the face of the cliff. Here, in this lonely spot, cut off from all intercourse with the world, the Saint, every year, spent several weeks during Lent. No one approached his 40 retreat save his nephew, the Abbot, who took to him the scant nourishment which he allowed himself, and the reports from his diocese, carrying away the Archbishop’s replies and the directions he transmitted to Dublin. If any serious matter called for his presence, Laurence left his retreat and returned for a short time to the city.
1 “De sepulchro Audoeni, episcope et confessoris.” — The Book of Obits and Martyrology, p. 141.
2 Lib. iii., Epist. lxxiii.; Lib. iv., Epist. xxvii.
3 “Quod statim fecisset nisi detulisset insolentiae Hibernensium, qui tunc habebant potestatem in terra illa.” — V. Act. SS. Junii, t. i., p. 303.
4 “In ipso tractatu affuit te fama beati Laurentii cunctis notissima.” — Jean d’Abbeville, c. iv.
5 “Divilinum urbem maritimam, portuque celeberrimo, in comerciis et commeatibus nostrarum aemulam Londoniarum.” Willelm. Neubrig, De rebus Anglicis, ii., 26.
6 Gosse, Histoire de L’Abbaye et de L’Ancienne Congrégation des Chanoines Réguliers d’Arouaise, p. 540.
7 In it, amongst other Bishops of Cambrai, was mentioned St. Vindicien under the dates March 11 and June 26; the formula attached to the later date ran: Vindiciani et reliquorum episcoporum et confessorum. In the martyrology, under the date June 8, was mentioned St. Augis de St. Michel-en-Thiérache.
8 Maurice died in 1164.
9 The Irish shared the veneration which they had for their sainted Archbishop with his sister, Mor.