Historia y cultura I
Ireland
Rev. 7 November 2003
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Ignored by the Romans
Until the late 700s and in comparison with what became "England", Ireland was much more insular. Before the Roman invasion and conquest, when Claudius followed up, a century later (AD 43), on Caesar's initial, exploratory expeditions to southern "England" in 55 and 54 BC, all the British Isles were Celtic. Roman Britain lasted some four hundred years but no "Roman", it seems, ever reached Ireland [no written record of any visit]. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and other Germanic peoples had an enormous impact upon the Britain the Romans abandoned in the first decades of the 5th century -- bringing into existence what we still call "England" and, of course, the English language -- but they did not reach Ireland. Thus, Celtic ways in Ireland (for example, Gaelic, a Celtic language of the Goidelic group) were relatively unaffected by other forces and cultural influences, for many centuries.
Celtic Christianity
Someone did reach Ireland from Roman Britain, not as a Roman conqueror but as a slave -- future patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick. After escape to the Continent and years of preparation, he returned as a missionary determined to convert his former captors into Christians. Tradition tells us St. Patrick returned to Ireland, mid-5th century, and converted the rulers of the north. The how, when, where, who of this converting are impossible to detect. But one can mention how, eventually, monasticism, instead of a structured, hierarchical ecclesiastical system, came to predominate. At the beginning of the 5th century, the Irish remained innocent of Christianity, but in the 6th and 7th centuries they were some of its most active propagators -- into southwest Scotland (the island of Iona), into Anglo-Saxon England (Lindisfarne, just off the Northumberland coast) and into Europe (Luxeuil in France and Bobbio in northern Italy). Another Irish missionary, Brendan the Voyager, allegedly braved the Atlantic to faraway places that remain unidentified, but perhaps as far as the Azores.
Eventually, Irish monasticism, especially its relatively autonomous, centrifugal character, bows to various centripetal factors -- English monarchy and papacy -- more interested in centralizing. [Such description excludes a lot of other ingredients as well as the extenuating circumstances characteristic of specific historical moments. So take it as one of those statements in need of qualifiers.] But between St. Patrick and the coming of Vikings (450-late 700s), the monasteries were the backbone of Irish culture, the seats of learning and literacy. Illuminated manuscripts, about fifteen surviving from the fertile period, 650-800, and all products of Irish workshops (called "scriptoria") are justly famous. The culmination of a synthesis, between Celtic decorative tradition (geometrical art) and Christian didactic themes, is the mid-to-late 8th-century Book of Kells, the richest and most elaborate of all the Irish manuscripts. Just as Stonehenge disallows dismissive attitudes towards the prehistoric inhabitants of England so the unrivalled beauty and perfection of Irish metalwork (the Tara Brooch and the Ardagh Chalice), from the 7th and 8th centuries, defy the validity of any intellectual disdain. Later (in the 12th and 13th centuries), it was Irish monks who wrote down contemporary (that means, of course, medieval versions) of those stories, legends, descriptions, and parables that had been passing, orally, from generation to generation for centuries, sometimes since well before BC.
Ireland of the tuatha or clans
When St. Patrick returned to Ireland, he found the population divided into as many as 150 tuatha, a word most nearly translated "tribes" or "clans". These were kin groups with a recognized leader and having collective claims to the wealth of, and authority over, specified territories. Pre-Viking Ireland (mid-8th century) was divided into perhaps 100 small kingdoms, of varying size and importance, each ruled by a chief or king. There were three grades of kingship: king of one tuath; king of three or four tuatha; and the third rank, overking or high king. Royal succession was determined during the lifetime of a reigning king, from amongst eligible members of kindred.
Like elsewhere (in Anglo-Saxon England and on the Continent), there was a long-term tendency [but much faster outside Ireland] for these political divisions to grow larger and by 1100, the number of tribal units in Ireland was about 30. But perhaps it is important to recognize that by the 12th century, and really long before, a major difference existed in the political organization of the two islands. The whole of the southern part of Britain had been unified, first under the Anglo-Saxons, and after 1066, under the Normans. No such unification had occurred within Ireland despite various aborted tendencies in that direction.
Vikings
The relative insularity of Ireland was rudely shattered when Viking raiders fell upon the islands and coastal locations, or sites on the lower reaches of navigable rivers. [first raids in 795, island of Lambay, a few miles northeast of present-day Dublin and monastery of Iona, off the Scottish coast] But by the second quarter of the 9th century, they were reaching inland. Large fleets pushed up the Shannon, Boyne, Liffey, and Erne, reaching and ravaging inland areas. Gradually their presence became permanent rather than seasonal. They established a coastal stronghold at Dublin (a Scandinavian name meaning "dark pool") and later at Limerick, Wexford, Waterford, and Cork; each was (from the 10th century) a center of Viking settlements (see map). It was from those strongholds that they threatened to topple native Irish dynasties. Their power waxed, unchecked by the Irish until the Battle of Tara (980) and according to tradition, the Viking threat to Ireland finally ended with the exertions of the Irish king Brian Boru of Munster at the battle of Clontarf (just outside Dublin) in 1014.
Land replaced movables as an objective even though these Vikings retained their maritime mobility, remaining still, voyagers and traders. With permanent settlement, they slowly assimilated into Irish society -- intermarriage between Irish and Vikings and conversion to Christianity took place.
Anglo-Normans
In the last third of the 12th century and for the first time, people from across the Irish Sea [the water from Pembroke, southwestern tip of Wales, to Wexford or Waterford, is really St. George's Channel] reach Ireland. They had been "invited" to help support one of the Irish kings, Dermot MacMurrough, defeated king of Leinster, who awakened the interest of a powerful Norman, Richard Fitzgilbert de Clare, 2nd earl of Pembroke and Striguil, called "Strongbow". These Normans had recently conquered south Wales and Pembrokeshire, the westernmost shire of south Wales, was a Norman stronghold with only sixty miles of water between it and the excellent Irish harbors at Wexford and Waterford. An advance party under Robert Fitzstephen landed near Wexford in 1169 and de Clare himself the following year when he took Waterford and married Dermot's daughter, Eva. With this Norman help, Dermot was restored but de Clare inherited the kingdom of Leinster upon Dermot's death in 1171, the same year Strongbow also managed to repel Rory O'Connor, high king of Ireland.
In 1155, Adrian IV, Pope from 1154-1159 (born Nicolas Breakspear, only English pope ever) and a vigorous defender of papal supremacy, had authorized King Henry II (1154-1189) to invade Ireland. Adrian's objective was to promote ecclesiastical reform; since the Irish Church retained many Celtic characteristics and the papacy knew effective change required the appointment of reforming bishops supported by a powerful and sympathetic king. But what really alarmed this English monarch was the prospect of Norman power outside his jurisdiction. So it was in October of 1171, shortly after Strongbow's success, that Henry II "invaded" or led a major expedition to establish his rights over Ireland and its people, including those recent Normans. This is what historians refer to as the "Anglo-Norman" conquest of Ireland. Henry II received the submission not only of the newly arrived Normans but also of every important Irish chief and king except Rory O'Connor who submitted later (1175). [Although the English recognized Rory as high king of Ireland, he was ousted from Connaught in 1186 and retired to a monastery in 1191].
For the rest of the century and throughout the 13th century, Anglo-Normans proceeded to conquer Ireland, failing only to subdue the northwest and southwest (see map). In the 14th and 15th centuries some land was reconquered by the native Irish [notice the words "native Irish"] and many of the Anglo-Normans were assimilated into Irish society and, thus, referred to as "Anglo-Irish" (see Cultural assimilation and map). By the 16th century English rule was confined to a small area around Dublin known as the English Pale. [Pale=the area in Ireland where English law and the royal administration were respected; the extent of the Pale varied: in the mid-14th century it comprised Dublin, Louth, Meath, Trim, Kilkenny, and Kildare, but subsequently it progressively shrank until the Tudors reasserted the English presence in the 16th century]
Under the Tudors and Stuarts
From Henry VIII to Elizabeth's death (1603) and with much warfare, English authority in Ireland energetically expanded. The English government encouraged English and Scottish families to settle in Ireland in an effort to anglicize the country and secure its allegiance. Various areas were planted with settlers, most successfully in the north. Less successful was the introduction of Protestantism, which was never accepted by the majority. [Tudor methods were a bit grim.]
Hugh O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, earl of Tyrconnell, were Ulster chiefs who fought against Elizabeth until their final submission in 1603. Although pardoned, they found the increasing English intervention an intolerable challenge to their traditional jurisdiction, and departed to the Continent in 1607. The so-called flight of the earls left Ulster open to settlement by the Scots and English families. Most of Ulster was confiscated. The city of London participated by colonizing Londonderry. These predominantly Presbyterian inhabitants survived and their descendants remained a distinctive identity in Ulster. Later in the 17th century there were further land confiscations called "plantations" in Wexford, Longford, and Leitrim, but no accompanying large-scale immigration from Britain. In the 17th century two massive land transferences, after the Cromwellian (Oliver Cromwell) and Williamite (William III) wars, left most of the Irish Catholics landless. Between 1695 and 1727, the English government issued a series of laws [referred to as the "Penal Code"], designed to suppress the practice of Roman Catholicism and to restrict the material wealth and participation in public life of Catholics (the majority in Ireland).