The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Volume 1, August 1865

by Unknown

§ VII. THE ACTS OF HIS EPISCOPATE.

One of the most striking characteristics of Archbishop Fitz-Ralph's pastoral life was his assiduity in preaching the word of God to his people. His sermons on the principal festivals, still extant in MS. in the university libraries of Dublin, Oxford, and Cambridge, and in the British Museum, would fill a large volume. Already as Dean of Lichfield he had been remarkable for his fervour in preaching, but as successor of St. Patrick in the see of Armagh, he seemed to have received a double spirit of zeal and diligence. A volume of his sermons, once in the possession of Ware, and lately purchased for the British Museum at the sale of the Tenison library, includes sermons preached at Avignon, London, Drogheda, Dundalk, Trim, and other places of the province of Armagh. The fame of his eloquence preceded him to the Holy See, and when at Avignon he was frequently admitted to the high honour of preaching before the Holy Father and the cardinals and prelates of his court. He loved to make our Blessed Lady's virtues the subject of his discourse. De Laudibus S. Deiparae is the title of many of his sermons. There are also special sermons on her Conception, Visitation, and Assumption. His sermons are generally constructed on a uniform plan. After quoting his text, it was his custom to begin with some short prayer like the following, which occurs in a sermon preached at Avignon on the feast of All Saints, 1358: Pro edificandi gratia impetranda, devote, si placet, matrem gratiae salutemus, dicentes Ave Maria. And in a sermon preached before Innocent VI. on the feast of the Epiphany, after the text Videntes stellam Magi, he begins with the invocation, O Maria stella Maris, Mater stellae solaris. After the introductory prayer he repeats the text in the vernacular, and then proceeds with the division of the subject. In dividing his discourse he generally employs the rigour of the scholastic method; each member of the division being complete in itself, and forming as it stands a finished whole. Hence, the great feature of his style is its singular clearness; a clearness which, however, never becomes hard or cold, so tender is the unction that pervades the entire. He appears to have had a singular devotion to St. Catherine the Martyr and to St. Thomas of Canterbury, among the saints; three or four different sermons are to be found in the collection in honour of each. It is much to be regretted that those beautiful sermons have never been printed.

Anxious to secure efficient pastors for his flock, he took care that his clergy should have the benefit of the highest literary and ecclesiastical training it was within his power to procure. With this view he sent four of his priests to the University of Oxford, where he himself had spent so many happy years of profitable study. He also acquired for his diocese from the Benedictines of St. Mary of Lenley's in Normandy, the priory and houses of St. Andrew in the Ardes, belonging to that order. Besides this, he was diligent in visiting every portion of his province. Among the rolls of Edward III., there is a letter of 28th April, 1356,[21] addressed by that King to the Archbishop, at a moment that the latter has actually engaged in his visitation of the diocese of Meath. Edward calls upon the Primate to return with all speed to Dundalk to treat with Odo O'Neill, who was advancing upon that town with a considerable army of Irish. Nor was it the first time that the Archbishop's virtues enabled him to discharge the blessed office of peacemaker in the disturbed state of society in which his lot was cast. As far back as 1348 he had received from the King full powers to treat for peace between the English and Irish.[22]

While careful of the spiritual interests of his diocese, Archbishop Fitz-Ralph did not neglect to take care of its temporal concerns. He justified to the letter the description given of him in the bull which made him Archbishop: in spiritualibus providum, in temporalibus circumspectum.

On January 11th, 1351, he received from Clement VI. a favourable answer to his petition that he might be allowed to incorporate with the mensal funds of his see the income of four churches with care of souls, provided the ordinaries consented, and that the sum did not exceed the annual value of one hundred marks. The petition of the Archbishop set forth that the entire income of his see did not reach four hundred pounds sterling per annum. On the same day the Pontiff issued letters requiring the Abbot of St. Mary's in Dynelek (Duleek), the Prior of St. Leonard's in Dundalk, and the Archdeacon of Armagh, together with the chapter of the cathedral, to examine how far it would be useful to exchange certain church lands, rents, and other immovable property, for others, which the Primate judged more likely to be advantageous to the see of Armagh.

Two documents preserved by Rymer show how careful Dr. Fitz-Ralph was not to sanction by any act of his the claims made to the primacy by the Archbishop of Dublin, to the detriment of Armagh. The first is dated 8th December, 1350, and is an order from Edward III., that the Archbishop of Armagh should not have his cross carried before him within the limits of the province of Dublin. Archbishop Fitz-Ralph was unwilling to cause disturbance by refusing to obey this order, but on the other hand he felt that to comply with it fully would be to prejudice the legitimate claims of his see.

He resolved in consequence simply to absent himself from Dublin. He procured a royal license which excused him from personal attendance at the parliaments held at Dublin, on the ground, that within the province of Dublin he was not permitted to have his cross borne before him. In 1349 he was charged by the same king to plead in the royal name before the Sovereign Pontiff Clement VI. for the grace of a jubilee on behalf of the people subject to the English crown. In Oxford there is a MS. entitled Propositio ejusden (Ric. Rad. sive Fitz-Ralph Archiepiscopi Armachani) ex parte Regis Angliae Edwardi III. in consistorio Domini Papae, Avinione pro gratia jubilaei ejus Domino Regis populo obtinenda, anno 1349. A similar heading is prefixed to another propositio of the same prelate, which, as we shall see, he urged in person at Avignon in 1357. Pope Clement VI. was engaged in anxious efforts to restore the oriental churches to union with Rome. The Armenians were in an especial manner the objects of his paternal solicitude. The remarkable series of questions which the Pope proposed to the bishops of that church are well known in ecclesiastical history. It was, probably, during this visit to the Holy See that Archbishop Fitz-Ralph became acquainted with the two Armenian prelates, Nerses or Narses of Manasgarda and John, Bishop elect of Clata, in Greater Armenia. These oriental bishops had long and earnest conferences with their Irish brother on the sad state of their once flourishing church, and at their earnest and oft-repeated requests, the Primate resolved to contribute his aid to the great work of bringing back the Armenians to unity. One circumstance connected with the occasion, though it narrowed his field of argument for the time, has given, nevertheless, to his writings a character which makes them valuable in modern controversy. In his Questiones Armenorum he was forced to defend the Catholic doctrine almost exclusively from the Holy Scriptures, seeing that his adversaries did not admit the authority of the Roman Church. Hence his position as a controversial writer does not differ from that which the Reformation has imposed upon modern theologians since the time of Bellarmine.

Before the publication of Theiner's Vetera Monumenta, there was but a single writer, Raphael of Volterra,[23] to assert that Archbishop Fitz-Ralph had been created Cardinal. This solitary testimony, though positive, was not considered by Ware and others strong enough to counterbalance the negative argument drawn from the silence of all other writers on the subject, and especially from the fact that upon the elaborate catalogue of cardinals, drawn up by Panvinio and Ciacconio, the name of Fitz-Ralph is not to be found. Among the documents published by Theiner there is a consistorial process drawn up in 1517 on occasion of a vacancy in the see of Ardagh,[24] in which mention is made, among other glories of Ireland, of the Cardinal of Armagh, who flourished in the year 1353. This is no other than our Archbishop Fitz-Ralph. It is curious that the statement in this process is made in words almost identical with those used by Raphael of Volterra. So close is the likeness between the two statements that one is clearly copied from the other. It is also to be observed that in the Papal documents he is never styled Cardinal, and that even as late as October, 1358, Archbishop Fitz-Ralph is styled by Innocent VI. simply Archbishop of Armagh, although in the same letter the Pontiff makes mention of the Cardinals appointed to examine into the questions at issue between our prelate and the Mendicant Orders. However this may be explained, we have the weighty authority of an official document drawn up at Rome and accepted by the Holy Father himself, for believing that the see of Armagh was honoured by the Roman purple in the person of Richard Fitz-Ralph.