The object, however, was not lost sight of either by the Pope or the Primate. Cardinal John Paparo landed in Ireland in A.D. 1151, and went straight to Armagh to meet the Primate, with whom he remained for a week making arrangements for the coming Synod. It was held at Kells, not Drogheda or Mellifont, in the spring of next year, A.D. 1152, and was attended by twenty-two bishops and five bishops elect, with a large number—some 300 or more—of the clergy of the Second Order, both secular and regular. We cannot here enter into the many interesting questions connected with this Synod. It is enough to say that whilst formally recognising the superiority of Armagh as the Primatial See, four palls were granted by the Cardinal Legate, thus legally constituting four archbishops in Ireland for the first time. It is, however, only in this legal and technical sense that Gelasius can be described as the ‘first Archbishop of Armagh.’ Other regulations were also made at this Synod, two of which are especially noticed. It was ordered by the Synod to put away all concubines from men[291]—not from the clergy, as Moore falsely says; and also to pay tithes according to the usage of the Church elsewhere. This is the first reference to tithes we find in our Annals, and it is said that even the clergy did not care to introduce this new system of getting a maintenance.
The zealous Primate held another Synod at Mellifont in A.D. 1157, partly to have the new monastic church of the parent Cistercian House consecrated with greater solemnity, and partly to pronounce sentence of excommunication against Donogh O’Melaghlin for his impiety and contempt of the Primate’s authority. We are not acquainted with the full particulars; but this public act by which the Prince of Meath was solemnly excommunicated and deposed, and his brother appointed by the bishops and the princes in his stead, shows that the Primate was a man of vigour, who was resolved to adopt energetic measures to assert his own authority.
Next year we find Gelasius holding another Synod at a place called Brigh Mac-Taidgh, near Trim, in Meath. Twenty-five bishops were present, with Christian of Lismore, the Papal Legate in Ireland. The Connaught Bishops were unable to attend, because they were robbed and maltreated near Clonmacnoise on their way to the Synod by a party of soldiers belonging to that very Diarmaid O’Melaghlin, whom the Synod of Mellifont had named King of Meath the previous year. This incident shows the violent and lawless spirit of the times, and how necessary it was for the Primate to vindicate to the utmost of his power the authority of the Church, which alone could keep these fierce and bloodthirsty princes in check. It was at this Synod, as we have already seen, that a Bishop’s Chair was set for O’Flaherty O’Brolchain, who was on that occasion formally created, with the assent of the Legate, first Bishop of Derry.
A few years later in A.D. 1162, the venerable Gelasius presided at another Synod at Clane in Magh Liffe—the north of the present County Kildare. It was at this Synod the important decree was passed, which required all the Fer-leighinn, or professors throughout Ireland, to graduate in the great School of Armagh. This decree more than anything else shows the far seeing wisdom of the Primate. The School of Armagh was under his own immediate direction and control, so that he could secure a thorough and orthodox training in theology for the students. Then by requiring the professors from all the other schools to attend lectures at Armagh, he secured at once uniformity of system, and soundness of doctrine in all the other schools where the clergy of the Irish Church were being trained for the ministry. At the same time it was a recognition that as Armagh was the seat of authority, it was also the mistress of sound theology. It is quite evident that Gelasius was a man far superior to his contemporaries in wisdom and the science of government.
In the same year he had the satisfaction of consecrating the great St. Laurence O’Toole to be Archbishop of Dublin—the first prelate of that see that was ever consecrated in Ireland. It is clear that the Primate was resolved not to tolerate any longer the claim of the Archbishops of Canterbury to metropolitan jurisdiction in any part of his primacy.
Yet another great assembly of the clergy and laity was held at Athboy in Meath, in the year A.D. 1167. Both the Primate and Rory O’Connor, King of Ireland, were present with many of the prelates and nobles of the North. Its main object seems to have been to restore peace and concord between the native princes, whose fratricidal strife had reddened every green field in their native land, and offered such strong inducements to the stranger to conquer and divide their inheritance.
The Primate saw the danger, and realized it to the full. As he had held a Synod the year before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans to remove the cause of the danger; so the year after their arrival, that is in A.D. 1170, he held the last Synod of his clergy in his own city of Armagh, to concert means to expel the foreigners, before they could secure a foothold in the country.
The venerable old man was then in the eighty-third year of his age, but he had a braver spirit and a clearer mind than any of the degenerate children of Niall the Great, whom he gathered round him in his primatial city. He warned them, and he appealed to them in vain. When the day of trial came, and Strongbow with his knights were besieged in Dublin, and by united energetic action might have been driven into the sea more completely than the Danes were at Clontarf, the men of the North were in their native mountains ignobly heedless of their country’s fate.
Alas! for the aged Gelasius, who had laboured so hard and so long for the Irish Church and the Irish people. He saw the princes of his country bow the knee in homage to the triumphant invader; he saw her prelates meet in Cashel at Henry’s summons to endorse his laws; he saw her petty chieftains either warring with each other or allied with the Norman. Then, and only then, the old man came from his episcopal city and kissed the hand of Henry in his new capital of Dublin. He had his old white cow driven before him to give him milk, which was his only sustenance. He paid his homage to the king, and then returned home with a sad heart to Patrick’s royal City. Two years after he died at the age of eighty-five, and after his death was recognised and honoured as a saint by the entire Church of Ireland.