In this way we get a number of over-kingdoms acknowledging only the supremacy of the Tara dynasty. These were (1) Munster with Cashel as centre, (2) Connaught, (3) Ailech, (4) Oriel, (5) Ulidia, (6) Meath, (7) Leinster, (8) Ossory. Some of these states might be split up into various parts at certain periods, each part becoming for the time-being an over-kingdom. For instance, Ailech might be resolved into Tír Conaill and Tír Eogain according to political conditions. Hence the number of over-kingdoms is given variously in different documents. The supremacy was vested in the descendants of Niall Nóigiallach without interruption until 1002; but as Niall’s descendants were represented by four reigning families, the high-kingship passed from one branch to another. Nevertheless after the middle of the 8th century the title of ardrí (high-king) was only held by the Cinél Eogain (northern Hy Neill) and the rulers of Meath (southern Hy Neill), as the kingdom of Oriel had dropped into insignificance. The supremacy of the ardrí was more often than not purely nominal. This must have been particularly the case in Leth Moga.
Religion in Early Ireland.—Our knowledge of the beliefs of the pagan Irish is very slight. The oldest texts belonging to the heroic cycle are not preserved in any MS. before 1100, and though the sagas were certainly committed to writing several centuries before that date, it is evident that the monkish transcribers have toned down or omitted features that savoured too strongly of paganism. Supernatural beings play an important part in the Táin Bó Cualgne, Cuchulinn’s Sickbed, the Wooing of Emer and similar stories, but the relations between ordinary mortals and such divine or semi-divine personages is not easy to establish. It seems unlikely that the ancient Irish had a highly developed pantheon. On the other hand there are abundant traces of animistic worship, which have survived in wells, often associated with a sacred tree (Ir. bile), bulláns, pillar stones, weapons. There are also traces of the worship of the elements, prominent among which are sun and fire. The belief in earth spirits or fairies (Ir. aes síde, síd) forms perhaps the most striking feature of Irish belief. The sagas teem with references to the inhabitants of the fairy mounds, who play such an important part in the mind of the peasantry of our own time. These supernatural beings are sometimes represented as immortal, but often they fall victims to the prowess of mortals. Numerous cases of marriage between fairies and mortals are recorded. The Tuatha Dé Danann is used as a collective name for the aes síde. The representatives of this race in the Táin Bó Cualgne play a somewhat similar part to the gods of the ancient Greeks in the Iliad, though they are of necessity of a much more shadowy nature. Prominent among them were Manannán mac Lir, who is connected with the sea and the Isle of Man, and the Dagda, the father of a numerous progeny. One of them, Bodb Derg, resided near Portumna on the shore of Lough Derg, whilst another, Angus Mac-in-óg, dwelt at the Brug of the Boyne, the well-known tumulus at New Grange. The Dagda’s daughter Brigit transmitted many of her attributes to the Christian saint of the same name (d. 523). The ancient Brigit seems to have been the patroness of the arts and was probably also the goddess of fertility. At any rate it is with her that the sacred fire at Kildare which burnt almost uninterruptedly until the time of the Reformation was associated; and she was commonly invoked in the Hebrides, and until quite recently in Donegal, to secure good crops. Well-known fairy queens are Clidna (south Munster) and Aibell (north Munster). We frequently hear of three goddesses of war—Ana, Bodb and Macha, also generally called Morrígu and Badb. They showed themselves in battles hovering over the heads of the combatants in the form of a carrion crow. The name Bodb appears on a Gaulish stone as (Cathu-)bodvae. The Geniti glinni and demna aeir were other fierce spirits who delighted in carnage.
When we come to treat of religious rites and worship, our sources leave us completely in the dark. We hear in several documents of a great idol covered with gold and silver named Cromm Cruach, or Cenn Cruaich, which was surrounded by twelve lesser idols covered with brass or bronze, and stood on Mag Slecht (the plain of prostrations) near Ballymagauran, Co. Cavan. In one text the Cromm Cruach is styled the chief idol of Ireland. According to the story St Patrick overthrew the idol, and one of the lives of the saint states that the mark of his crosier might still be seen on the stone. In the Dindsenchus we are told that the worshippers sacrificed their children to the idol in order to secure corn, honey and milk in plenty. On the occasion of famine the druids advised that the son of a sinless married couple should be brought to Ireland to be killed in front of Tara and his blood mixed with the soil of Tara. We might naturally expect to find the druids active in the capacity of priests in Ireland. D’Arbois de Jubainville maintains that in Gaul the three classes of druids, vates and gutuatri, corresponded more or less to the pontifices, augurs and flamens of ancient Rome. In ancient Irish literature the functions of the druids correspond fairly closely to those of their Gaulish brethren recorded by Caesar and other writers of antiquity. Had we contemporary accounts of the position of the druid in Ireland prior to the introduction of Christianity, it may be doubted if any serious difference would be discovered. In early Irish literature the druids chiefly appear as magicians and diviners, but they are also the repositaries of the learning of the time which they transmitted to the disciples accompanying them (see [Druidism]). The Druids were believed to have the power to render a person insane by flinging a magic wisp of straw in his face, and they were able to raise clouds of mist, or to bring down showers of fire and blood. They claimed to be able to foretell the future by watching the clouds, or by means of divining-rods made of yew. They also resorted to sacrifice. They possessed several means for rendering a person invisible, and various peculiar and complicated methods of divination, such as Imbas forosna, tein laegda, and díchetal do chennaib, are described in early authorities. Whether or not the Irish druids taught that the soul was immortal is a question which it is impossible to decide. There is one passage which seems to support the view that they agreed with the Gaulish druids in this respect, but it is not safe to deny the possible influence of Christian teaching in the document in question. The Irish, however, possessed some more or less definite notions about an abode of everlasting youth and peace inhabited by fairies. The latter either dwell in the síd, and this is probably the earlier conception, or in islands out in the ocean where they live a life of never-ending delight. These happy abodes were known by various names, as Tír Tairngiri (Land of Promise), Mag Mell (Plain of Pleasures). Condla Caem son of Conn Cétchathach was carried in a boat of crystal by a fairy maiden to the land of youth, and among other mortals who went thither Bran, son of Febal, and Ossian are the most famous. The doctrine of metempsychosis seems to have been familiar in early Ireland. Mongan king of Dalriada in the 7th century is stated to have passed after death into various shapes—a wolf, a stag, a salmon, a seal, a swan. Fintan, nephew of Partholan, is also reported to have survived the deluge and to have lived in various shapes until he was reborn as Tuan mac Cairill in the 6th century. This legend appears to have been worked up, if not manufactured, by the historians of the 9th to 11th centuries to support their fictions. It may, however, be mentioned that Giraldus Cambrensis and the Speculum Regale state in all seriousness that certain of the inhabitants of Ossory were able at will to assume the form of wolves, and similar stories are not infrequent in Irish romance.
Conversion to Christianity.—In the beginning of the 4th century there was an organized Christian church in Britain; and in view of the intimate relations existing between Wales and Ireland during that century it is safe to conclude that there were Christians in Ireland before the time of St Patrick. Returned colonists from south Wales, traders and the raids of the Irish in Britain with the consequent influx of British captives sold into slavery must have introduced the knowledge of Christianity into the island considerably before A.D. 400. In this connexion it is interesting to find an Irishman named Fith (also called Iserninus) associated with St Patrick at Auxerre. Further, the earliest Latin words introduced into Irish show the influence of British pronunciation (e.g. O. Ir. trindóit from trinitāt-em shows the Brythonic change of ā to ó). Irish records preserve the names of three shadowy pre-Patrician saints who were connected with south-east Ireland, Declan, Ailbe and Ciaran.
In one source the great heresiarch Pelagius is stated to have been a Scot. He may have been descended from an Irish family settled in south Wales. We have also the statement of Prosper of Aquitaine that Palladius was sent by Pope Celestine as first bishop to the Scots that believe in Christ. But though we may safely assume that a number of scattered communities existed in Ireland, and probably not in the south alone, it is unlikely that there was any organization before the time of St Patrick. This mission arose out of the visit of St Germanus of Auxerre to Britain. The British bishops had grown alarmed at the rapid growth of Pelagianism in Britain and sought the aid of the Gaulish church. A synod summoned for the occasion commissioned Germanus and Lupus to go to Britain, which they accordingly did in 429; Pope Celestine, we are told, had given his sanction to the mission through the deacon Palladius. The heresy was successfully stamped out in Britain, but distinct traces of it are to be found some three centuries later in Ireland, and it is to Irish monks on the European continent that we owe the preservation of the recently discovered copies of Pelagius’s Commentary. Palladius’s activity in Britain probably marked him out as the man to undertake the task of bringing Ireland into touch with Western Christianity. In any case Prosper and the Irish Annals represent him as arriving in Ireland in 431 with episcopal rank. His missionary activity unfortunately is extremely obscure. Tradition associates his name with Co. Wicklow, but Irish sources state that after a brief sojourn there he proceeded to the land of the Picts, among whom he was beginning to labour when his career was cut short by death.
St Patrick.—At this juncture Germanus of Auxerre decided to consecrate his pupil Patrick for the purpose of carrying on the work begun by Palladius. Patrick would possess several qualifications for the dignity of a missionary bishop to Ireland. Born in Britain about 389, he had been carried into slavery in Ireland when a youth of sixteen. He remained with his master for seven years, and must have had ample opportunity for observing the conditions, and learning the language, of the people around him; and such knowledge would have been indispensable to the Christian bishop in view of the peculiar state of Irish society (see [Patrick, St]). The new bishop landed in Wicklow in 432. Leinster was probably the province in which Christianity was already most strongly represented, and Patrick may have entrusted this part of his sphere to two fellow-workers from Gaul, Auxilius and Iserninus. At any rate he seems rather to have addressed himself more especially to the task of founding churches in Meath, Ulster and Connaught. In Ireland the land nominally belonged to the tribe, but in reality a kind of feudal system existed. In order to succeed with the body of the tribe it was necessary to secure the adherence of the chief. The conversion in consequence was in large measure only apparent; and such pagan superstitions and practices as did not run directly counter to the new teaching were tolerated by the saint. Thus, whilst the mass of the people practically still continued in heathendom, the apostle was enabled to found churches and schools and educate a priesthood which should provide the most effective and certain means of conversion. It would be a mistake to suppose that his success was as rapid or as complete as is generally assumed. There can be no doubt that he met with great opposition both from the high-king Loigaire and from the druids. But though Loigaire refused to desert the faith of his ancestors we are told that a number of his nearest kinsmen accepted Christianity; and if there be any truth in the story of the codification of the Brehon Laws we gather that he realized that the future belonged to the new religion. St Patrick’s work seems to fall under two heads. In the first place he planted the faith in parts of the north and west which had probably not yet heard the gospel. He also organized the already existing Christian communities, and with this in view founded a church at Armagh as his metropolitan see (444). It is further due to him that Ireland became linked up with Rome and the Christian countries of the Western church, and that in consequence Latin was introduced as the language of the church. It seems probable that St Patrick consecrated a considerable number of bishops with small but definite dioceses which doubtless coincided in the main with the territories of the tuatha. In any case the ideal of the apostle from Britain was almost certainly very different from the monastic system in vogue in Ireland in the 6th and 7th centuries.
The Early Irish Church.—The church founded by St Patrick was doubtless in the main identical in doctrine with the churches of Britain and Gaul and other branches of the Western church; but after the recall of the Roman legions from Britain the Irish church was shut off from the Roman world, and it is only natural that there should not have been any great amount of scruple with regard to orthodox doctrine. This would explain the survival of the writings of Pelagius in Ireland until the 8th century. Even Columba himself, in his Latin hymn Altus prosator, was suspected by Gregory the Great of favouring Arian doctrines. After the death of St Patrick there was apparently a relapse into paganism in many parts of the island. The church itself gradually became grafted on to the feudal organization, the result of which was the peculiar system which we find in the 6th and 7th centuries. Wherever Roman law and municipal institutions had been in force the church was modelled on the civil society. The bishops governed ecclesiastical districts co-ordinate with the civil divisions. In Ireland there were no cities and no municipal institutions; the nation consisted of groups of tribes connected by kinship, and loosely held together by a feudal system which we shall examine later. Although St Patrick endeavoured to organize the Irish church on regular diocesan lines, after his death an approximation to the lay system was under the circumstances almost inevitable. When a chief became a Christian and bestowed lands on the church, he at the same time transferred all his rights as a chief; but these rights still remained with his sept, albeit subordinate to the uses of the church. At first all church offices were exclusively confined to members of the sept. In this new sept there was consequently a twofold succession. The religious sept or family consisted in the first instance not only of the ecclesiastical persons to whom the gift was made, but of all the céli or vassals, tenants and slaves, connected with the land bestowed. The head was the coarb (Ir. comarba, “co-heir”), i.e. the inheritor both of the spiritual and temporal rights and privileges of the founder; he in his temporal capacity exacted rent and tribute like other chiefs, and made war not on temporal chiefs only, the spectacle of two coarbs making war on each other not being unusual. The ecclesiastical colonies that went forth from a parent family generally remained in subordination to it, in the same way that the spreading branches of a ruling family remained in general subordinate to it. The heads of the secondary families were also called the coarbs of the original founder. Thus there were coarbs of Columba at Iona, Kells, Derry, Durrow and other places. The coarb of the chief spiritual foundation was called the high coarb (ard-chomarba). The coarb might be a bishop or only an abbot, but in either case all the ecclesiastics in the family were subject to him; in this way it frequently happened that bishops, though their superior functions were recognized, were in subjection to abbots who were only priests, as in the case of St Columba, or even to a woman, as in the case of St Brigit. This singular association of lay and spiritual powers was liable to the abuse of allowing the whole succession to fall into lay hands, as happened to a large extent in later times. The temporal chief had his steward who superintended the collection of his rents and tributes; in like manner the coarb of a religious sept had his airchinnech (Anglo-Irish erenach, herenach), whose office was generally, but not necessarily, hereditary. The office embodied in a certain sense the lay succession in the family.
From the beginning the life of the converts must have been in some measure coenobitic. Indeed it could hardly have been otherwise in a pagan and half-savage land. St Patrick himself in his Confession makes mention of monks in Ireland in connexion with his mission, but the few glimpses we get of the monastic life of the decades immediately following his death prove that the earliest type of coenobium differed considerably from that known at a later period. The coenobium of the end of the 5th century consisted of an ordinary sept or family whose chief had become Christian. After making a gift of his lands the chief either retired, leaving it in the hands of a coarb, or remained as the religious head himself. The family went on with their usual avocations, but some of the men and women, and in some cases all, practised celibacy, and all joined in fasting and prayer. It may be inferred from native documents that grave disorders were prevalent under this system. A severer and more exclusive type of monasticism succeeded this primitive one, but apart from the separation of the sexes the general character never entirely changed.
Diocesan organization as understood in countries under Roman Law being unknown, there was not that limitation of the number of bishops which territorial jurisdiction renders necessary, and consequently the number of bishops increased beyond all proportions. Thus, St Mochta, abbot of Louth, and a reputed disciple of St Patrick, is stated to have had no less than 100 bishops in his monastic family. All the bishops in a coenobium were subject to the abbot; but besides the bishop in the monastic families, every tuath or tribe had its own bishop. The church in Ireland having been evolved out of the monastic nuclei already described the tribe bishop was an episcopal development of a somewhat later period. He was an important personage, his status being fixed in the Brehon laws, from which we learn that his honour price was seven cumals, and that he had the right to be accompanied by the same number of followers as a petty king. The power of the bishops was considerable, as they were strong enough to resist the kings with regard to the right of sanctuary, ever a fertile source of dissension. The tuath bishop in later centuries corresponded to the diocesan bishop as closely as it was possible in two systems so different as tribal and municipal government. When diocesan jurisdiction was introduced into Ireland in the 12th century the tuath became a diocese. Many of the old dioceses represent ancient tuatha, and even enlarged modern dioceses coincide with the territories of ancient tribal states. Thus the diocese of Kilmacduagh was the territory of the Hui Fiachrach Aidne; that of Kilfenora was the tribe land of Corco-Mruad or Corcomroe. Many deaneries also represent tribe territories. Thus the deanery of Musgrylin (Co. Cork) was the ancient Muscraige Mitaine, and no doubt had its tribe bishop in ancient times. Bishops without dioceses and monastic bishops were not unknown outside Ireland in the Eastern and Western churches in very early times, but they had disappeared with rare exceptions in the 6th century when the Irish reintroduced the monastic bishops and the monastic church into Britain and the continent.
In the 8th and 9th centuries, when the great emigration of Irish scholars and ecclesiastics took place, the number of wandering bishops without dioceses became a reproach to the Irish church; and there can be no doubt that it led to much inconvenience and abuse, and was subversive of the stricter discipline that the popes had succeeded in establishing in the Western church. They were accused of ordaining serfs without the consent of their lords, consecrating bishops per saltum, i.e. of making men bishops who had not previously received the orders of priests, and of permitting bishops to be consecrated by a single bishop. This custom can hardly, however, be a reproach to the Irish church, as the practice was never held to be invalid; and besides, the Nicene canons of discipline were perhaps not known in Ireland until comparatively late times. The isolated position of Ireland, and the existence of tribal organization in full vigour, explain fully the anomalies of Irish discipline, many of which were also survivals of the early Christian practices before the complete organization of the church.