History of Roman Catholicism in Ireland - The Vikings Arrive

The Vikings Arrive

During the ninth and tenth centuries, waves of Norse warriors ransacked the countryside. The Vikings plundered everything in sight. The monasteries were favorite targets for their treasures of golden religious ornaments.

As the eighth century neared its close, religion and learning still flourished; but unexpected dangers approached and a new enemy came, before whose assaults monk and monastery and saint and scholar disappeared. These invaders were the Danes from the coasts of Scandinavia. Pagans and pirates, they loved plunder and war, and were formidable foes both on land and sea. Descending from their ships along the coast of western Europe, they murdered the inhabitants or made them captives and slaves.

In Ireland as elsewhere they attacked the monasteries and churches, desecrated the altars, carried away the gold and silver vessels, and smoking ruins and murdered monks attested the fury of their assaults. Armagh and Bangor, Kildare and Clonmacnoise, Iona and Lindisfarne thus fell before their fury. Under native and Christian chiefs churches were destroyed, church lands appropriated by laymen, monastic schools deserted, and lay abbots ruled at Armagh and elsewhere. Bishops were consecrated without sees and conferred orders for money, there was chaos in church government and corruption everywhere.

In a series of synods beginning with Rathbreasail (1118) and including Kells, at which the pope's legate presided, many salutary enactments were passed, and for the first time diocesan episcopacy was established. Meanwhile, St. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh, had done very remarkable work in his own diocese and elsewhere. His early death in 1148 was a heavy blow to the cause of church reform. Nor could so many evils be cured in a single life, or by the labours of a single man; and in spite of his efforts and the efforts of others the decrees of synods were often flouted, and the new diocesan boundaries ignored.