Laudabiliter - Controversy

Controversy

The Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke O.P., in his English Misrule in Ireland: A Course of Lectures in Reply to J. A Froude, puts forward a number of arguments against both the Bull of Adrian and the letters of his successor, Pope Alexander III. The Rev. Burke questions the date on the 'Laudabiliter', in addition to the terms contained in it and how it was obtained, questioning also the date in which it was first produced by Henry and why.

In addition to Laudabiliter and the letters Alexander a number of authors have examined the character of Giraldus Cambrenis and the account of John of Salisbury, in addition to challenging each other. McCormick's The Pope and Ireland is very much a challenge to James G. Maguire's Ireland and the Pope: A Brief History of Papal Intrigue Against Irish Liberty from Adrian IV. to Leo XIII. While Cambrensis Eversus by John Lynch is in response to the works of Giraldus Cambrensis. Goddard Henry Orpen responded to both Oliver Joseph Thatcher and J. H. Round in support of Giraldus Cambrensis while citing Miss Norgate in the English Historical Review, vol. viii.

Each of these points have been challenged by a number of authors including, Laurence Ginnell, Stephen J. McCormick, Cardinal Gasquet, in addition to Oliver Joseph Thatcher. Goddard Henry Orpen notes that as early as 1615 Laudabiliter was denounced as a forgery by Stephen White, to be followed by John Lynch (Cambrensis Eversus) in 1662 and later still by Abbé Mac Geoghegan. There are also a number of other writers, he notes which include Catholic historians such as Dr. Lingard and Dr. Lanigan, who have defended the authenticity of the Laudabiliter, and that English writers generally have accepted it as genuine.

It was only in the year 1872 that the first indictment of the evidence upon which the Bull had been accepted as genuine, was drawn up by the ultramontane Irish Australian prelate Dr. Moran, and published in the pages of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record. To the arguments against the grant in that article, the editor of the Analecta Juris Pontificii added fresh and according to Cardinal Gasquet "almost conclusive evidence of the forgery."