READINGS IN IRISH HISTORY

New Zealand Tablet, 16 August 1917, Page 9

READINGS IN IRISH HISTORY

By "Suanacuie."

POPE ADRIAN'S ALLEGED GRANT OF IRELAND TO HENRY 11. Much controversy has raged round the alleged Bull of Adrian IV. Some have stoutly defended its genuineness; others have unhesitatingly set it down as a forgery. This document has been used by turns as a whetstone on which to sharpen political axes, and as a stalking-horse behind which writers have screened themselves to shoot poisoned arrows of prejudice against the Sovereign Pontiffs. Religious bigots hark back to it as a stock-in-trade example of papal aggression. Englishmen from the loth to the loth century looked upon it as the sacred sanction of their interference in the government of Ireland, and as the chief ground of Irish allegiance to the English monarch. So much is clear from an Act of the Dish Parliament in 1467. To-day it has no more bearing on the political relations between Great Britain and Ireland than the spots in the sun have on the price of eggs in London. It is a purely academic matter. Thus the genuineness or spuriousness of Adrian's Bull must be viewed altogether in the light of history : religious prejudice or political bias should not enter into the discussion. Since men of unquestionable sincerity and historical scholarship range themselves on different sides in the controversy that has arisen round the Bull, we cannot do better than summarise the arguments for and against its authenticity. Those who hold that the Bull is genuine, do so for the following reasons: 1. John of Salisbury, secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury, states in his Metafof/iciis that he was sent in 1155 by Henry 11. as an envoy to Adrian IV., and asked and obtained for that monarch the grant of Ireland, together with an emerald ring as token of investiture. 2. The Bull is to be found in the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis, Roger of Wendover, and Matthew Paris, both monks of St. Albans. 3. There exist three letters of Alexander 111. confirming the grant made by Adrian, his predecessor. 4. We have the recorded public reading of the Bulls of Adrian and Alexander at a synod of the bishops of Ireland held at Waterford in 1175. 5. In 1318, Domhnall O'Neill and other kings and chieftains, and the whole laity of Ireland, forwarded to Pope John XXII. a letter of appeal and protest. They state in the letter thai Pope Adrian induced by false representations granted Ireland to Henry 11., and enclose a copy of a Bull which the context shows was Adrian's. 6. Cardinal Baronius has embodied the Bull in his annals. 7. The Bull is, moreover, found in the Bullarium Romanum printed at Rome in 1739. This, briefly set forth, is the case in favor of the Bull. The following are the answers to the above arguments by those who reject this document as a forgery: 1. Cardinal Moran, W. B. Morris, Bellesheim, hold that the words imputed to John of Salisbury, and found in the last chapter of his book, are not. part of the original, and were inserted by a later hand : because (a) They interfere with the continuity of the passage in which they occur: (b) they are out of place in a work dealing with questions of logic : (c) and contain expressions that betray the hand of the forger. In

later life, when John of Salisbury fell into disfavor, with . Henry and complained of the many good services heJ had rendered the king, he did not mention having obtained the grant of Ireland though one would imagine it would have been much to his purpose to have done so. Moreover, if, as John of Salisbury is alleged to say, Henry received the grant of Ireland in 1155, why did the king keep it a secret for 20 years— from 1155 to 1175? It cannot be pleaded that opportune occasions for mentioning and producing the Bull did not arise before 1175. Why did he not produce it, if he had it, when he permitted his vassals to join Dermot MacMorrogh in the invasion of Ireland in 1169? Why was it not produced at the synod of the Irisn bishops at Cashel, presided over by the papal legate in 1172? A document so vital to the interests of the Irish Church should have been mentioned, if it existed. Why was no mention made of the Bull when Henry solicited and received in person the homage of the Irish bishops and chiefs at Dublin It is no use to say that the. state policy of Henry 11. enjoined silence, for his agent, John of Salisbury, proclaimed the existence of the Bull to the world in 1159. How, then, explain this remarkable silence of -Henry regarding the existence of the Bull ? Hence, from external as well as internal evidence, learned historians conclude that this passage attributed to John of Salisbury is an interpolation or insertion by some later hand, probably not made till many years after the first Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Reply to the second argument that Giraldus, a contemporary witness, gives in full the Bull of Adrian IV., and nowhere betrays the slightest doubt as to its genuineness :—lt was not till many years after the death of Adrian that Giraldus entered on the stage of Irish history. He visited Ireland on two occasions, first in 1185 as Prince John's secretary. He was, therefore, the special court correspondent with the invading army. lie wrote two books on Ireland, The Topograph;/ and The Conquest of Ireland. The Conquest of Ireland may justly be said to have been written to order. Hence, as a matter of course, Giraldus adopted as genuine any document set- forth as such by his royal master ; and any statements to strengthen the claims or promote the interests of the Welsh adventurers were not likely to be too nicely weighed in the scales of criticism by such an historian. In their prefaces to the collected works of Giraldus in the Rolls Series, Brewer and Dimock both recognise this special feature of his historical works. The official catalogue describing The < '<>//(/ lust of Ire/and expressly . says : "It must be regarded rather as a great epic than as a sober,relation of facts occurring in his own days. No one can peruse it without coming to the conclusion that it is rather a poetical fiction than a prosaic, truthful history.'' In the preface to the fifth volume of the historical treatise of Giraldus, the learned editor, Dimock, thus concludes his criticism of The Conquest of Ireland : —"I think I have said enough to justify me in refusing to accept Giraldus's history of the Irish and of their English invaders, as sober, truthful history." Dimock next quotes with approbation Brewer's statement that The Conquest is in great measure rather a poetical fiction than a prosaic, truthful history." It is sufficient to say in regard to the other writers mentioned as witnesses in support of the Bull that they only incidentally make reference to Irish matters, and in these they naturally enough take Giraldus as their guide. Criticism of the third argument in favor of the Bull : It is quite true that we have some letters of Alexander 111. connected with the Irish invasion. Three of these written in 1172 are certainly authentic. They are found in Liber Searearii, and are printed in Migne. It must be borne in mind, however, that none of these three letters contains any direct confirmation of Adrian's supposed grant of Ireland. So far, therefore, are these letters from corroborating the genuineness, of Adrian's Bull that they furnish an unanswerable argument for wholly setting it aside as groundless and unauthentic. They are entirely, de-

voted to the- circumstances of the invasion of -Ireland .and its results, and yet the only title they recognise in Henry is that monarch's power and the submission of the Irish chiefs. They simply ignore any Bull of Adrian and any investiture from the Holy See. There is, we are told, another letter of Alexander 111. preserved by Giraldus, granted to Henry in 1172, confirming the gift and investiture made by Adrian IV. This it is triumphantly asserted, sets at rest for ever any doubt about the authenticity of Adrian's Bull This objection is met with the answer that the confirmatory letter of Alexander 111. is also a forgery, because the three genuine letters of Alexander are dated from Tarentum 1172, while the supposed confirmatory letter is dated from Rome 1172. Now, owing to the disturbed state of Rome, it was impossible for the Pope to reside there at that period, and as a matter of fact, he did not return to. the city till 1178. Moreover, Dimock asserts, what TJssher long ago remarked, that the confirmatory letter of Alexander once formed part of The Conquest, though later copyists and the first editors, including the learned Camden, recognising its spuriousness, excluded it from the text. The same letter is found in another work of Giraldus, De InstriicHone Principis, and here it is stated that, "some assert or imagine that the Bull was obtained from the Pope, but others deny that it was ever obtained." Thus the confirmatory letter, with its evidence in support of Adrian's Bull, goes by the board. (To bo continued.)