Originally published in 1966, The Church in Early Irish Society traces the history of the church right up until the twelfth century. It gives an account of the problems which arose when the organization of the Christian church, imported from the urban bureaucracy of the Roman Empire, had to be adapted to the society of early Ireland. The book also looks at the legal texts of the sixth seventh and eighth centuries and attempts through them, to trace the gradual process of modification which culminated in the eighth century, when the church now fully adjusted to Irish society, reached a so-far unprecedented height of power and influence. The book also examines the issues faced in the ninth century by the Viking raids and settlements.
Introduction
Part I: Birth
1 The Heathen Celts
2. East Mediterranean Christianity
3. The Western Provinces
4. The First Missionaries
Part II: Growth
5. The Problems of the Sixth-Century Church
6. The Foundation of Monastic Paruchiae
7. The When and Why of Early Monastic Paruchiae
8. Bishops and Monastic Confederations in the Seventh Century
9. Ireland and the Outside World
10. Seventh-Century Controversies
11. Armagh’s Claims to Archiepiscopal Authority
Part III: Maturity
12. Irish Canonists and the Secular Law
13. Monastic Establishment
14. The Uses of Power
15. The ‘Abuses’ of Power
16. Ascetic Revival
17. The Influence of the Ascetic Revival
Part IV: Adversity and Recovery
18. The Church and the Viking Terror
19. The Ecclesiastical Order and the Early Viking Settlement
20. The World in the Church
21. Spiritual, Intellectual, and Artistic Life
22. Restoration
Part V: Transmutation
23. Influences from Abroad
24. Reformation and Revolution
Appendix
Liber Angeli
Abbreviations
Select Bibliography
Index
Map of Ireland
Biography
Kathleen Hughes
