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By Root 2556 0

affectionately. In a way, it seemed to him, the older man represented all that was best—and worst—in the Celtic Irish Church. Half hereditary chief, half druid, he was an exemplary parish priest. He was married with children, but still a priest. These traditional arrangements extended to his ecclesiastical income as well. The lands with which his family had anciently endowed the monastery—and Conn had added those valuable lands at Rathmines as well—had passed into the parish, and so they technically belonged to the Archbishop of Dublin now. But as the parish priest, his father received all the revenues from these lands himself, as well as those from the family’s large estates down the coast. In due course Gilpatrick himself might succeed him as priest, and in all likelihood one of his brother’s children, assuming this uncanonical marriage produced sons, might follow on after. It was so in churches and monasteries all over Ireland.

And, of course, it was a scandal. Or so, at least, thought the Pope in Rome.

For during the last century or so, a great wind of change had been sweeping across western Christendom. The old church, it was felt, had become too rich, too worldly, lacking in spiritual fire and passionate commitment. New monastic orders dedicated to simplicity, like the Cistercians, were springing up. The Crusades had been launched to regain the Holy Land from the Saracens. Popes sought to purify the Church and to extend its authority, even issuing peremptory commands to kings.

“You have to admit, Father,” Gilpatrick gently reminded him, “that the church in Ireland lags behind our neighbours.”

“I wish,” his father replied gloomily, “that I’d never let you go to England.”

For one country in particular that had felt the force of this vigorous new wind had been the kingdom across the water. A century ago, the old Saxon Church had been notoriously lax. When William of Normandy began his conquest, he had easily obtained a papal blessing by promising to clean it up. Since then, the Norman English Church had been a model, with archbishops like the reforming Lanfranc and the saintly Anselm. Not that Gilpatrick was the only Irishman to catch the reforming contagion there. Quite a number of Irish churchmen had spent time in the great English monasteries like Canterbury and Worcester. The ecclesiastical contacts were many. For a while, indeed, the bishops of Dublin had even gone to England to be consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Though they only did that,” Gilpatrick’s father had remarked with some truth, “to show that Dublin was different from the rest of Ireland.” As a result, many of the leading churchmen in Ireland now had a sense that they were out of step with the rest of Christendom and that they ought to do something about it.

“In any case,” the older man said irritably, “the Irish Church has already been reformed.”

Up to a point, it had—the administration of the Irish Church was certainly being brought up to date. The ancient tribal and monastic dioceses had been redrawn and brought under four archbishoprics: the ancient seat of Saint Patrick at Armagh, Tuam in the west, Cashel down in Munster, and lastly Dublin. Archbishop O’Toole of Dublin had set up new monastic houses, including the one at Christ Church, which followed a strict Augustinian rule that couldn’t have been bettered anywhere in Europe. In Dublin, at least, many of the parishes now paid taxes, known as tithes, to the Church.

“We’ve made a start,” Gilpatrick said. “But much still needs to be done.”

“You would consider my own position needed reforming then, I dare say.”

It was a tribute to Gilpatrick’s filial respect that he had always managed to avoid discussing this issue with his father. There had been no need to discuss something that wasn’t going to change anyway. It was the realisation that the discussion of his brother’s marriage might lead to such larger issues that had made him dread this meeting with his father in the first place.

“It would be hard to defend outside Ireland,” Gilpatrick said gently.

“Yet the archbishop has