Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [196]
It was one of the great wonders of the rule of Lawrence O’Toole that, like many great leaders, he had the genius—there was no other word for it—to live in two contradictory worlds at once. Gilpatrick had been given a number of tasks by the archbishop since his return and had had the opportunity to study him. He was saintly—there was not a doubt of that—and Gilpatrick revered him. O’Toole wanted to purify the Irish Church. But he was also an Irish prince, every inch of him, a poetic soul, full of a mystical spirit. “And it’s the spirit that matters, Gilpatrick,” the great man had often said to him. “Some of our greatest churchmen, like Saint Colum Cille, were royal princes. And if a people revered God through the leadership of their chief, there surely can be no harm in that.”
“That is true, Father,” Gilpatrick now replied, “and until the archbishop does object, I shan’t say a word about it.”
His father looked at him. On the face of it, Gilpatrick was being conciliatory. But did he not realise, his father wondered, how patronising that answer was? He felt a flush of anger. His son was patronising him, telling him he would tolerate his position in life until such time as the archbishop called it in question. It was an insult to him, to the family, to Ireland itself. He felt like hitting out.
“I’m beginning to see what it is you want for the Church, Gilpatrick,” his father said with a dangerous gentleness.
“What is that, Father?”
The older man looked at him coldly. “Another English Pope.”
Gilpatrick winced. It was a low blow, but telling. The previous decade, for the first and only time in its long history, the Catholic Church had had an English Pope. Adrian IV had been unremarkable, but for the Irish at least he had done one thing that made him remembered.
He had recommended a Crusade against Ireland.
It had been at a time, just after his accession, when King Henry of England had briefly considered an invasion of the western island. Whether to please the English king, or whether he had been misled about the state of the Irish Church by Henry’s ambassadors, Pope Adrian had written a letter telling the English king that he would perform a useful service in taking over the island “to increase the Christian religion.”
“What could you expect from an English Pope?” men like Gilpatrick’s father had asked. But though Pope Adrian had now departed this life, the memory of his letter still rankled. “We, the heirs of Saint Patrick, we who kept alive the Christian faith and the writings of ancient Rome when most of the world had sunk under the barbarians, we who gave the Saxons their education, are to be taught a lesson in Christianity by the English?” So Gilpatrick’s father would storm if ever the subject came up.
Pope Adrian’s letter, of course, had been an outrage; Gilpatrick wouldn’t deny it. But that wasn’t really the point. The real issue was larger.
“You speak as if there were such a thing as a separate Irish Church, Father. But there is only one Church and it is universal: that is its great strength. Its authority comes from the one Heavenly King. You speak of the past, when barbarians were fighting over the ruins of the Roman Empire. It was only the Church which was able to bring peace and order because it had a single, spiritual authority beyond the reach of earthly kings. When the Pope calls upon the knights of Christ to go on Crusade, he calls upon them from every land. Disputing kings set aside their quarrels to become warriors and pilgrims together. The Pope, the heir of Saint Peter himself, rules all Christendom under Heaven. There must be only one true Church. It cannot be otherwise.”
How could he convey the vision which inspired him and so many others of his kind—of a world where a man might walk from Ireland to Jerusalem, using a common Latin language, and finding everywhere the same ordered Christian empire, the same monastic orders, the same liturgy. Christendom was a vast spiritual machine, an engine of prayer, a universal brotherhood.
“I will tell you what I think,” said his father