Laudabiliter

Laudabiliter was a papal bull issued in 1155 by the English Pope Adrian IV purporting to give the Angevin King Henry II of England lordship over Ireland.

Terms

The bull purported to grant Henry, who requested it from English Pope Adrian, the right to invade Ireland in order to "reform" Church practices in Ireland, which up until that point had not been fully aligned with Rome in some matters, for example with regard to liturgy and clergy.

The incipit of the bull, Laudabiliter, means literally "laudably', "in a praiseworthy manner"; it is the opening word of the Latin text, referring to Henry's "laudable" intention "to extend the borders of the Church, to teach the truths of the Christian faith to a rude and unlettered people, and to root out the weeds of vice from the field of the Lord; ..."

The actual wording which was asserted as giving authority to Henry to take possession of Ireland is as follows:

You have signified to us, our well-beloved son in Christ, that you propose to enter the island of Ireland in order to subdue the people and make them obedient to laws, and to root out from among them the weeds of sin; and that you are willing to yield and pay yearly from every house the pension of one penny to St Peter, and to keep and preserve the rights of the churches in that land whole and inviolate.

We, therefore, regarding your pious and laudable design with due favour, and graciously assenting to your petition, do hereby declare our will and pleasure, that, for the purpose of enlarging the borders of the Church, setting bounds to the progress of wickedness, reforming evil manners, planting virtue, and increasing the Christian religion, you do enter and take possession of that island, and execute therein whatsoever shall be for God's honour and the welfare of the same.

And, further, we do also strictly charge and require that the people of that land shall accept you with all honour, and dutifully obey you, as their liege lord, saving only the rights of the churches, which we will have inviolably preserved; ...

Norman invasion 1167-72

A Norman invasion of Ireland took place in 1167, with the main body of nobles arriving in 1169. The incursion was in theory in aid of, and at the personal request of, an Irish provincial king, Diarmait Mac Murchada, King of Leinster, and led by Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (Strongbow), a Cambro-Norman knight assisted by Welsh and Flemish forces. The invaders took control of large areas, though by no means all of, the country.

Henry II followed in 1171, fearing that the Cambro-Norman warlords would seize control in his absence and, using the papal bull, claimed sovereignty over the whole island. He arrived with a large army, took Dublin by storm, and then gave hospitality to, and accepted fealty from, the Gaelic kings in the feudal manner. The Treaty of Windsor followed in 1175, with the Irish High King, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, keeping lands outside of Leinster, which had passed through Strongbow to Henry on the unexpected death of both Diarmait and Strongbow, Waterford, the beachhead for the invasion, and Meath, the mediaeval seat of Ireland, and lordship over all Gaelic Irish. Leinster and Meath then comprised two of Ireland's five provinces.

Ruaidrí lost authority in his three provinces by 1186, and the old title of High King of Ireland became ineffective. Claiming to want to avoid anarchy, Henry purported to award all of Ireland to his younger son John with the title Dominus Hiberniae (Lord of Ireland) in 1185. When John unexpectedly succeeded his brother as King of England, the Lordship of Ireland fell directly under the English Crown, the titles of Lord of Ireland and King of England falling into personal union.

Henry's invasion was met with jubilation in Rome, and Pope Alexander III declared that when he heard that Henry, "instigated by divine inspiration," had successfully brought the Irish people within the control of the Roman Church, he had "returned thanks to [God] who had conferred so great a victory." Alexander's legate, Vivianus, at the synod of Dublin in 1172 "made a public declaration of the right of the king of England to Ireland" and threatened excommunication against all "who presumed to forfeit their allegiance."

Papal letter of 1311 and the Bruce kingship 1315-1318

However within a century-and-a-half, Norman misrule in Ireland became so apparent that Laudabiliter was to be invoked again, this time in aid of the rights of the Gaelic Irish clans. In 1315-18, in alliance with the Scottish (and the Welsh), who were also fighting the Normans, they proclaimed Edward Bruce as King of Ireland. Pope John XXII writing to Edward II of England in 1311 had reminded him of the responsibility that Laudabiliter put upon England to execute government in Ireland for the welfare of the Irish. He warned Edward II that:

... the kings of England ... have in direct violation of [Laudabiliter], for a long period past kept down that people [of Ireland] in a state of intolerable bondage, accompanied with unheard-of hardships and grievances. Nor was there found during all that time, any person to redress the grievances they endured or be moved with a pitiful compassion for their distress; although recourse was had to you ... and the loud cry of the oppressed fell, at times at least, upon your own ear. In consequence whereof, unable to support such a state of things any longer, they have been compelled to withdraw themselves from your jurisdiction and to invite another to come and be ruler over them ...

The Crown of Ireland Act 1542

The Bruce invasion failed, and Ireland remained in English control, in part using the authority claimed to derive from Laudabiliter, until 1542, when Henry VIII's split from the Catholic Church (1529–1535) had, incidentally, put England's authority in Ireland, insofar as it was based on Laudabiliter, in legal jeopardy. To rectify this King Henry's English Parliament, using authority delegated to it in 1494 by the Irish Parliament (Poyning's Law), passed the Crown of Ireland Act, which declared that the proper title of Lord of Ireland should really be that of King of Ireland, owing to the authority it commanded in Ireland being as great as that of a king:

Forasmuch as the ... Kings of England, have bin Lords of this land of Ireland, having all manner kingly jurisdiction, power, pre-eminences, and authoritie royall, belonging or appertayning to the royall estate and majestie of a King, by the name of Lords of Ireland, where the King's majestie and his most noble progenitors justly and rightfully were, and of right ought to be, Kings of Ireland according to their said true and just title, stile, and name therein, ...

Thus the Henrician Parliament had established the principle that the Crown of Ireland was in personal union with the Crown of England. Though this declaration was not recognised by the Papacy nor by the Catholic countries of Europe, it transpired that Henry's Catholic daughter, Mary, would become Queen of England in 1553, thus becoming Queen of Ireland in both English and Irish law. In response to this development, at Mary's request, Pope Paul IV issued a papal bull in 1555 declaring Mary and her consort, Philip, Prince of the Asturias (who was shortly to become King Philip II of Spain), to be the joint monarchs of Ireland.

Philip made no claim to the Crown of Ireland on Mary's death in November 1558. Between 1559 and 1561 the New Parliament of the new Protestant Queen of England, Elizabeth I, repealed all English and Irish legislation that had restored the ecclesiastical union with Rome and re-established the Churches of England and of Ireland with Queen Elizabeth as their "Supreme Governor". The English Parliament ignored then and has ever since continued to ignore as irrelevant all Papal acts, bulls or other decrees since the English Reformation had begun.

In 1570 relations between England, Ireland and the Catholic Church were in turmoil following the publication on 25 February of Pope Pius V’s Bull ‘Regnans in Excelsis’. This Bull had declared Queen Elizabeth to be illegitimate and a usurper and thus incapable of having legitimately inherited her English crown. It also proclaimed her to be a heretic, declared her deposed and strictly forbade all Catholics anywhere to obey her or her laws or to acknowledge, respect or obey any persons in authority appointed by her. It made no mention at all of her “pretending” to the Throne of Ireland, which significant omission appeared to infer that the Bull of 1555 had, in accordance with Laudabiliter, granted the Crown of Ireland only to Queen Mary and her legitimate heirs and it thus appeared to endorse the English view that Philip of Spain’s mention in the Bull of 1555 had been merely as a mention of his then status as Queen Mary’s Consort and not as an intentional conferral of the status of King of Ireland in his own right.

The Irish Archbishop of Cashel acted as envoy for some Irish nobles who proposed to rectify this omission by offering the Kingship of Ireland to King Philip directly. The project was communicated to Pope Pius V through Cardinal Francesco Alciati (who enjoyed the curious status of "Protector of Spain and Ireland before the Holy See"), who wrote to the Archbishop of Cashel (9 June, 1570):

“His Holiness was astonished that anything of the kind should be attempted without his authority since it was easy to remember that the Kingdom of Ireland belonged to the dominion of the Church, was held as a fief under it, and could not therefore, unless by the Pope, be subjected to any new ruler. And the Pope, that the right of the Church may be preserved as it should be, says he will not give the letters you ask for the King of Spain. But if the King of Spain himself were to ask for the fief of that Kingdom in my opinion the Pope would not refuse.” — Spicil. Ossor., ed. Card. Moran, I, 69

No further official reference to the Bull of 1555 nor to Laudabiliter was ever made again — neither by the Papacy nor by the Governments of England, Ireland nor Spain. It must be presumed that the low-level Papal diplomatic recognition of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1914 and the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Irish Free State in 1922 both entailed the implicit final consignment of Laudabiliter to the archives.

Authenticity debate

Evidence for the bull came from John of Salisbury, who was sent to Rome as an envoy to request it and by Geraldus Cambrensis, a Cambro-Norman chronicler, and the authenticity of its text became the subject of academic dispute in the nineteenth century. As with many Church documents, the original document is no longer in existence. When Cardinal Baronius published it as ex codice Vaticano the codex in question was a transcription of the chronicle of Matthew Paris, an English chronicler, and it is noted that "in form and wording it differs from other papal bulls of the time." But there is no record that the bull's authenticity was questioned at the time.

Adrian's successor, Pope Alexander III, in any case reconfirmed the purported "grant" of Ireland to Henry in 1172, and the Irish bishops at the Synod of Cashel, in the same year, accepted that bull, though at no time in that period was the "grant" accepted by the Irish High King or the collective provincial kings and lords. However, the Irish kings did submit to Henry in Dublin in November 1171, and later agreed to the Treaty of Windsor. The problem was that the Norman and Irish definitions of what a submission amounted to were very different.

In 1317, during the Bruce invasion, some of the remaining Gaelic kings, following decades of English rule, tried to have the bull recast or replaced, as a basis for a new kingship for Ireland, with Edward Bruce as their preferred candidate. They issued a remonstrance to Pope John XXII requesting that Laudabiliter should be revoked, but this was refused. This action may suggest that the kings saw Laudabiliter as the legal basis for their continuing problems at that time..

That an actual bull was sent according to Ernest F. Henderson is doubted by many. The authenticity of that Bull has been questioned without success according to P. S. O'Hegarty and suggests that the question now is purely an academic one.

It was, according to the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke in the year 1174 that King Henry produced a letter which he said he got from Pope Adrian IV. permitting him to go to Ireland. The Rev. Burke asks, if he had the letter, when he came to Ireland, why did he not produce it, as this was his only warrant for coming to Ireland? When news of Pope Adrian's election had arrived in England, he says, John of Salisbury was sent by Henry to congratulate him, and get this letter in a "hugger-mugger way," from the Pope. The date he writes that was on the letter was 1154, therefore it was consequently twenty years old. During this twenty year period nobody ever heard of this letter except Henry, it was said that Henry kept this letter a secret, because his mother, the Empress Matilda, did not want Henry to act on it.

The letter according to Rev. Burke has been examined by a better authority than his own he says and by one "who has brought to bear upon it all the acumen of his great knowledge." The date according to Reimer, he says "the most acceptable authority amongst English historians," according to Rev. Burke authenticated this the date of 1154. However Pope Adrian was elected on the 3d of December, 1154. Rev Burke suggests that it must having taken at least a month in those days before news of the election would have arrived in England, and at least another before John of Salisbury arrived in Rome making his arrival there around March 1155. The date being found inconvenient Reimer under who’s authority is uncertain, changed the date to 1155.

According to Herbert Paul, author of The Life of Froude, the Rev Burke "boldly denied that it [the letter] had ever existed at all" however in English Misrule in Ireland: A Course of Lectures in Reply to J. A Froude, the Rev Burke outlines the anomalies of the letter and states that it had been examined by Reimer an acceptable authority amongst English historians. The Rev Burke dose say though that "there is a lie on the face of it."

Paul says that Froude maintained that the existence of the letter and its nature were proved by later Bulls of succeeding Popes in a challenge to the Rev Burke, but as the Rev Burke states, there were many learned men who support the genuineness of both Adrian's and Alexander's rescripts but there was also an equally large number who deny it . The Rev Burke said that like the latter he preferred to believe with them that it was a forgery. He based this view he said on the authority of Dr. Lynch, author of "Cambrensis Eversus," in addition to both the Abbé McGeoghegan, who he says was "one of the greatest Irish scholars, and one of the best archaeologists" and Dr. Moran, the learned bishop of Ossory "that Alexander's letter was a forgery, as well as that of Adrian IV."

This was in reply to Mr. Froude suggestion that Alexander III., Adrian's successor, had mentioned that rescript or document in a letter. Froude also said there was a copy of this letter in the archives at Rome and how would the Rev Burke "get over that"? The Rev Burke in responce pointed out that the copy had no date at all on it and that Baronius, the historian, along with the learned Dr. Mansuerius declare that a rescript or document "that has no date, the day it was executed, the seal and the year, is invalid" and was therefore "just so much paper". The result of this being "that even if Adrian gave it, it was worth nothing." The Rev Burke continued that the "learned authorities tell us that the existence of a document in the archives does not prove the authenticity of that document" and that it "may be kept there as a mere record."

The Rev Burke pointed out that Alexander's letter carried the date 1172 and asked was is it likely that a Pope would have given a letter to Henry, who he knew well, asking Henry to take care of the Church and put everything in order? The Rev Burke notes that Adrian did not know Henry, but Alexander knew him well. Henry, he say in 1159, supported the anti-Pope, Octavianus, against Alexander and again in 1166, supported the anti-Pope, Guido, against him. Citing Mathew of Westminster, he says that "Henry obliged every man in England, from the boy of twelve years up to the old man, to renounce their allegiance to the true Pope, and go over to an anti-Pope" and asks was it likely then, that the Pope would give him a letter to settle ecclesiastical matters in Ireland? Citing then Alexander himself who wrote to Henry, saying to him, instead of referring to a document giving him permission to settle Church matters in Ireland ;

Instead of remedying the disorders caused by your predecessors, you have oppressed the Church, and you have endeavored to destroy the canons of apostolic men.

The Rev Burke then asks "is this the man that Alexander would send to Ireland to settle affairs, and make the Irish good children of the Pope?" Responding again to Mr. Froude, who then said that "the Irish never loved the Pope till the Normans taught them" Rev Burke notes that until "the accursed Normans came to Ireland," the Papal Legate could always come and go as he pleased and that no Irish king obstructed him and that no Irishman's hand was ever raised against a Bishop, "much less against the Papal Legate." However the very first Legate that came to Ireland, after the Norman Invasion, the Rev Burke writes that in passing through England, Henry "took him by the throat, and imposed upon him an oath that, when he went to Ireland, he would not do anything that would be against the interest of the King". It was unheard of that a Bishop, Archbishop, or Cardinal should be persecuted, the Rev Burke says until the Anglo-Normans brought with them "their accursed feudal system, and concentration of power in the hands of the king..."

References

• Selected Documents in Irish History, edited by Josef Lewis Altholz, M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 2000
• Lyttleton, Life of Henry II., vol. v p. 371: text of Laudabiliter asa reprinted in Ernest F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London : George Bell and Sons) 1896 with Henderson's note: "That a papal bull was dispatched to England about this time and concerning this matter is certain. That this was the actual bull sent is doubted by many".
• "Pope Adrians's bull Laudabiliter and note upon it" from Eleanor Hull, 1931, A History of Ireland, Volume One, Appendix I