Bishops and Presbyters in Early Christian Ireland

Abstract

The description of the first order of saints in the Catalogus Sanctorum Hiberniae gives witness to very early church traditions. One infers that Christianity was already established in Ireland by 400 CE. Every church had a bishop. One of them became ‘first bishop’, or primate. This was initially the Patrick of the Confessio. The next primate was Palladius, also called ‘ Second Patrick’ and ‘Old Patrick.’ Presbyters lived with the bishop in the main church and travelled to the ‘kills’ for Sunday services. There was also a shadowy figure of power, sometimes called the princeps and sometimes the abbot. Conventual abbots, unlike the Roman type, were priests. By the second millennium, many features of the Irish church seemed abusive to outsiders but they witness to traditions inherited from earlier times.