The story of the “other St. Patrick’s Cathedral”

For most American Catholics, the name “St. Patrick’s Cathedral” conjures up an image of the neo-Gothic church with its twin spires on New York City’s Fifth Avenue—a cathedral now dwarfed by the skyscrapers of glass all around it. Many probably also think of the iconic celebration on St. Patrick’s Day when the grand parade filled with green-clad marchers and bagpipers makes its way past this cathedral in what is the world’s largest celebration of Ireland’s patron saint.

The first St. Patrick’s Cathedral

However, few will think of the “other St. Patrick’s Cathedral”—the one actually established by the eponymous saint himself, at his see in Armagh. This St. Patrick’s Day is as good a time as any to discover and reflect on the history of the mother church of Ireland that reveals so much about the once persevering spirit of the nation’s Catholic people.

St. Patrick is remembered as “Equal to the Apostles” and the “Enlightener of Ireland.” His mission to the island nation lasted from 432 to 461. He described his time there as “my laborious episcopate.” He worked for the salvation of souls like a man possessed, founding 700 churches and ordaining 370 bishops and 5,000 priests. To this day, Ireland has 26 dioceses, which is seemingly too many for its small population. This anomaly has its origins in Patrick’s time. To best inculcate the gospel among the Irish people, it was determined that each tribe should have its own bishop.¹

Within ten years of his arrival in Ireland, Patrick was able to establish the Church’s hierarchy, ensuring the unity of the many newly established churches and monastic foundations led by native Irish clergy. Such progress was made in Patrick’s own lifetime that Rome raised Ireland to the status of an ecclesiastical province. He was made its metropolitan with his seat at “Ard Macha, the Height of Macha” from which Armagh gets its name. Before Patrick’s death at Saul Monastery, where he retired to in old age, he was able to see a native Irish bishop, St. Benignus, who he baptized and trained since childhood, become his successor as the metropolitan of Armagh.²

The first cathedral church of stone at Armagh was built by Patrick in 445 on “Druim Saileach, Sally Hill.” A monastic community developed around the cathedral from which Patrick’s successors served as abbot as well as archbishop.

The historic cathedral church at Armagh has been destroyed and rebuilt 17 times over the course of its long history.

The Viking invasions of Ireland began in 795. They targeted many monasteries, including Armagh, which was plundered on ten occasions between 831 and 1013. They even occupied the city for a time and drove off its primate-archbishop in 845.

From King Brian Boru to Cromwell

Brian Boru (c. 941-1014) is one of the greatest figures of Irish history and legend. He rose to the high kingship of Ireland and is credited with being the first to unite all the squabbling kingdoms of the land to take on the Viking invaders. In 1004 he travelled to the cathedral at Armagh to make an offering of gold at its altar, confirming its status as the ecclesiastical capital of the nation. He would later be victorious over the Vikings at the famous Battle of Clontarf in 1014. Though he won the battle, he was killed while found praying in his tent by a Viking. His body was carried to the cathedral at Armagh where it lay in state before burial there.

After the Vikings came the Norman invasion in the late twelfth century. Many are surprised to know that the English presence in Ireland came at the behest of the pope.

Amid the ravages of the Viking invasions, abuses crept into the Irish Church. For instance, the bishopric of Armagh became a family inheritance, passed on from the bishop to his son. Pope Adrian IV, the only Englishman to ever sit on the Chair of Peter, issued the bull Laudabiliter in 1155 to rein in the semi-autonomous Irish Church. The Gregorian Reforms begun by his predecessors were being carried out elsewhere in Europe, and it was time for Ireland to conform as well.

The more immediate cause for the Norman invasion, however, was the invitation of the deposed king of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, to Norman mercenaries to help him reclaim his crown. He promised in exchange loyalty to King Henry II of England and to give land to the Norman invaders. The Earl of Pembroke, Richard “Strongbow” de Clare, answered the call and invaded Ireland. When King Henry II arrived not long after in 1169, he did so having been declared “Lord of Ireland” by the pope citing the bull Laudabiliter.

This clear watershed in Irish history was the start of 800 years of English colonialism. Significant religious implications would come later with the Protestant Reformation and King Henry VIII’s creation of his own national churches in England and Ireland.

In 1534, the English parliament passed the Acts of Supremacy declaring Henry as the head of the Church of England. Like all kings before him since the Norman invasion of Ireland, he held the title “Lord of Ireland” bestowed by the pope, which meant he held this lordship in fealty from the bishop of Rome. With his excommunication there was worry this title would be withdrawn. In 1541, he pressured the Irish parliament to change the status of the country from a Lordship to that of a Kingdom. Henry was then declared to be the King of Ireland and the head of the newly created Church of Ireland analogous to his title in the Church of England.

Despite all of the political and economic advantages of membership in the state church, the substantial majority of Ireland’s population remained Catholic. Irish Catholics loyal to the Holy See in Rome were deemed traitors, and the degree of persecutions against them ebbed and flowed over the centuries. All churches were ceded to the new Church of Ireland including the cathedral church at Armagh.

The worst of the persecutions came under Oliver Cromwell, who sought to crush rebellious Irish confederates taking up arms seeking an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, the restoration of land confiscated by English settlers in the different plantation pushes, and greater Irish self-governance. Leading the armies of the Parliament of England, Cromwell invaded Ireland in 1649. He occupied the whole country within three years and began enacting harsh penal laws against the Irish Catholics. Thousands were put to death.

The practice of the Catholic Faith was outlawed. Upon taking control, Cromwell gave priests twenty days to get out of Ireland. Many dared to stay, putting their lives in peril so they could administer the sacraments to the faithful. These “underground” priests would visit the sick by night and celebrate Mass just before dawn in hiding places such as upon “Mass rocks” out in remote fields and forests with scouts on lookout for soldiers. If the priest was ever caught—and hundreds were—he was tortured and executed.

Cathedral completed and dedicated

After continual Irish resistance with greater advocacy for home-rule and further concessions, the penal laws began to be dismantled through the various succession movements for Catholic emancipation. From 1805 onward, this effort was led by the lawyer, Daniel O’Connell, a hero of Irish history hailed as “the Liberator” in his time. O’Connell was a champion of Ireland’s Catholic majority who successfully organized even the poorest tenant farmers into a mass movement of political action. His efforts culminated in the last Catholic Relief Act issued in 1829.

The most substantial restrictions against Catholics were finally removed from law. Catholics were able to sit in parliament, reestablish the hierarchy, and build more churches. Restrictions prohibiting Catholic bishops from using the same diocesan names as those of the Church of Ireland, were largely ignored on the principle that the Catholic dioceses never lapsed in spirit.

Since the time of King Henry VIII, no Catholic archbishop had resided in Ireland’s primatial see of Armagh. With their new freedom, Catholics were eager to see this rectified.

In 1835, Archbishop William Crolly was appointed the Catholic archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland. He was granted permission by the authorities to reside in Armagh and immediately began preparations for the building of a new cathedral.

The medieval cathedral in the possession of the Church of Ireland stands on the original site of Patrick’s first stone church at Sally Hill. The site where Archbishop Crolly negotiated the building of the Catholic cathedral, however, does still have an association with the saint.

As recorded in the ninth-century Book of Armagh, a deer with her fawn appeared at the cathedral at Sally Hill. Some of the monks wanted to capture and kill them, but Patrick had compassion for the innocent creatures and carried the animals on his shoulders to the safety of another location known as “Tealach na Licci, Sandy Hill,” the site of the present Catholic cathedral. The incident is depicted in the current cathedral’s east window as it has been interpreted as a prophecy for the building of another sanctuary in the saint’s honor at the site 1,400 years later.

Construction began on St. Patrick’s Day 1840, but would come to a halt five years later due to the Great Famine that devastated the country. Cathedral funds were diverted to famine relief efforts and even the primate himself, Archbishop Crolly, tragically succumbed to the disease of cholera caused by the famine in 1849. He was laid to rest in the unfinished cathedral he began to build.

Work resumed in 1854 and donations poured in from the Irish diaspora across the world who believed in the importance of having a Catholic cathedral once again in Patrick’s own city.

With its over 200-foot tall twin spires, St. Patrick’s Cathedral at Armagh was finally completed and dedicated under Archbishop Daniel McGettigan on August 24, 1873.

It is a monument in stone to Patrick’s greatest legacy, the once persevering faith of the Irish people.

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