Irish church records (Roman Catholic Church) are the records which have been produced by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland over the last six or seven centuries since such records first began to appear in large numbers. Ireland is an unusual case, for the Roman Catholic Church was not the official church here between the introduction of the English Reformation to the country in 1536 and the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, but it was the religion of the majority of Irish people. This created a peculiar situation where approximately 80% of the inhabitants of the island were often clandestinely having their children baptized, marrying their spouses or burying family members according to Roman Catholic rites, and yet the records that would normally be produced in association with these sacramental ceremonies could not be kept in the normal way. Nevertheless, many important Roman Catholic Church records have survived for Ireland between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries that can aid genealogical studies.[1]
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History of Roman Catholicism in Ireland
Ireland’s religious history has always been unusual. For starters, the Christianization of the country began in the fifth century through the proselytizing of the quasi-mythical St Patrick and progressed with immense speed, such that by the sixth century St Columba and others were acting as missionaries in other regions like Scotland and the Hebrides. This was quite unusual for the early history of Christianity, which generally speaking first gained traction in parts of the Roman Empire and only spread beyond what had been Rome’s borders in the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries. Thereafter the church in Ireland was unified for a millennium under the rule of the Roman Catholic Church and the Papacy.[2]
A split came in the sixteenth century. There was no indigenous Protestant movement in the 1520s and 1530s to speak of, but the English crown nevertheless began attempting to impose Protestantism as part of the introduction of the English Reformation and the establishment of the Anglican Church of Ireland from 1536 onwards. These efforts failed completely. For a wide range of reasons the Irish and the Anglo-Irish or Old English of Ireland all, for the very most part, refused to convert to Protestantism and became trenchant in their adherence to Roman Catholicism.[3] The cause was not aided by the rise within the Church of Ireland of figures like Adam Loftus, archbishop of Dublin between 1567 and 1605, who were wholly corrupt and worldly in their conduct.[4]
This failure of the Protestant Reformation in Ireland must be viewed in association with secular government policies. Successive administrations in Dublin that were trying to convince the Irish to convert to the Protestant faith, while at the same time confiscating land en-masse from those same Irish people and handing it over to English, Welsh and Scottish newcomers, were always fighting a losing battle. Over time adherence to Roman Catholicism and rejection of Protestantism and the Church of Ireland became a political act in Ireland.[5]
All of this meant that 80% or so of the population continued to adhere to Roman Catholicism through the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though regulated by the government throughout much of the early modern period, and outright prohibited at the height of the European Wars of Religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Roman Catholic Church continued to operate in the country as a kind of shadow church. For instance, in each diocese there was generally a state-approved Anglican, Protestant bishop or archbishop appointed by the decision-makers in London, while Rome selected its own rival Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops to unofficially oversee the same dioceses. This meant that there were two entire sets of church records being created in Ireland between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries, one by the Church of Ireland and one by the Roman Catholic Church.[6]
Types of Roman Catholic Church records for Ireland
The records for the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland fall into two time periods. In essence, every religious record produced in Ireland prior to the Irish Reformation Parliament of 1536 is a Roman Catholic record, as there was no Protestant movement or Church of Ireland in the country prior to this. Admittedly, there is a paucity of such records for the country by comparison with later time periods, though that does not mean that they do not exist. For instance, there are a number of registers which were kept by successive archbishops of Armagh during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries extant today, as well as a number of valor ecclesiasticus records (‘church valuations’).[7] These documents are all generally in Latin, though modern scholarly editions have been produced through the work of the Irish Manuscripts Commission.[8]
The second time period for Roman Catholic Church records in Ireland involves everything that was produced after the Irish Reformation Parliament of 1536, from which date the Roman Catholic Church became a quasi-illegal entity in Ireland. The range of records which fall into this category is quite broad. Many of these records are found in the archives of the Vatican Apostolic Library in Rome and involved reports being sent by archbishops and bishops appointed by the Papacy in Ireland back to the Holy See on affairs in Ireland. Another extensive array of such letters from the seventeenth century involved members of the Jesuit order in Ireland sending annual reports back to Rome.[9]
From a demographic and genealogical perspective some of the most important documents pertaining to Roman Catholics in Ireland from the early modern era are the Catholic Qualification Rolls. These are official records which were kept in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries to record where Roman Catholics in Ireland had agreed to take an oath of allegiance to the crown in order to not be persecuted under the Penal Laws which had been introduced since the 1690s to discriminate against Catholics on everything from access to education to horse-ownership. Over 50,000 names and addresses for the period between 1700 and 1845 were recorded on the Catholic Qualification Rolls and are a very useful genealogical tool.[10]
What can be found in Roman Catholic Church records for Ireland
As stated, the Catholic Qualification Rolls contain names and addresses for over 50,000 individuals in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Ireland. Earlier documents such as the Armagh registers and church valuations can often include names of tenants on the ecclesiastical lands of the archdiocese of Armagh. Elsewhere the genealogical data provided can be more idiosyncratic. For instance, the large volume of letters sent to Rome can contain good information on specific urban centers or locales, while there are also records which were produced for distinct regions owing to the industry of an individual. Such is the case for the diocese of Elphin in the west of Ireland, where the bishop, Edward Synge, undertook a census of all Protestants and Roman Catholics in 1749 on his own initiative.[11]
Explore more about Irish church records from the Roman Catholic Church
- Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating To Great Britain And Ireland records collection on MyHeritage
- Armagh Clergy and Parishes records collection on MyHeritage
- 1766 Ireland Religious Census records collection on MyHeritage
- Tracing Your Immigrant Ancestor to Ireland at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.irishchurches.org/members/church-of-ireland
- ↑ https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04136a.htm
- ↑ Brendan Bradshaw, ‘The Opposition to the Ecclesiastical Legislation in the Irish Reformation Parliament’, in Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 16, No. 63 (March, 1969), pp. 285–303.
- ↑ Henry Jefferies, The Irish Church and the Tudor Reformations (Dublin, 2010).
- ↑ Nicholas Canny, ‘Why the Reformation Failed in Ireland: Une Question Mal Posée’, in The Journal Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 30, No. 4 (October, 1979), pp. 423–450.
- ↑ https://www.irishchurches.org/members/church-of-ireland
- ↑ Henry Jefferies, ‘The Armagh Registers and the Re-interpretation of Irish Church History on the Eve of the Reformations’, in Seanchas Ardmhacha, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1999/2000), pp. 81–99.
- ↑ Mario Alberto Sughi (ed.), The Register of Octavian de Palatio, Archbishop of Armagh, 1478–1513 (Dublin, 2008).
- ↑ https://www.irishmanuscripts.ie/product/irish-jesuit-annual-letters-1604-1674/
- ↑ https://www.nationalarchives.ie/article/catholic-qualification-rolls-1700-1845/
- ↑ Marie-Louise Legg (ed.), The Census of Elphin, 1749 (Dublin, 2004).