The origins of the parish in Ireland

Abstract

This study addresses the emergence of a parish system in Ireland between AD 700 and AD 1300. This process is examined against the background of similar processes in Britain and the Continent, and a taxonomy of early Irish church types reveals parallels, if not indeed linkages, between Ireland and her neighbours. By the early twelfth century a de facto parish system based on the local community, the túath, emerges in Ireland. The parish church of this system may be described as the túath-church. Some elements of this system can be found much earlier, in the eighth century canons. The arrival of the Anglo-Normans sees the túath-church system replaced by the English version of the Gregorian reform parish, the establishment of which in Ireland occurs during the century from 1172. This system is a complex mix of rectories and vicarages with origins both secular and ecclesiastical, and was the result of tension between lay and monastic interests on the one hand and episcopal efforts to maintain the cura animarum on the other. Elements of the earlier túath-church system survived within the later reformed parish structure.