Legatenkonzil; 1111
Held during a vacancy in the see of Canterbury, which still claimed and exercised some jurisdiction over the Irish church. The spelling of the name varies from one source to another, and the precise location of the synod is debated, but it was probably somewhere in what is now County Laois (Leix). It was presided over by Gille, papal legate and bishop of Limerick. The synod attempted to integrate the recently established Viking dioceses (like Waterford and Dublin, both of which had previously looked to Canterbury as their provincial see) with existing Irish monastic ones, but with limited success. A list of the dioceses thus created or merged survives. There were no representatives from Connacht or Dublin, but a decision was taken to divide Ireland into two provinces (Armagh and Cashel), each with twelve suffragans. This pattern appears to have been modelled after the one Bede claimed had been proposed by Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) for the island of Great Britain, and seventeen of the dioceses established at that time have remained in existence ever since. However, the overall arrangement proved to be unstable and following representations from Armagh in particular, it was revised at the synod of Kells-Mellifont in 1152. The synod of Ráth Breasail is somehow connected with one supposedly held at Uisneach (q.v.) in the same year, which may have been a rival to it or a mistake, owing to the fact that Uisneach was an ancient meeting place where synods were often thought to have been held.
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QQ: Keating, The History of Ireland, III 298-307; Annals of Ulster, ed. Hennessy/MacCarthy, II 84-87; Annals of Inisfallen, 268-269. Records of Convocation, ed. Bray, Vol. 16 (Ireland 1101-1690), 81-84.
Lit.: Watt, The Church in Medieval Ireland, 12-14.
Gerald Lewis Bray
Juni 2024
Empfohlene Zitierweise:
Bray, Gerald L., “Ráth Breasail; Legatenkonzil 1111" in: Lexikon der Konzilien [Online-Version], Juni 2024;
URL: http://www.konziliengeschichte.org/site/de/publikationen/lexikon/database/4291.html
