ABSTRACT
Between the fifth century, which saw the first formal mission to Ireland, and the seventh century, when the Irish churches emerge for the first time into the full light of history, there is a serious gap in our knowledge. But from that point, c. 600 onward, when the evidence begins to be available in significant quantities, the Irish churches appear to be organized along lines that differ markedly from the church in Gaul. In the century and more leading up to the ‘Golden Age’, changes came about that worked ‘a revolution’ in the structures of the Irish churches.1 From an initially standard administrative system adopted from the western church, in which bishops ruled over dioceses whose territorial boundaries were clearly defined, the Irish churches appear to have been transformed into a quite different but distinctive organization in which most of the important churches are monastic houses, united to lesser daughter houses in a confederation or paruchia under the overall control of the abbot of the mother church. In stark contrast to the earlier continental pattern, the paruchia was not a territorial unit with fixed boundaries, for the monastic churches comprising it might be widely scattered. This and another distinctive feature marked off the Irish churches as peculiar: administrative power was in the hands of the abbot, not the bishop. Bishops there were still, of course, since the ecclesiastical dignities and sacramental functions of the bishop could never be dispensed with. But his administrative jurisdiction was apparently a thing of the past; that now rested in the hands of the abbot. There was nothing like this on the continent.
