Parishes on the Edges: The Parish and the Cultural Regions of Early Modern Ireland
Raymond Gillespie
Ideas about margins and edges are problematical. To deal with a margin it is necessary to
define a centre and such definitions are often difficult and arbitrary. While we tend to
think of centres as geographical expressions they can also be ideological and institutional
ideas. This paper tries to explore these two senses of a problematical idea. The
geographical centre of the paper is Dublin and the institutional centre is the church. For
the period before the Reformation views from the church in the centre of the margins
were decidedly unfavourable. Anglo-Irish clergy of the pale complained of the state of
the church in the areas on the edges of the country. The arguments that they advanced
were not, in the main, doctrinal but rather points of canon law. The church on the edge
did not conform to the norms of Roman canon law that was central to the pale clergy’s
self image as stalwarts of English civility and order. One of the main issues at stake was
the way in which the parish was organised. Parishes on the edge of pale authority lacked
the sort of administrative structures that worked in Dublin. Moreover they were
geographically large leaving room for pastoral care to be exercised by religious orders,
especially the Franciscans, as well as parish clergy. Moreover the parish was constructed
not as a local corporation expressing local identities, parallel to trade or religious guilds
or confraternities, but rather expressions of family power with few families monopolising
the living over time. Such cultural differences led to the pale clergy regarding the Irish
parish on the edge as at best deviant and at worst corrupt.
While the idea of a geographical centre and margin is useful for understanding the
various ways in which parishes worked within cultural regions in pre-Reformation
Ireland the idea of an institutional centre and margin is more useful in understanding the
world after the reform movement slowly gained impetus in the sixteenth century. The
institutional centre around which the parish was constructed was clearly the established
church leaving dissent, both Protestant and Catholic, on the margins. Within the
established parochial structures dissent might response in a number of ways to being
marginalised. Broadly speaking two strategies emerged. One was the creation of a
parallel parochial structure in an attempt to build a new institutional centre. Both
Catholicism and the Ulster Presbyterians resorted to this technique which survived in
Catholicism but died out in late eighteenth century Presbyterianism. The second strategy
by dissenters was to colonise the Established Church centre as both Catholics and
protestant dissenters of various forms sought offices within the Church of Ireland
parochial system, demonstrating an ability to differentiate the theological and social
meanings of the parish. Thus Catholics, Quakers and Presbyterians can all be identified
as holding parochial office in late seventeenth century Dublin.