Galway Archaeological & Historical Society

A Franciscan Bishop of Clonfert

Author(s): Aubrey Gwynn
Source: Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, Vol. 28 (1958/1959), pp.
5-11
Published by: Galway Archaeological & Historical Society
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 A Franciscan Bishop of Clonfert
BY REV. AUBREY GWYNN, SJ.

Within the past year the Cambridge University Press has published an exceedingly
fine history of the Council of Florence, by an English Jesuit -scholar* Father Joseph
Gill, S.J.1 Most of his book is, as may be expected, taken up with a full account of
the various negotiations that were being actively pursued in the first half of the
fifteenth century with a view to securing the reunion of the Eastern Churches with
the Church of Rome; and Father Gill's book has thus a topical interest for English
and "rish readers. The story is complicated by the fact that two rival Councils of the
Church were in session at the same time: the Fathers assembled at Basel, who were
eager to establish the principle that the Pope was subordinate to the General Council,
and that papal decisions, both in faith and morals, must be approved by the Fathers
in Council; and an assembly of prelates summoned by Pope Eugenius IV, who
rejected these claims as his predecessors had rejected them at the time of the Council
of Constance. The Council which the Pope had summoned met first at Ferrara, and
then at Florence; and it was at Florence that the final decree of Union between East
and West was signed and promulgated in July 1439. These two rival Councils were
competing for recognition by the kings of Western Europe; and it is in this con
nectibn that Father Gill has balled attention to an episode which throws unexpected
light on the succession to the see of Clonfert in 1438 41.
Father Gill tells as much of the story of John O'Heyne, bishop of Clonfert, as is
relevant to his main theme.2 The bishop was an Irish Friar Minor, and we learn from
a letter which Pope Eugenius IV wrote to the English king, Henry VI, that John was
a native of the diocese of Clonfert. (Father Gill makes a slip in calling him Henry, not
John O'Heyne.) The name (5 h-Eidhin is, of course, the name of the chieftains of UI
Fiachrach Aidhne, whose territory in the fifteenth century corresponded with the
territory of the diocese of Kilmacduagh. John seems, none the less, to have been a
native of Clonfert. He first appears in history at the court of Henry VI about November
1437. Henry VI sent him as his messenger to the prelates assembled at Basel, to the
German Emperor (Sigismund of Hungary) and to Pope Eugenius IV, who was then
in Rome. The full text of the two letters which Henry VT wrote to the Fathers at
Basel and to the German Emperor can be read in the official correspondence of
Thomas Bekynton, bishop of Bath and Wells, who was the king's secretary at this
time.3 The king had made up his mind in November 1437 to give his full support to
the Pope in Rome, and he made this plain in his letter to the Emperor, whom he

xThe Council of Florence. By Joseph Gill, SJ. Pp. xviii, 453. Cambridge University Press. 1959.
47/6.
8Ibid., pp. 132-3.
3Bekynton>s correspondence, Rolls Series (1872), pp. 37-45; 83-6.

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 6 GALWAY ARCHAEOLOGICAL
AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

urges to follow the same policy. In his letter to the Fathers at Basel he rebukes them
sharply for their anti-papal policy, and orders all the English prelates who were then
at Basel either to leave Basel for Ferrara or come home to their dioceses.
John O'Heyne must have been one of the unluckiest Franciscans who ever lived.
He went first from England to Germany, where he found that Sigismund's successor
was elected. Albrecht was elected as Emperor on 18 March 1438, and John duly
handed him the letter which he had brought from England and which had been meant
for Sigismund. Having fulfilled this first part of his commission, John made his way
to Basel, where the Fathers had become increasingly anti-papal during the winter.
There was nothing in Henry Vl's letters to give them satisfaction, and they refused to
accept them at this late date as having been really sent to the Council by the English
king. As Father Gill tells the story, 'they treated O'Heyne and his mission with scant
respect'. From Basel John went to Ferrara, where the Pope's Council had been in
session since 9 April. Here he was able to deliver the king's letter to Eugenius IV and
to report on his mission as a whole. The Pope made amends to John for the scant
courtesy which he had received at Basel, and provided him to the see of Clonfert
at some date earlier than 18 July 1438. The bull of provision has been lost, but
payment of his dues was made by John Heyne in person on 18 July. He had not yet
been consecrated, and we learn from the record of this payment that John was a
professor and bachelor of theology.4 We do not know where he had made his studies.
Pope Eugenius sent John back to the English king in October 1438, with a short
letter in which he replied to the king's official letter and added that he would be
sending a longer reply by another messenger.5 Here we lose sight of Bishop John for
four or five years, though it is probable that he made his way to Clonfert at some time
in 1439. Father Gill tells us no more of the bishop's later history, which is in fact the
sad story of a disappointed candidate. The vacancy in Clonfert which Eugenius IV
had filled in the summer of 1438 was due to the death of John Bermingham, archbishop
of Tuam, in 1437. At some date in the first half of 1438 (the bull of provision has
again been lost) the Pope translated Thomas, bishop of Clonfert, from Clonfert to
Tuam; and it was this translation which made it possible for Eugenius IV to reward
John O'Heyne by a provision to the see of Clonfert.
Bishop Thomas of Clonfert was a member of the princely family of (3 Cellaigh,
and we know from the record of his provision that he was a Friar Preacher before
he was elevated to the see of Clonfert by Innocent VII on 11March 1405.6 He ruled
the diocese for the next quarter of a century, and there is nothing in the records which
survive that suggests that he was not in every way worthy of this honour. But there
is a bald statement in the Annals of Connacht for the year 1441, which records his
*Cat. papal letters, IX, p. 224, note.
5This letter is in Cal. papal letters, VIII, p. 267.
eIbid., VI, p. 6.

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 A FRANCISCANBISHOP OF CLONFERT 7

death as bishop of Clonfert in that year, and adds that he was the son of Muirchertach
0 Cellaigh, who had himself been bishop of Clonfert (1378-94) and archbishop of
Tuam (1394-1407). In the papal records Muirchertach appears consistently as Maurice,
but there is no doubt at all that he is the Muirchertach 6 Cellaigh in whose honour
the great Book of Ui Maine was compiled whilst he was still bishop of Clonfert.
On folio lllv of this Book there is a note to say that Faelan mac a' Gabann has
written these quaternions (caidirni) for his lord and friend, the bishop 6 Ceallaig;
and a note has been added on folio 170v which records the translation of Bishop
Muirchertach from Clonfert to Tuam in 1394. For the two years 1405-7 it would
thus seem certain that the father was archbishop of Tuam, and the son bishop of
Clonfert; and it may well have been reluctance on the part of the clergy and people
of Tuam in 1438-9 which prevented Bishop Thomas from following in his father's
footsteps, first as bishop of Clonfert and then as archbishop of Tuam. The Four
Masters (who seem here to be copying an entry from the Annals of All Saints of
Loch Ri) give Bishop Thomas the title of archbishop of Tuam in the entry which
records his death in 1441; but the entry in the Annals of Connacht for this year calls
him simply bishop of Clonfert. (The Annals of Loch Ce are defective for this year.)
It would seem clear that Bishop Thomas, though he had obtained a papal provision
translating him from Clonfert to Tuam, was unable to make this provision effective;
and that he died in 1441 as bishop of Clonfert.
John O'Heyne must have found that the bishopric to which he had been provided
in July 1438 was not in fact vacant when he came to Clonfert, most probably in 1439
?if indeed he did not get news of his disappointment whilst he was still in England,
for we have no clear proof that he ever came to Clonfert. His hopes must have been
revived in 1.441,when Bishop Thomas died and thus left the siiccession open. Normally
it should have been possible for Bishop John, who had been consecrated in 1438 but
was still without a diocese, to make his way to Rome and there obtain a fresh provision
to the see of Clonfert; and he may well have gone to Rome in 1441. But his bad luck
was not yet at an end. We learn from an entry in Luke Wadding's Annates Fratrum
Minorum1 that John White, who was then minister provincial of the Friars Minor in
Ireland, was deposed by his brethren for bad government in 1441. The Observantine
movement had begun to have its effect on Franciscan life in Ireland at this time,
and we may presume that this deposition of an unworthy minister provincial was
due to the work of reform within the Irish province. But its immediate result was to,
give John White, the deposed provincial, a very urgent reason for wishing to establish
himself in some secure position from which he could not be dislodged by troublesome
and over-zealous brethren. And so it came about that John White made his way to
Rome and secured a provision to the see of Clonfert, now genuinely vacant by the

7Ibid. XI, p. 137.

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 8 GALWAY ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

death of Bishop Thomas, on 15 October 1441.8 Eubel has confused John White with
John O'Heyne, and has thus wrongly dated John O'Heyne's provision to the year
1441.9 John White remained bishop of Clonfert until his death which occurred at
some date before 22 May 1447, when yet another Friar Minor, named Cornelius
O'Mullally, secured a provision to this see from Nicholas V.10 We have no record at
all of John White's activity as bishop of Clonfert.
John O'Heyne had thus for a second time failed to secure a valid provision to the
vacant see of Clonfert, his native diocese. In the technical language of medieval
canonists, he was left as a bishop 'in the universal church', without a diocese and
without the revenues of a diocese. It was not a pleasant future to face, but there was
a well-known place of refuge for unfortunate prelates of this type, who were only
too familiar inWestern Europe at this time. For an Irish 'bishop in the universal
church', work in England as a 'suffragan bishop' was easily to be found: that is to say,
the unlucky bishop could work as a 'suffragan' (or, as we should say today) an
auxiliary bishop in some English diocese, earning his livelihood in this way. That is
why the name of John, bishop of Clonfert, appears unexpectedly in the list of Irish
suffragan bishops in England, which Bishop Stubbs published as an appendix to his
Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum.11 Bishop John's name appears as a suffragan at
Worcester in 1443, and he was working in the,diocese of London from 1443-48. His
name also occurs in the registers of Exeter from 1447, and it is probable that a
systematic search of other English episcopal registers of this period would reveal
him at work in other dioceses.
It must have been a hard enough life, since the bishop's finances depended on the
work which he was willing to do here, there and everywhere. That is no doubt the
reason why John, bishop of Clonfert, appears as vicar of West Thurrock near London
in or about 1457. He died as vicar of this small parish in 1459, and his will can be
read in Somerset House to-day. He may perhaps have been a disappointed and
embittered man, but I prefer to think of him as an elderly prelate who had at last
secured a living in England, and who could entertain his guests at table with tales
of the great days twenty years ago when he had been a royal messenger to the German
Emperor, to two rival Councils of the Church, and to the kindly, if not over-efficient
Pope Eugenius IV. This Pope's portrait by Pinturicchio makes a very pleasing
frontispiece to Father Gill's fine volume, and it is easy to believe that so kindly a
Pontiff must have been glad in July 1438 to reward the royal messenger from England
with a provision to some remote Irish bishopric. That the bishopric to which he
provided John O'Heyne was not in fact vacant was, in the confusion of papal admin

BCal. papal letters, IX, p. 224.

%Hierarchia Catholica, II, p. 146.
10Cal. papal letters, X, p. 295.
nSecond edition, 1897.

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 A FRANCISCANBISHOP OF CLONFERT 9

istration in the mid-fifteenth century, no more than an unlucky accident; and the
same Pope may well have believed in October 1441 that he was providing the same
Irish Friar Minor to this see of Clonfert in the far-distant province of Tuam in Ireland.
Eubel made this mistake when he was compiling his Hierarchia Catholica in the
twentieth century, with all the facilities now available to modern scholars. We must
not be too hard on papal clerks and papal administrators of the fifteenth century,
who must often have marvelled at the strange names of places and persons which
they had to copy when dealing with Irish benefices and Irish bishoprics.
Eubel is not the only modern scholar who has been led astray by the complicated
evidence concerning Bishop John O'Heyne's life. In his very valuable work on The
Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland and Ireland,1* W. Maziere Brady gives the
provision of John O'Heyne under the date 19 July 1438. He adds that John was
'Provincial of the Franciscans, and belonged to the once princely family of O'Heyne
of Kiloviragh, Co. Galway'; and that 'Bishop O'Heyn was buried in the tomb of his
ancestors in the church of the Dominicans at Athenry'. The first of these statements
is plainly due to confusion between John O'Heyne and John White, who was minister
provincial of the Irish Franciscans before his elevation to the episcopate in 1441.
For the rest of his information Brady is dependent on Bishop Thomas de Burgo's
famous work, Hibernia Dominicana, which he here cites as his authority. Bishop de
Burgo makes this statement on page 222 of his work, where he is writing about the
history of the great Dominican priory of Athenry. He himself had visited the church
of this priory, and had noted some of the inscriptions on the tombs in this church;
and he had also been able to consult the manuscript 'Register' of this convent, from
which he gives details about the prelates and noblemen who were buried here. Among
the noble families who were traditionally buried at Athenry was the family of O'Heyne
of 'Kiloviragh'; and a bishop was buried in this family's tomb, with his coat of arms
and pastoral cross engraved above his tomb. In a footnote Bishop de Burgo states
that neither the bishop's name nor the name of his diocese was noted in the manuscript
from which he took these details. He then went to the trouble of searching through
all the Irish bishops listed by Sir James Ware and his editor Walter Harris, and found
only one bishop of the family of O'Heyne: the Franciscan bishop of Clonfert, who
had been provided to that see in 1438. Hence his conclusion, that this bishop of
Clonfert was buried at Athenry.
Now there are two obvious difficulties that can be urged against this conclusion.
In 1438, when accepting provision to the see of Clonfert, John O'Heyne, O.F.M;
stated that he was a native of Clonfert. Moreover, we have seen that this John,
bishop of Clonfert, ended his days as vicar of West Thurrock, and was presumably
buried somewhere in England, not at Athenry. Bishop de Burgo's mistake was in

*2II, p. 210.

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 AND HISTORICALSOCIETY
10 GALWAY ARCHAEOLOGICAL

assuming that no Bishop O'Heyne can have existed apart from the bishop whose
name appears inWare-Harris.13 But there are several western bishops of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries who are known to us only by their Christian names. Since
the family of O'Heyne belongs to the territory of Kilmacduagh, it is worth noting
that at least three bishops of Kilmacduagh, known only to us by their Christian
names, ruled this diocese in the fourteenth century: John, who was consecrated by
Archbishop Malachy of Tuam inMay 1326, and who had died before 16 November
1358 when Innocent VI provided Nicholas, dean of Kilmacduagh, as his successor;
Nicholas who ruled the diocese for the next thirty-five years, and died in 1393; and
Gregory, like Nicholas, a former dean of Kilmacduagh, who was provided to the see
by Boniface IX in October 1383 (and again, owing to a defect in the first provision,
in August 1396), and who ruled the diocese until his death which seems to have
occurred in or about the year 1400.
Any one of these three bishops may have belonged to the family of O'Heyne.
John who ruled the diocese from 1326 to 1358 is worthy of further notice, since he
plainly enjoyed strong local support during his rule. He was consecrated, so Ware
tells us, by Malachy Mac Aedha, archbishop of Tuam, in 1326. Dr. J. Fahey is wrong
in suggesting14 that John was never a bishop. Ware got his information from the
contemporary patent rolls, and gives the date (14 May 1326) on which the new bishop
was granted restitution of the temporalities of his see.15 In the following year (31
July 1327) Pope John XXII, having received a petition from the English king Edward
II, decreed the union of the three small dioceses of Achonry, Enachdun and Kilmac
duagh with Tuam. Each diocese was to be united with Tuam on the death of its then
(1327) reigning bishop.16 Bishop John of Kilmacduagh had the advantage of having
been elected and consecrated as recently as 1326. By the time of his death in 1358
both Achonry and Enachdun had petitioned the Holy See for revocation of the
decree of 1327.17 The fact that Bishop John had lived through all these years, even
though he had a son who seems to have been the cause of much trouble to him,
meant that the chapter and clergy of Kilmacduagh had no need to petition the Holy
See against a threat of union with Tuam which could only become effective on the
death of their bishop. Bishop John died in 1358; but by that time the archbishop and
chapter of Tuam had found from experience that the proposed union of Tuam and
Kilmacduagh would only be burdensome to them and a source of constant trouble.
Accordingly they made representations to the Holy See in a consistory that was held
before 1March 1359, when Innocent VI issued a commission to the three abbots of

lsWare-Harris I, p. 641.
^History of the Diocese of Kilmacduagh, pp. 174-5.
15Ware-Harris, I, p. 648.
16See the text of John XXIFs decree in Cal. papal letters, II, p. 263,
11
Cal. papal letters, III, pp. 227, 388.

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 A FRANCISCANBISHOP OF CLONFERT 11

Knockmoy, Corcomroe and Kilmacduagh to inquire into the facts concerning the
rents and profits of the archbishopric of Tuam and the bishopric of Kilmacduagh,
and to report their findings to the Holy See. Nothing more is heard of the proposed
union.
Thus it came ^hout that Bishop John, who ruled the diocese from 1326-58, was
able to maintain the independence of Kilmacduagh for more than thirty years. It
seems a pity that so gallant an effort on behalf of his native diocese was not rewarded
by an entry in the contemporary Annals of Connacht, or some other local annals,
from which we might have learned the bishop's full name. We can do no more than
hazard a guess. B%t it seems to me very probable that the Bishop O'Heyne who was
buried at Athenry at a date which has not been recorded may well be this Bishop
John* and that his success in maintaining the independence of his diocese against
King and Pope arid Archbishop of Tuam may have been due to his strong family
connections with the ruling family of h-Eidhin in that area.
But we must leave the question open, for lack of proof from any contemporary
record. Was it John or Nicholas or Gregory whose tomb was noted by the Dominican
friar who compiled the register of the Dominican priory of Athenry? it is at least
very much more probable that one of these three bishops was buried with other
members of his family at Athenry than that the unlucky Franciscan bishop of Clonfert,
whose story we have traced from Rome and Constance to the diocese of London
and the rectory of West Thurrock, was brought back to Ireland for burial, and was
buried in a Dominican, not a Franciscan church.

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