his diocese alone
mention is made of a Cathedral Church: "The Church of Mary in Limerick
is its principal church."[56] Note the present tense: "The Church of
Mary _is_"--not shall be--"its principal church." We remember that
Gilbert insisted in the _De Statu Ecclesiae_ that a diocese should have
a "pontifical church." Again, the boundaries of this one diocese are
protected by a clause which has no parallel elsewhere: "Whosoever shall
go against these boundaries goes against the Lord, and against Peter the
Apostle, and St. Patrick and his coarb and the Christian Church." Who
but the legate of the Pope would have thus invoked St. Peter?

Surely this portion of the ordinances of the Synod must have been
penned by Gilbert himself. And the whole passage--by the minuteness of
its description of the diocese, by the strength of the terms in which it
is expressed, by the reference to the Cathedral Church as already
existing--suggests that the diocese was formed and organized before the
Synod met, as I have already assumed. We may even suspect that an
attempt had been made to invade it, which Gilbert stoutly resisted,
relying on his legatine authority.

In the list of dioceses there is an omission which demands explanation.
No mention whatever is made of Dublin, the oldest diocese in Ireland.
Not only so; the northern limit of the diocese of Glendalough is marked
by Lambay Island and Greenogue, which lies due west of it in the County
Meath. Thus the diocese of Glendalough, as contemplated by the
Synod--and, it may be added, as it was in fact forty years
later[57]--included the whole of the actually existing diocese of
Dublin. The Danish Christians of Dublin and their Irish bishop are
treated as interlopers; they are absolutely ignored. It may be said that
this was due to the mutual hostility which divided the diocese of Dublin
from the native Church, and to the fact that the bishops of Dublin had
always been subject to Canterbury. But it is not enough to say this; for
the estrangement of Dublin from the Irish is the very thing that has to
be accounted for.

It had its root in the growing prosperity of the Danish city. The Irish
had no towns. Town life was introduced among them by the Norsemen. And
of their towns Dublin was always the chief. By this time it had become
so important that it had good right to be called the metropolis of the
country. And its citizens were thoroughly aware of this. As early as
1074 the burgesses of