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Life
| 1758-1828 [Dr Lanigan], b. Cashel; ordained Rome; DD, Univ. of Pavia; taught at Pavia before returning to Ireland at fall of Milan to Napoleon, 1796; barred from Maynooth post on being suspected of Jansenism by the Bishop of Cork [RAF, had to resign]; asst. librarian RDS, 1799, and later foreign sec. to same; librarian RDS, 1808 and fnd Gaelic Soc. with Edward O’Reilly in 1808;his Ecclesiastical History of Ireland from the first introduction of Christianity to the beginning of the 13th century ([4 vols] 1822), sets out to correct errors in Mervyn Archdall’s Monasticum Hibernicum using extant Gaelic MSS - though apparently without consulting the Book of Armagh (Codex Armanachus); |
| Lanigan argued that St. Patrick was born in (‘Taberniae’ [L. being Tarvenna] Boulogne; he also committed himself in that book to the Phoenician view of Irish round towards, and entered controversay with the Edward Ledwich [q.v] on this and other matters relating to Irish ecclesiastical history; d. 7 July in Dr Harty’s private mental asylum, Clontarf; W. J. Fitzpatrick derived much of the biographical lore in History of Dublin Catholic Cemeteries (1900) and other works from Lanigan. CAB ODNB DIB DIW RAF OCIL |
Works
An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland from the first introduction of Christianity among the Irish to the beginning of the 13th century [...] compiled from the works of the most esteemed authors [...] and from Irish Annals, 4 vols. (Dublin: Hodges, MacArthur 1822); Do., 4 vols. [2nd edn.] (Dublin: Printed for Cumming, 16 Ormond-quay; London: Simpkin and Marshall; Edinburgh: R. Cadell and Co. 1829).
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Commentary
William Bullen Morris [Rev.], Ireland and St. Patrick (London & NY: Burns and Oates; Dublin M. H. Gill & Son, 1891), cites Lanigan’s article, ‘Northmen and Normans in England and Ireland’ (1856), printed in Essays in Church History, p.46, and comments: ‘Dr. Lanigan’s account of the state of Ireland previous to the irruption of the Normans is fair and dispassionate ... When, however, he reaches the perod of Pope Adrian, it is clear that he is blinded by that indignation which sometimes disturbs the wisest mind [...] Dr. Lanigan is so angry with the Pope that he dismisses with contempt every argument in his favour, and in answer to Cambrensis Eversus, and MacGeoghegan, he rashly affirms of the “Bull”, that “never did there exist a more real and authentic document.”’ [Eccles. Hist., Vol. iv, pp.32, 34, 43, 55, &c.]; Note that from Morris’s viewpoint the Bull is a forgery whose ‘almost every line the letter reveals the swordsman - the self-appointed military missioner’ (i.e., Henry II).
James Godkin, Ireland and Her Churches (London: Chapman & Hall 1867) - supplies a note on the Ledwich-Lanigan controversy: ‘Dr. Lanigan accounts for the exclusion of women from the monasteries, by the fact that it became necessary when they were crowded with young students; and he asks how would Dr. Ledwich like to see boarding-schools composed indiscriminately of grown-up boys and girls.’ (p. 27.)
Note: The point being made is that the institutions in question were “monastic” and not as Ledwich supposes, schools in the modern sense. Godkn goes on to quote Todd’s remarks taxing James Ussher, William Ledwich and Rev. John Lanigan with failing to understanding the clan basis of the ecclesiastical ranks of the Early Irish Church: ‘“Even Ussher, Ware, and Lanigan,” says Dr. Todd, “led away by their preconceived opinions, as to the existence of diocesan succession from the age of St. Patrick, were unable to realise to themselves the strange state of society indicated bv our ancient records, and the still more strange state of the Church when bishops were without dioceses or territorial jurisdiction. Hence it is that these eminent writers took the modern state of the Church, since the establishment of dioceses, as the model of what they conceived was, or ought to have been, the state of the Church in the days of Patrick and Columbkill, and thus they have confounded the ancient corbes with chorepiscopi, and erenachs with arch deacons. Even Colgan, influenced by the same prejudices, fell into the same mistakes.”’ (Godkin, op. cit., p.30; citing J. H. Todd, St. Patrick, p.162.)
P. W. Joyce, A Short History of Ireland from the Earliest Times to 1608 (London: Longmans 1893), quotes Lanigan on the arrival of St. Patrick: ‘Although Christianity was not propagated in Ireland by the blood of martyrs, there is no instance of any other nation that universally received it in as short a space of time as the Irish did.’ (Lanigan, Eccl. Hist. iv. 287; Joyce, p.142.)
George A. Little, Dublin Before the Vikings (Dublin: M. H. Gill 1957): ‘Dalton [recte D’Alton] points out that Dr. Lanigan, who was opposed to the theory of a pre-Scandanavian prelacy in Dublin, felt well-nigh insuperable difficulty in excluding Sedulius [d.785] from this rank and title. Dr Lanigan’s uneasiness must have increased if he realised that, giving way on this point, it would have been difficult to maintain his view regarding the others. Dr Lanigan’s difficulty (and that of some later writers) seems to have arisen from his effort to interpret an early form of Church government in terms that obtained at a much later period [viz., diocesan, not king-monastic] (p.100-01).
Joep Leerssen, Remembrance and Imagination: [...] Literary Representation of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century (Cork UP/Field Day 1996) - writes: ‘A Catholic scholar like John Lanigan, author of the Ecclesiastical History of Ireland (1822)[,] could only reap academic laurels by going to the Continent: he was given a chair at the Italian university of Pavia before returning to Ireland in 1796 with at least the prestige of a professorial title. [...; p.70-] Maynooth] afforded a professional chair for Lanigan when that scholar was driven from the Continent by the tide of revolutionary wars (Lanigan was later deprives of his Maynooth place by the malicious rumour that he had Jansenist sympathies) [...]’ (pp.70-71.)
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References
Dictionary of National Biography, and publ. first part of his Institutiones Biblicae (Padua 1793); returned to Ireland, 1796, and became asst.-lib RDS, 1799; assisted to found Gaelic Society of Dublin, 1808; An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland &c. (1822). Note that his insanity is not mentioned.
Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography [rev. edn.] (Gill & Macmillan 1988), University of Pavia; suspected of Jansenism by bishop of Cork, preventing proposed appointment to chair of Hebrew and Sacred Scripture; ed. and translator on RDS staff adn £1.50 p.w., raised to £3 on advancement to librarian in 1808; incapacitated by mental illness in 1813. Note however that Fitzgerald’s life of Dr Lanigan is about the RC bishop of Ossory, James Lanigan [q.v].
Hyland Books (Cat. 214) lists An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland [&c.], 4 vols. (1822) £55.
De Burca Books (1997) lists An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland from the first introduction of Christianity among the Irish to the beginning of the thirteenth century. With list of subscribers. Four volumes. Dublin, Cumming, 1829 [sic]. Cont. half calf on marbled boards with red and black labels; attractive set bound by D.W. Carroll of Dublin, with his ticket on the front pastedown [£275].
Univ. of Ulster (Morris Collection) holds An Ecclestical History of Ireland ... to the thirteenth century, 4 vols. (1822).
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