Plunkett, Oliver

(Saint) Oliver Plunkett (1625–1681), the martyred Roman Catholic archbishop of Armagh, was born in Loughcrew, Co. Meath, on 1 November. After an early education in Ireland, Plunkett traveled to study in the Irish College in Rome in 1647. He was ordained on 1 January 1654, and in 1657 was appointed professor of theology at Propaganda College. He was later transferred to the chair of controversies, the branch of theology dealing with items at issue between the Christian denominations.

Plunkett was elevated to the archiepiscopal see of Armagh in 1669 and consecrated in Ghent. After arriving in Ireland in March 1670, he quickly set about visiting and reorganizing his archdiocese and reforming abuses. He worked to improve the education and lifestyles of his parochial clergy, discouraging such vices as drinking and womanizing, removing factious clerics from their posts, and ordaining more suitable candidates. His ongoing attempts to regulate the size, training, activities, and rivalries of the religious orders in his province, as well as his opposition to Jansenism (a Catholic ideological movement frequently denounced as heretical), led him into conflict with the Franciscans in particular. In his dealings with the laity his major concerns were with confirmation, regularizing marriages not contracted in full conformity with Canon Law, and restraining "tories" (bandit members of the dispossessed gentry). He was particularly concerned with education and sponsored Jesuit-run schools that were later forcibly closed by the Protestant authorities. In 1672 he wrote Jus Primatiale, a defense of the primacy within Ireland of the see of Armagh, in response to the rival claims of Peter Talbot, archbishop of Dublin. A practical and effective administrator, he held several synods and dispatched numerous letters to his superiors on the continent detailing his achievements and recommendations for the Irish church. The poverty of his see led him to complain of financial hardship, and outbreaks of persecution beginning in late 1673 occasionally forced him into hiding.

During the fallout from the Popish Plot (a fictitious conspiracy to assassinate Charles II and replace him with his Catholic brother) Plunkett was arrested, imprisoned successively in Dublin and London, accused of treason, and tried and convicted on 8 June 1681 on the perjured evidence of several Irish witnesses, including priests and friars from his own province. He was executed at Tyburn on 1 July. His body was buried in Saint Giles's churchyard, London, but it was subsequently translated to Lamspringe, Germany, and thence to Downside Abbey, England. His head is preserved in Saint Peter's Church, Drogheda, Co. Louth. Plunkett was declared venerable on 9 December 1886, beatified on 23 May 1920, and canonized on 12 October 1975. His feast day is 11 July.

SEE ALSO Council of Trent and the Catholic Mission; English Political and Religious Policies, Responses to (1534–1690); Restoration Ireland

Bibliography

Hanly, John, ed. The Letters of Saint Oliver Plunkett. 1979.

Moran, Patrick Francis. Memoir of the Ven. Oliver Plunket. 1861. Reprint, 1895.

Ó Fiaich, Tomás. Oliver Plunkett: Ireland's New Saint. 1975.

Clodagh Tait