Abstract
Here is in this little city two great cathedral churches, richly endowed and too near together for any good they do . Here Sir John Perrot, an Elizabethan lord deputy, described the peculiar situation of Dublin which since the thirteenth century owed two cathedrals. Although the church of St. Patrick had been consecrated in 1192 and Archbishop John Cumin had incorporated a secular college to it, it was not until 1220 that his successor, Henry of London, perfected the chapter of St. Patrick?s by including the dignitaries associated with a cathedral. Then, the see of Dublin was constituted of two chapters of different kind: Holy Trinity owed a regular chapter and St. Patrick?s a secular one. Thus, we may wonder if this condition was not one of the origins of the political conflict between the two cathedrals, a conflict for ecclesiastical supremacy. Moreover, it is clear that by the same time, the cathedral chapter had become a very important institution in Ireland since it had the right to choose the new bishop and to assume some of the bishop?s function when the Episcopal see was vacant. As result, we understand that the exceptional context of Dublin led to some wrangles between the two chapters about how the election should be conducted and about the choice of the new archbishop. Moreover, as the chapter of St. Patrick was composed "for the most part of king?s clerks" , it could be assumed that the chapter was used by the King as a mean to control his colony both on an ecclesiastical and political level. We may therefore wonder what exactly the significance of this conflict was, was it a political conflict between the two cathedrals of Dublin due to their both will to lead the ecclesiastical line of the see of Dublin as well as the political line or if it was a conflict of a racial kind opposing the Irish regular chapter of Holy Trinity to the Anglo-Norman secular chapter of St. Patrick?s. Thus, we will firstly intend to assess what exactly the archbishops? intention were in creating the chapter of St. Patrick, then to look at the king?s interest in the nomination of the bishops and at his role in their election and finally how these quarrels expressed themselves.
