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In 1155, Pope Adrian IV issued a papal bull Laudabiliter giving the Norman King Henry II lordship over Ireland. Though it was mentioned by John of Salisbury, who was sent to Rome as an envoy to request it and by Geraldus Cambrensis the authenticity of its text became the subject of academic dispute in the nineteenth century; As with many Church documents whose authenticity has never been questioned, the original document is no longer in existence: when Cardinal Baronius published it as ex codice Vaticano the codex in question was a transcription of the chronicle of Matthew Paris. only later copies exist. Ernest Henderson noted in 1896 that "in form and wording it differs from other papal bulls of the time"

The wording of the copy of the bull that has survived by implication reinforces a papal claim to England equally with Ireland, as an island: "There is indeed no doubt, as thy Highness doth also acknowledge, that Ireland and all other islands which Christ the Sun of Righteousness has illumined, and which have received the doctrines of the Christian faith, belong to the jurisdiction of St. Peter and of the holy Roman Church."

Henry invaded Ireland in 1171, using the papal bull to claim sovereignty over the island, and forced the Cambro-Norman warlords and some of the Gaelic Irish kings to accept him as their overlord.

Adrian's successor, Pope Alexander III ratified the grant of Irish lands to Henry in 1172, and Irish bishops at the Synod of Cashel, 2 February 1172, accepted the bull.

Henry awarded his Irish territories to his younger son John with the title Dominus Hiberniae ("Lord of Ireland"). When John unexpectedly succeeded his brother as John of England, the "Kingdom of Ireland" fell directly under the English Crown.

Notes

1. ad preces mea writes John in Metalogicus, noted by Kate Norgate, "The Bull Laudabiliter"The English Historical Review 8.29 (January 1893, pp. 18-52) p. 29.
2. Expugnatio Hibernica (1188), also noted by Norgate 1898:18.
3. With the publication in 1849 of an Apologia pro Hibernia adversus Cambri calumnias written about 1615 by an otherwise unknown Jesuit, Steven White. John Lynch, writing as "Gratianus Lucius", followed up the argument with Cambrensis Eversus. The nineteenth-century scholars who followed these leads were refuted in detail by Norgate.
4. Compare Unam sanctam.
5. Augustin Theiner, Vetera Monumenta Hibernorum Historiae, noted in Norgate 1898:20.

References

• Selected Documents in Irish History, edited by Josef Lewis Altholz, M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 2000
• Lyttleton, Life of Henry II., vol. v p. 371: text of Laudabiliter asa reprinted in Ernest F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages (London : George Bell and Sons) 1896 with Henderson's note: "That a papal bull was dispatched to England about this time and concerning this matter is certain. That this was the actual bull sent is doubted by many".

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