Armagh

City and district in Northern Ireland, home of the (papal) primate of Ireland, who bears the title Comharba Phádraig [successor of Patrick], the claimed antiquity of which has recently been challenged; it is also the residence of the head of the Church of Ireland. Although the site has been Christian in all of recorded history, its name in Irish, ‘Height of Macha’, acknowledges a pre-Christian past. According to the pseudo-history Lebor Gabála [Book of Invasions], Ard Macha was named for Macha (1), wife of the mythical invader Nemed. It is on high ground, 2 miles E of Emain Macha [Irish fortress of Macha], an important settlement in early Ireland, widely celebrated in Irish heroic literature. The excavations for St Patrick's (Protestant) Cathedral in 1840 uncovered many early carvings, especially figures of bears.

In pre-conquest Ireland Armagh was the site of a centre of learning, sometimes described as a university, established by Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair [Rory O'Connor]. Following the Synod of Clane (1162), no one who was not an alumnus of Armagh could be fer léiginn [Irish, master of studies] in any Irish monastic school. The advent of the Anglo-Normans in 1169, and their plundering of the school in 1184, 1185, and 1189, ended the tradition of learning at Armagh. The former (until 1974) county of Armagh, just south of Lough Neagh, was the smallest of the six in Northern Ireland. Within its borders are several sites often mentioned in Irish narrative, including Sliab Cuillinn [Slieve Gullion], a hill 5 miles SW of Newry, and Sliab Fúait [Slieve Fuad], sometimes thought to be the residence of Lir, near Newtown Abbott. See also Book of Armagh [Liber Ardmachanus]. Richard Sharpe, ‘St. Patrick and the See of Armagh’, Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 4 (Winter 1982), 33–59; cf. B. K. Lambkin, ‘Patrick, Armagh, and Emain Macha’, Emania (Belfast), 2 (1987), 29–31.