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Christ Church Cathedral
The earliest manuscript dates Christ Church cathedral to its present location around 1030. Dúnán, the first bishop of Dublin and Sitriuc, Norse king of Dublin, founded the original Viking church, which was probably subject to the archbishop of Canterbury. By 1152 it was incorporated into the Irish church and within a decade the famous Archbishop Laurence O.Toole had been appointed. This future patron saint of Dublin began a reform of the cathedral.s constitution along European lines and introduced the canons regular of Saint Augustine forming a cathedral priory, which was to survive until the Reformation following the liturgical use of Sarum (Salisbury) in England.
Laurence O.Toole acted directly in diplomatic efforts between the Dubliners and the Anglo-Normans including Strongbow (Richard de Clare) following the capture of the city in 1170. It was due largely to John Cumin, the first Anglo-Norman archbishop, that the Hiberno-Norse cathedral was replaced with the Romanesque and later Gothic cathedral, parts of which survive today.
In 1395 King Richard II sat in state in the cathedral to receive homage from the kings of the four Irish provinces O'Neill of Ulster, McMurrough of Leinster, O'Brien of Munster and O'Connor of Connacht. In 1487 Lambert Simnel, pretender to the English throne in the reign of Henry VII was .crowned. in Christ Church as Edward VI.
In the sixteenth century, reform again came from England when Henry VIII broke from Rome. He dissolved the Augustinian priory of the Holy Trinity and established a reformed foundation of secular canons. On 22 December 1541 Robert Castle (alias Paynswick), the last prior, became the first dean of Christ Church.
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