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The first records of Augustinians arriving in Ireland date back to c.1259 when Norman barons sought tutors for their sons and chaplains for their manors. Through their contacts with the new Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Augustinians numbered among their members many men of learning and scholarship. Ireland offered a rich harvest and needed only rich benefactors to encourage them to spread here.
The first Augustinians to arrive in Ireland were fortunate to have the Talbot Family to patronise them. They generously donated a site to the friars for a monastery in Dublin. Situated on the banks of the Liffey in open country, and to the east of the city walls, it was on this four-acre field that their first priory was established.
In the beginning, the members of the Dublin community were probably all English and Welsh and it is unlikely that for the first few years they received novices from Dublin and certainly none from the native Irish.
The first student house was established c.1358, at this location. Prior to this students were trained in England, and those destined for higher studies went to university at Oxford and Cambridge.
By the middle of the fifteenth century there were twenty foundations around the country. Eight of their houses were in purely Irish-speaking areas, west of the Shannon. Another five were outside the influence of the Pale, so that by the second half of the century the influence of Irish Friars was discernible.
The Reformation saw a dramatic change in the fortunes of the Augustinians in Ireland. Things were never to be the same again for the friars and monks.
Their daily round of community prayer and common life, their sense of security
in their havens of peace all were shattered. Strangers had taken over their houses, their churches were dismantled and they, like homeless fugitives, were left to fend for themselves.
The centre of administration of the Irish houses was transferred from Dublin to the west, most likely Dunmore in County Galway where a community had been in existence for some years at the time.
The last of the pre-Reformation houses was outside the city walls in Galway and dates from c.1500. Two other reformation churches are still in daily use today in Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo and Fethard, Co.Tipperary.
From Ireland, Augustinians have gone forth to all parts of the world, to each of the five continents, over a period of almost three hundred years spreading of the Gospel message. Friars have laboured in England in penal times, in India, in North and South America, Australia and Africa.
The Augustinian Friars have retained a presence in a number of the other pre-Reformation towns (though not in the precise original sites) and they have added other houses in other major locations.
In Rome we have a church, St. Patrick’s (the Irish National Church) and a college for Philosophy and Theology students. In Ireland the friars have a Novitiate and student house, busy churches, some parishes (in Dublin and Galway), two colleges (in Dungarvan and New Ross), friars in third-level colleges and in various religious and social and cultural apostolates.
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