St Patrick’s Cathedral

St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, founded in 1191, is the National Cathedral of the Church of Ireland. With its 43-metre (141 ft) spire, St Patrick’s is the tallest and the largest church (not Cathedral) in Ireland. Christ Church Cathedral, also a Church of Ireland cathedral in Dublin, is designated as the local Cathedral of the diocese of Dublin and Glendalough. Unusually, St Patrick’s is not the seat of a bishop, as the Archbishop of Dublin has his seat in Christ Church Cathedral. Since 1870, the Church of Ireland has designated St Patrick’s as the national cathedral for the whole of Ireland, drawing chapter members from each of the twelve dioceses of the Church of Ireland. The most famous office holder was Jonathan Swift. There is almost no precedent for a two-cathedral city, and some believe it was intended that St Patrick’s, a secular cathedral, would replace Christ Church, a cathedral managed by an order. A confrontational situation persisted, with considerable tension, over the decades after the establishment of St Patrick’s, and was eventually settled, more-or-less, by the signing of a six-point agreement of 1300, Pacis Compositio. Still extant, and in force until 1870. Over the following centuries, the two cathedrals functioned together in the diocese, until in the period of disestablishment of the Church of Ireland.