As he entered his office on the day of Amalgaidh's death, his appointment could not have been made by popular election, but on some other principle accepted and recognized by the clergy and people. His vacant lectorship was filled by the appointment of
bishop of Armagh for seventeen years. Sir James Ware, who terms Dubhdalethe archbishop of Armagh, finds a difficulty in the fact of Forreidh having been also bishop during his time; however, the coarb of Armagh, or primate in modern language, was not necessarily a bishop, and in the case of Dubhdalethe there is even some doubt whether he was ordained at all.[1]
A bishop was a necessary officer in every ecclesiastical establishment, such as that at Armagh, but he was not the chief ecclesiastic.
In 1050, Dubhdalethe made a visitation of
county of Meath. The two fought, and many were killed. The quarrel probably related to some disputed property belonging to one or other of the abbeys concerned. This entry is omitted by the Annals of the Four Masters, deliberately so according to Thomas Olden in the DNB.[2]
His death was recorded in 1064, and "Maelisa
St. Columba, and other famous saints succeeded according to certain rules in which kinship to the founder played an important part. And thus it was that Dubhdalethe succeeded his predecessor on the day of his death, and that Maelisa, on the death of the former, "assumed" the abbacy.[3]
Dubhdalethe was the author of
Roderic O'Flaherty's opinion that it only came into use there about 1020. He considered him as contemporary with Mugron, Abbot of Iona (Hy) (died 980), and as he must therefore have been at least sixty-nine years old when he became primate, and may naturally be presumed to have compiled his Annals at an earlier period, he may have been actually the first to use it. His Annals are quoted in the Annals of Ulster (1021), page 926, and in the Four Masters, page 978. He is also reported to have been the author of a work on the archbishops of Armagh down to his own time.[3]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Olden, Thomas (1888). "Dubhdalethe". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 16. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 83–84.
