ST. LAURENCE O'TOOLE
The son of an Irish chieftain, St. Laurence O'Toole became archbishop of Dublin and let the resistance of his people to English and Norman invaders. His appointment by Pop Alexander III as legate to Ireland angered King Henry II of England, who kept him from returning to his own country. The strain of wearying travel resulted in his death. Laurence was born in Leinster, Ireland in 1128 and died in Eu, France, on November 14, 1180.
Known in Irish history as Lorcan Ua Tuathail, he was the younger son of a Leinster chieftain. His childhood was overshadowed by the feud between his father and their overlord, Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster. When the King demanded guarantees from O'Toole, the ten-year-old boy was sent to the King as a hostage, and on the King's orders, was kept a close prisoner in a remote mountain area for two years. Then the abbot of Glendalough mediated between the King and O'Toole and took Laurence to his school in Wicklow Valley.
The Monastery founded by St. Kevin 500 years earlier had grown to the size of an university and was the seat of a diocese, its high traditions had not deteriorated with time. Laurence joined the novices there and later became a monk in the community. He was elected abbot of Glendalough at the age of twenty-five, and when the archbishop of Dublin died in 1161, Laurence was appointed to replace him.
Laurence continued in Dublin the austerities he had been practicing in Glandalough. He turned the cathedral chapter into a community of Augustinian canons and wore their habit. He never ate meat, fasted every Friday on bread and water, scourged himself, and wore a hair shirt. He fed as many as 40 poor people at his house every day. The burdens of his work caused him to return frequently to make retreats at Glendalough, and there he preferred to sleep in St. Kevin's cave above the lake.
He resisted the Anglo-Norman invaders who swept across Ireland in 1170. When Dublin was besieged, he negotiated with the invaders. When the city was sacked, despite his anguished efforts to prevent it, he spent all his time among the people, comforting the survivors and burying the dead, and, for a time, led the national resistance. In 1175, he traveled to Windsor, near London, to negotiate the treaty between King Henry II and Rory O'Connor, the Irish High King.
Four years later he attended the Third General Council of the Lateran in Rome. The Pope approved of his work and appointed him legate to Ireland, but this appointment cost Laurence the favor of King Henry. When Laurence went to England in 1180, still negotiating the peace between the Irish and the Anglo-Normans, King Henry forbade him to return to his see. Laurence followed the King to Normandy and finally secured permission to return to Dublin. Exhausted from the strain of the difficult negotiations and from the endless traveling, he became ill on the way home and stopped at the Abbey of St. Victor at Eu. His condition deteriorated and he died there; his body is enshrined in the Church of Our Lady at Eu. This information comes form "The Catholic Encyclopedia for Home and School" Page 294.
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