Ua Caráin, Gilla in Choimded (Gillebertus) (d. 1180), archbishop of Armagh, is named as the son of Inlestar Ó hAinlighe ‘chieftain of Cenél Doffa’ in the annals of Loch Cé, though nothing else is known of his antecedents. His name means ‘devotee of the Lord’. He was bishop of Raphoe in Tír Conaill, which at that time still included the monastic church of Derry and its properties, from 1152, and may have been one of the seven new bishops consecrated by the papal legate, Cardinal Iohannes Paparo (qv), at the final session of the synod of Kells-Mellifont in March of that year. An ‘epis. de Rathboth’ is listed as a suffragan of Armagh in the documentation relating to the redefined Irish dioceses after that synod. In 1156–7 his name appears in its Latin form, Gillebertus, as a witness to the foundation charter of Newry Abbey, where he is styled ‘ep. Tir-conail’, and he swore fealty to Henry II (qv) at the council of Cashel in 1172. He succeeded Gilla Meic Liac (qv) (d. 1174) as archbishop of Armagh in 1175, and on his death early in 1180 was succeeded in his turn by Tommaltach Ua Conchobair (qv) in 1180. In 1178, he accompanied Máel Sechlainn Mac Lochlainn, king of Cenél nEógain, and Ruaidrí Mac Duinn Sléibe, king of Ulaid, on a hosting to Ulster to retake Downpatrick from John de Courcy (qv). The kings fled and the archbishop was left behind. His obit in the annals of Ulster call him ‘Gilla-an-C. . . . successor of Patrick’.
Sources
ALC; AU; Misc. Ir. Ann.; A. Gwynn, ‘Raphoe and Derry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, Donegal Annual, iv, no. 2 (1959), 84–100, at 91–2; Aubrey Gwynn and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval religious houses (1970), 94–5; A. Gwynn, The Irish church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, ed. G. O'Brien (1992), 140–41; NHI, ix, 239