rkable series of
questions which the Pope proposed to the bishops of that church are well
known in ecclesiastical history. It was, probably, during this visit to
the Holy See that Archbishop Fitz-Ralph became acquainted with the two
Armenian prelates, Nerses or Narses of Manasgarda and John, Bishop elect
of Clata, in Greater Armenia. These oriental bishops had long and
earnest conferences with their Irish brother on the sad state of their
once flourishing church, and at their earnest and oft-repeated requests,
the Primate resolved to contribute his aid to the great work of bringing
back the Armenians to unity. One circumstance connected with the
occasion, though it narrowed his field of argument for the time, has
given, nevertheless, to his writings a character which makes them
valuable in modern controversy. In his _Questiones Armenorum_ he was
forced to defend the Catholic doctrine almost exclusively from the Holy
Scriptures, seeing that his adversaries did not admit the authority of
the Roman Church. Hence his position as a controversial writer does not
differ from that which the Reformation has imposed upon modern
theologians since the time of Bellarmine.

Before the publication of Theiner's _Vetera Monumenta_, there was but a
single writer, Raphael of Volterra,[23] to assert that Archbishop
Fitz-Ralph had been created Cardinal. This solitary testimony, though
positive, was not considered by Ware and others strong enough to
counterbalance the negative argument drawn from the silence of all other
writers on the subject, and especially from the fact that upon the
elaborate catalogue of cardinals, drawn up by Panvinio and Ciacconio,
the name of Fitz-Ralph is not to be found. Among the documents published
by Theiner there is a consistorial process drawn up in 1517 on occasion
of a vacancy in the see of Ardagh,[24] in which mention is made, among
other glories of Ireland, of the Cardinal of Armagh, who flourished in
the year 1353. This is no other than our Archbishop Fitz-Ralph. It is
curious that the statement in this process is made in words almost
identical with those used by Raphael of Volterra. So close is the
likeness between the two statements that one is clearly copied from the
other. It is also to be observed that in the Papal documents he is never
styled Cardinal, and that even as late as October, 1358, Archbishop
Fitz-Ralph is styled by Innocent VI. simply Archbishop of Armagh,
although in the same letter the