A detailed study of the continental origins and native development of both the medieval Irish rural dean and rural deanery, largely drawn from the archiepiscopal registers of Armagh. While the rural deanery is an organizational unit found universally in the Church, its importation into Ireland by the Anglo-Normans appears to have been designed to replace the bottom layer of small, local bishoprics which were carried over from the pre-Invasion period without entirely obliterating them.