Footsteps

Morning prayers on the Großglockner, Otto Barth 1911

Is it us? We seem to be following in the footsteps of thieves and wreckers… Back in June 2012 we visited St Manchan’s Church, in Boher, Offaly and saw the splendid shrine of that Saint securely locked in an armoured glass case and mounted in front of the equally magnificent Harry Clarke window depicting him. That was at about 1 o’clock in the afternoon. We were shocked to hear on the news that evening that the shrine had been stolen at 1.30! Two men had taken just a few minutes to break open the case – in spite of alarms and cctv – and make off with the Saint’s remains…

St Manchan by Harry Clarke

The 12th Century shrine encased in armoured glass

Detail of the shrine

19th Century replica of the shrine in Dublin’s National Museum

We were relieved to hear the following day that the robbery had been bungled: the shrine was thrown out of the getaway car and landed in a bog: both it and the perpetrators were picked up by the Gardi. I wonder if perhaps the thought of what divine justice might be wrought from on high (from St Manchan himself, even) had put doubts into the minds of the thieves and diverted them from their intentions – whatever they might have been.

Harry Clarke’s depiction of the Saint’s shrine

Nevertheless, the incident led to some considerable debate on whether the reliquary should be returned to the church – where the security was evidently lacking – or whether the original 1,000 year old artefact should be put into Ireland’s National Museum and the replica which happens to be there should be sent back to St Manchan’s. The Boher people campaigned vigorously against this – quite rightly in my opinion – and eventually, after some improvements to the arrangements in the church, the shrine has been restored to where it belongs.

Carrauntoohil Summit – photo by Noel Mulcair: thejournal.ie

So there we were just a week or two ago, honeymooning in the shadow of Ireland’s highest mountain (although warmly ensconsed in a comfortable Kerry hotel) when we heard the news that, not far away, someone had climbed the mountain at night and felled the iron cross that had stood up there for many years, with an angle-grinder! Obviously some point was being made, although nobody was quite sure what that was at the time…

Gap of Dunloe, in the shadow of Carrauntoohil

The cross is felled…

The Carrauntoohil incident sparked off a lively correspondence in The Irish Times. Many were indignant at the act of vandalism, while others took the view that there is no reason why wild places should be ‘sullied’ with religious symbols. Hmmmm… that’s a bit harsh, perhaps: crosses on mountain tops have a been around for a long time all over the world and, ever since prehistory, humans have marked their presence on the landscape with monuments of one sort or another. As you all know, the two of us are fascinated (obsessed might be a more appropriate word) by megaliths, tombs, circles and inscribed rocks – and these are preserved archaeological artefacts – it would be unthinkable for someone to get it into their head that a standing stone should be destroyed because it might have represented someone’s god. At the very least, surely, the subject should be aired and a democratic decision made by a public majority before any such action is taken. Indeed, the subject did get aired after the event and I gleaned that the majority of respondents felt that the iconic cross should not have come down.

Crosses atop mountains in countries beyond these shores…

Well, this story – like the St Manchan one, has had a happy ending. A group of volunteers has been up to the summit with block, tackle and welding equipment and the cross is back again.

Reinstatement – photos by Valerie O’Sullivan – thejournal.ie

Ireland has many summits adorned with constructed pieces – ancient cairns and tombs, and more modern statues and symbols, not forgetting the wind farms which are another source of controversy. We are all part of human history and one of Ireland’s big attractions for me is that the history is so visible and accessible. In 1968 a white marble Pieta was placed high up on the Goat’s Path in Glanalin townland. It’s someone’s personal monument to a much loved father. In my opinion the melancholy statue enhances the wild place: I make a bee-line for it whenever I’m in the area – partly to enjoy the magnificent view but also, I have to say, because I am fascinated to see how many coins and offerings are put into the outstretched palm of Mary. Look here for a fuller description on the excellent website Sheep’s Head Places.

Hilltop Pieta

Given our experiences to date I worried a bit about our visits to Holy Cross Abbey and the Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne in Cork, where we came across the shin bone of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy. But it seems to be ok: fair enough, the fragment of the True Cross was stolen from Holy Cross (it’s now been replaced with another), but long before our visit, while the saintly shin bone seems to have survived unscathed so far. I can’t help looking over my shoulder, though, when we visit such places. Ireland is full of enigmas…

Sacred shin bone – with Angelic guardians

Finola’s childhood haunts: the cross on Bray Head, Wicklow

Posted on November 30, 2014December 4, 2014
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Three Pilgrims in West Cork

Glebe Church, on the Ilen River

The guest speaker at this Thursday’s Skibbereen Historical Society meeting was Louise Nugent, speaking on the topic of Pilgrimage in Medieval Ireland. We became familiar with Louise’s work though her blog of the same title – a blog which manages to be consistently erudite and down-to-earth and entertaining all at once – and suggested her as a speaker. This also gave us the opportunity to meet Louise in person (she is as engaging and as knowledgeable as her blog) and, the next day, show her a little bit of our part of West Cork.

Bessed Thaddeus, scallop shells on his cloak

Blessed Thaddeus

Reliquary of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy, Cork

One of the great delights of following Louise’s blog is realising that the concept of pilgrimage – a spiritual journey undertaken for a variety of purposes – is still very much alive in Ireland. Local veneration of shrines, relics and holy wells is common and often involves a mass or prayers on special days. The “journey” involves going to the shrine, and sometimes moving around it in a set pattern or round. Larger scale pilgrimages, such as the annual trek up Croagh Patrick or a stay at Lough Derg in Donegal or a Novena at Holy Cross Abbey, transcend the local and attract pilgrims from around Ireland. In her talk, Louise also described the popularity of pilgrimage in Medieval times to holy sites outside Ireland such as York, Santiago de Compostela, Rome, or Jerusalem. Those who completed the Santiago Camino wore scallop shells to signify their pilgrim status, an image we had just seen the previous weekend in Cork in the Cathedral of St Mary and St Anne, where we came across a shrine to Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy. There was a statue, a painting, scrolls, but most fascinating of all a reliquary containing a leg bone! Blessed Thaddeus lived in the 15th Century and was appointed a bishop twice but was never able to take up his see because of the activities of the rival clan O’Driscoll.

The 18th Century Church at Glebe

Two old headstones

Metal headstones could be ordered from a catalogue

IRA grave

On our day with Louise we concentrated on the area around Skibbereen. We started off by visiting the 18th Century Church at Glebe, on the banks of the River Ilen. The church and graveyard enjoy a picturesque and peaceful setting and a wander around the graveyard yielded interesting headstones.

Holy Rosary Church at Aughadown, window detail

From there we went to the ruined medieval church at Kilcoe, stopping for a quick peak at the notable windows in the Church of the Most Holy Rosary at Aughadown. They deserve a fuller description at a future date, so for now I will include a detail from the rose window at the back of the church, designed and executed by the Harry Clarke studios in 1941.

View from the church

Doorway, Kilcoe church

medieval window, Kilcoe church

Kilcoe church

The church at the tip of the Kilcoe Peninsula was already a ruin in the early 17th century. Although a simple rectangular structure, the pointed arched doorway and the tiny ogival windows mark it as medieval, perhaps as early as 14th or 15th century. Romantic and atmospheric as it is, it has the added advantage of a clear view of Kilcoe Castle, famously restored by Jeremy Irons and gently glowing in the afternoon light as we were there.

Two of the three pilgrims at a holy well

Louise’s special interest is in holy wells and several audience members the night before had come forward with information about local wells and the practices and beliefs associated with them. Two of the best known and most beloved local wells are situated close to each other at Lough Hyne. Robert is writing about these wells this week so I will leave the detailed description to him.

The steps

Somerville and Ross graves

Boyle Somerville grave

St Barrahane’s

Our final stop was the village of Castletownshend and the Church of St Barrahane, filling two different functions. First, Louise had been to visit a holy well dedicated to St. Martin of Tours in Clare, and we wanted to show her the Harry Clarke window that Robert had described in his Martinmas post. Second, a trip to St Barrahane’s is always a pilgrimage of a different sort for me, as it is the final resting place of three of my heroes. The first two, of course, are the writing team of Somerville and Ross – more about them in this post. The third is Vice-Admiral Boyle Somerville, brother of Edith and a keen amateur archaeologist worthy of a post to himself in the future.

St Louis: detail of Harry Clarke window in St Barrahanes, Castletownshend

Come back soon, Louise – these two pilgrims have lots more to show you!

Posted on September 28, 2014September 28, 2014
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Holy Relics + Masons’ Marks

Modern Tabernacle at Holy Cross

Ireland is full of surprises. We are always coming across unexpected feasts for the eyes and the senses: often this arises from simply looking at the map for names that might hold a promise of history – or just ‘story’ – and head that way. Returning home from Dublin recently we diverted into Tipperary, for an investigation of the name Holy Cross.

The medieval abbey occupied an extensive site beside the River Suir

Restored interior

Cloisters

What we found was a thousand years of turbulent Irish history: a ‘Celtic’ hermitage dating from the first millennium became a Benedictine Abbey in the second, was refounded as a Cistercian Monastery in the twelfth century by a King of Limerick, Domhnall Ó’Briain, went through Henry VIII’s decimation of the Irish religious houses in the 1530s but survived as a pilgrimage centre until the Williamite wars of 1690. (Incidentally, in my anxiety to try to understand the fine detail of Irish history around this time, I discovered that the Protestant King William’s campaigns in Ireland were funded by Pope Innocent XI to the tune of 150,000 Scudi, which in today’s money is around four and a half million Euros! Can someone explain, please?) By the beginning of the 18th century Holy Cross was in ruins and, like so many other destroyed sites, the remains of the Abbey became a local burial ground.

The church abounds in riotous ornamentation

‘Tomb of the Good Woman’s Son’

Following the Reformation the Anglican Church of Ireland became the established church and the entire population – overwhelmingly Catholic – had to pay tithes to the Church of the Ascendancy. English Prime Minister William Gladstone declared “My mission is to pacify Ireland” on being elected in 1868, and his Irish Church Act became law in 1871. This disestablished the Church of Ireland: no-one paid tithes thereafter, and Catholics were free to worship wherever they wanted. At the same time ruins such as Holy Cross became scheduled National Monuments ‘…to be preserved and not used as a place of worship…’

The ruins of the abbey became a burial ground (Bartlett)

A rare fresco – depicting a hunting scene – was found in the church

On the 50th anniversary of the Dáil, on 21 January 1969, special legislation was enacted to enable Holy Cross Abbey to be restored as a place of Catholic worship: the only exception to the 1871 Act ever granted.

Medieval masons marks and graffiti

Now, in the third Millennium, Holy Cross is fully restored as a functioning Catholic Church and a pilgrimage centre which, every September, hosts around 65,000 pilgrims.

Beasts…

…and bird

Why do so many people come to Holy Cross? Possibly because it was important enough, originally, to house a relic of the True Cross. In 1586 the English antiquarian William Camden wrote of the ‘…famous abbey to which the people still come to do reverence to the relic of the Holy Cross…’ He went on to say ‘…It is incredible what a concourse of people still throng hither out of devotion. For this nation obstinately adheres to the religion of superstition of their forefathers…’ This relic disappeared in the 1630s.

Chapter House doorway

A king’s son?

After the restoration of the church in the twentieth century an authenticated relic of the True Cross was provided by the Vatican, and placed on display there. Unhappily, in 2011 masked raiders descended on Holy Cross and, using angle grinders, hammers and screwdrivers, stole the relic. The story has a happy ending however, as it was duly recovered the following year and was safely back in place when we visited.

Reliquary containing a fragment of the True Cross displayed in the North transept

There is an intriguing piece of folklore surrounding this building. An English prince of royal blood – the Good Woman’s Son – came to Ireland to collect Peter’s Pence (a tithe) but was murdered and buried in a wood near the Abbey. Following a vision, a blind monk discovered the boy’s body and carried his ring to his mother, the Queen. In gratitude she presented to the Abbey a large piece of the True Cross which had recently come to England.

Shrine

Altar

The Abbey Shop

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