‘Histories of Protestant Limerick, 1912–1923’ … a chapter in a new book published in Limerick
Patrick Comerford
Limerick City and County Council’s Decade of Centenaries programme for 2023 continues with the publication of a new collection of essays edited by Dr Seán William Gannon, of Limerick City and County Library Service, and Dr Brian Hughes, of the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.
It is a privilege to be one of the contributors to Histories of Protestant Limerick, 1912–1923, which has been published in recent weeks. This is a collection of 10 original essays exploring the experience of Limerick’s Protestant communities during the revolutionary period, when they formed less than 5 percent of the population.
The essays in Histories of Protestant Limerick essays draw on a wide range of traditional and largely untapped local archival sources, including the archives of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the Limerick Young Men’s Protestant Association, and the newly discovered papers of Robert Donough O’Brien, which are held in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.
These chapters look at aspects of political, religious, economic, and social life in the city and county in 1912-1923, and they chart the courses taken by Limerick’s Protestant communities to meet the challenges that they faced during this time.
In my chapter (Chapter 6: ‘Church-goers in Limerick During War and Revolution’, pp 83-89), I take as my focus Limerick’s ordinary churches and their congregations and their experience of revolution and war.
Dr Ian d’Alton, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College, Dublin examines the unionist/loyalist politics central to Limerick Protestant life.
Dr John O’Callaghan, of the Atlantic Technological University, Sligo, discusses the anti-Protestant sectarianism to which these politics, amongst other factors, could give rise.
The Revd Robin Roddie, the archivist of the Methodist Historical Society of Ireland, documents the revolutionary experience of Limerick’s Methodist and Palatine communities.
Craig Copley Brown, a research student in Modern Irish History at TCD, looks at life in Saint Mary’s Cathedral and the Limerick Young Men’s Protestant Association in 1912–1923.
Dr Hélène Bradley-Davies, a lecturer in historical and cultural geography in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, and Paul O’Brien use the recently discovered papers of the Alice Craven Trust to shine a spotlight on the Protestant poor, specifically widows.
Professor Terence Dooley, Professor of History at Maynooth University and Director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates, and Dr Conor Morrissey, Senior Lecturer in Irish and British History at King’s College London, chart the decline of Limerick’s Protestant landed gentry in the longer revolutionary period.
Finally, Dr Deirdre Nuttall, an ethnologist, researcher and writer, looks at Limerick Protestants in early independent Ireland.
In their introduction, Seán Gannon and Brian Hughes write:
“The First World War and its memorials are central to Patrick Comerford’s essay, which takes as its focus Limerick’s ordinary churches and their congregations in 1912−23. It is, Comerford argues, impossible to overstate the war’s impact on Protestant Limerick. It ‘blighted the lives of almost every Protestant family in [1914–18] and in the decades that followed’, as the memorials erected still attest. Attacks on Protestant persons and property during the subsequent War of Independence and Civil War, inevitably perceived as sectarian, exacted a further emotional toll. Yet Comerford writes too of communal resilience, outlining how religious life for all Protestant denominations proceeded with a remarkable degree of routine throughout revolution and war. Again, we can see how churches across the city and county remained open for worship, diocesan organisations continued to meet, and social life was largely maintained. This determination to press on culminated in rapid acceptance of the new dispensation, through declarations of loyalty to the Irish Free State.”
The book also includes three of my photographs: the World War I war memorials in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, and the memorial to Limerick members of the Howth and Kilcoole gun running team at Mount Trenchard churchyard, Foynes, where Mary Spring Rice and Conor O’Brien are buried.
A limited number of print copies of this new book are available through Limerick City and County Library Service’s Local Studies Department, and an e-book version of this volume may be downloaded from the Limerick Museum HERE.
‘I have not lingered in European monasteries’ (Leonard Cohen) … the cloisters in Jerónimos Monastery in Belém in Lisbon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church since the beginning of Advent, and yesterday was the Second Sunday of Advent (10 December 2023).
Throughout Advent this year, my reflections each day include a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. These Advent reflections are following this pattern:
1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;
2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
‘I have not lingered in European monasteries’ (Leonard Cohen) … in Arkadi Monastery in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 9, I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries:
Leonard Cohen’s second book, The Spice-Box of Earth, was published in 1961, when he was 27, and became the most popular and commercially successful of his early books, established his poetic reputation in Canada, and brought him a measure of early literary acclaim.
My copy of this book, to paraphrase words in another Leonard Cohen song, ‘has grown old and weary,’ or, rather, it is battered, stained and dog-eared. As I read through it, I recall the poems I selected for poetry readings in Wexford in the early and mid-1970s, including ‘I have not lingered in European monasteries’ and ‘The Genius.’
Soon after The Spice-Box of Earth was published, Leonard Cohen retreated for several years to the island of Hydra in Greece, where worked on the sharper, darker poems published in Flowers for Hitler published in 1964.
Thirty years later, Leonard Cohen retreated yet again, when he interrupted his career in 1994 and entered Mount Baldy Zen Centre near Los Angeles for what became five years of solitude and study.
But his immersion in Zen Buddhism did not mean Cohen had abandoned his Jewish faith. Rather, he remained an observant Jew. He pointed out that there were neither petitionary prayer nor a god figure in Zen practice and said the two were not incompatible.
After leaving the monastery, Cohen returned to writing poetry, sending new material to be posted on a fan website. By 2001 he was back in the studio recording Ten New Songs, which became an international hit.
In this poem, the narrator the many things he has not done: he has not lingered in European monasteries, a metaphor for not heeding centuries-old religious traditions; he has not engaged in practices of meditation that would allow his mind to wander and wait; he has not ‘held my breath so that I might hear the breathing of God’; and he has not engaged in traditional religious practices that he dismisses as the worship of ‘wounds and relics. Instead, he claims, he is content and sees himself as being self-contained:
During the day I laugh and during the night I sleep.
My favourite cooks prepare my meals,
my body cleans and repairs itself,
and all my work goes well.
These final four lines are, on first reading, supposedly positive in their outlook, contrasting sharply with the negative dismissals earlier in the poem. The narrator claims a self-generating mastery over his own reading of the world. But the reader is left with a sense of emptiness and loneliness.
The speaker unintentionally exposes his own self-conscious obsession with the past traditions that he claims to reject. In this rejection itself there is another kind of ‘lingering’, despite the poem’s opening claims. Perhaps the narrator really needs to hold his breath so that he may hear the breathing of God.
The narrator is speaking ironically when he concludes that he has not been unhappy for 10,000 years. The poem laments both the loss of a right and proper way and a life lived superficially. None of his accomplishments amount to anything, really. What is gained by merely meeting my bodily needs and doing my work well?
Indeed, the tone of the closing stanza is so ironic that the poem comes to mean the opposite of what it seems to say on first reading, and exposes the deficiency and failings of the narrator’s claims to being the master of himself.
Many years after returning to terra firma following his five years as a recluse on Mount Baldy, Leonard Cohen gave an interview in 2007, in which he said he had ‘always resisted the claim for the unique truth of one particular model, and, growing up in Montreal, one had powerful versions of Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism. It didn’t involve a real stretch to be affected by those traditions. It was natural.’
When he was a secretary to his teacher, Roshi, there was ‘a kind of rapprochement between Zen and the Roman Catholic church,’ through people like Thomas Merton and the Trappists in Massachusetts. Cohen would accompany him to these monasteries, setting-up the meetings and dialogue while Roshi was leading meditations.
His interviewer asked, ‘So you lingered in North American monasteries but not in European ones?’
Cohen replied: ‘That’s right. I did linger in a number of them and I would talk to the monks and get a feel for things apart from what I was reading, like Simone Weil. I remember an older monk with whom I became friendly. I said to him one day, “How’s it going?” and he said, “I’ve been here 12 years and every morning when I wake up I have to decide whether or not to stay.” It’s a rough life.’
He spent many years with Roshi and explained: ‘People have very romantic ideas but a monastery is a kind of hospital where people end up because they can’t make it in any other circumstances.’
Leonard Cohen, I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries:
I have not lingered in European monasteries
and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights
who fell as beautifully as their ballads tell;
I have not parted the grasses
or purposefully left them thatched.
I have not released my mind to wander and wait
in those great distances
between the snowy mountains and the fishermen,
like a moon,
or a shell beneath the moving water.
I have not held my breath
so that I might hear the breathing of God,
or tamed my heartbeat with an exercise,
or starved for visions.
Although I have watched him often
I have not become the heron,
leaving my body on the shore,
and I have not become the luminous trout,
leaving my body in the air.
I have not worshipped wounds and relics,
or combs of iron,
or bodies wrapped and burnt in scrolls.
I have not been unhappy for ten thousand years.
During the day I laugh and during the night I sleep.
My favourite cooks prepare my meals,
my body cleans and repairs itself,
and all my work goes well.
‘I have not lingered in European monasteries’ (Leonard Cohen) … the courtyard in Stavropoleos Monastery in Bucharest, known throughout the Orthodox world for its Byzantine library and music (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Luke 5: 17-26 (NRSVA):
17 One day, while he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting nearby (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem); and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. 18 Just then some men came, carrying a paralysed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; 19 but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. 20 When he saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you.’ 21 Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, ‘Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ 22 When Jesus perceived their questionings, he answered them, ‘Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, “Your sins are forgiven you”, or to say, “Stand up and walk”? 24 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’ – he said to the one who was paralysed – ‘I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.’ 25 Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God. 26 Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen strange things today.’
The healing of the paralytic man (see Luke 5: 17-26) … a fresco in Analipsi Church in Georgioupoli, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Monday 11 December 2023):
The theme this week in the new edition of ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Faith of Advent.’ This theme was introduced yesterday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (11 December 2023) invites us to pray as we reflect on these words:
As yesterday was Human Rights Day, let us celebrate the fundamental rights we share and safeguard the rights of our fellow human beings.
‘I have not lingered in European monasteries and discovered … tombs of knights’ (Leonard Cohen) … among the Littleton tombs in Penkridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Collect:
O Lord, raise up, we pray, your power
and come among us,
and with great might succour us;
that whereas, through our sins and wickedness
we are grievously hindered
in running the race that is set before us,
your bountiful grace and mercy
may speedily help and deliver us;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit,
be honour and glory, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Father in heaven,
who sent your Son to redeem the world
and will send him again to be our judge:
give us grace so to imitate him
in the humility and purity of his first coming
that, when he comes again,
we may be ready to greet him
with joyful love and firm faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
purify our hearts and minds,
that when your Son Jesus Christ comes again
as judge and saviour
we may be ready to receive him,
who is our Lord and our God.
‘Although I have watched him often / I have not become the heron, / leaving my body on the shore’ (Leonard Cohen) … a heron on the river in Newcastle West, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
