Saint Mary’s Cathedral celebrates 850 years of life in Limerick

The west door of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick … celebrating 850 years this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I am in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, this afternoon to take part in a special Service of Thanksgiving marking the 850th anniversary of the cathedral.

In the calendar of the Church of Ireland, today [8 September] is the feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so it is the patronal festival of Saint Mary’s Cathedral.

The Dean of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the Very Revd Niall Sloane, told this week’s Limerick Leader that today’s Thanksgiving Service will be ‘the liturgical highlight of this year’s celebration.’

‘The Cathedral is looking forward to this special event in which we will have an opportunity to give God thanks for 850 years of Christian witness within the City and Diocese of Limerick,’ he said.

He added, ‘I’m delighted that a number of former bishops of Limerick will be joining us for the service along with public and civic representatives.’

Saint Mary’s, which was gifted to the Church by Donal Mor O’Brien the last King of Thomond, has been a site of Christian worship since 1168 and it is one of the oldest buildings in Limerick City.

The Thanksgiving Service this afternoon is part of this year’s festivities, which have focused on celebrating and promoting the Cathedral within Limerick and beyond. The guest preacher is the Right Revd David Chillingworth, former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.

The Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick, Dr Brendan Leahy, and the Mayor of Limerick, Councillor James Collins, are also taking part in the service, along with representatives from various groups within city. I am here this afternoon as the Canon Precentor of the cathedral.

The Thanksgiving Service begins at 3.30 pm and all are welcome.

An ancient cathedral site in Roscrea with its Round Tower, High Cross and Romanesque doorway

The Romanesque doorway at Saint Cronan’s Church, Roscrea, Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Roscrea in Co Tipperary originally stood on the ancient road that ran in part from Tara to Cashel. This location may explain why Saint Cronan founded a monastery there in the early seventh century, and why the monastic site briefly served as the episcopal seat in the short-lived Diocese of Roscrea in the 12th century.

Today, the site monastic site includes a round tower, a much-worn High Cross, an isolated Romanesque door, and a 200-year-old Church of Ireland parish church.

Both the Church of Ireland parish church and the Roman Catholic parish church in Roscrea are named Saint Cronan’s Church, in honour of the founding saint of these ecclesiastical sites, which I visited last week on my back to Co Limerick from Kilkenny.

Saint Cronan, who died in 640, is seen as the abbot-bishop and patron of the short-lived Diocese of Roscrea, which was later incorporated into the Diocese of Killaloe.

Saint Cronan was born in the territory of Ely O'Carroll, Ireland. His father’s name was Odhran, and his mother came from west Clare. After spending his youth in Connacht, he founded a number of monastic houses before returning to his native area ca 610, when he founded a monastery and school in Roscrea or ‘the wood of Cré.’

The Annals of Tigernach and the Annals of Ulster describe Saint Cronan as ‘Bishop of Nendrum.’ The Acts of Saint Cronan abound in miracles, including the legend Dimma, one of his monks, transcribing the Four Gospels without rest in a period of 40 days and 40 nights.

Saint Cronan of Roscrea is said to have died in the year 640, and his east is celebrated on 28 April.

The High Cross at the site in Roscrea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

In the confusion that followed the Synod of Rath Breasail in 1111, an attempt was made to establish an independent Diocese of Roscrea. However, there was no Bishop of Roscrea at the Synod of Kells and Mellifont in 1151, although it is later listed as one of the dioceses in the Province of the Archbishop of Cashel, probably incorporating areas that had previously been in the Diocese of Killaloe.

Isaac Ua Cuanáin, Bishop of Roscrea, died in 1161, and nNo more is heard of the Diocese of Roscrea after that. It was subsumed once again, along with the Diocese of Scattery into the Diocese of Killaloe, and the cathedral church became an Augustinian friary and later a parish church.

All that survives of the ancient monastic site are the Romanesque gable of the 12th century cathedral church, a high cross and a round tower.

The once beautiful sandstone gable is now very badly weathered from pollution and age. It includes a tangent gable, blind arcades, a doorway of three orders, with the figure of an abbot or bishop above, and rosettes. It has been compared with similar doorways in Cormac’s Chapel in Cashel and Saint Brendan’s Cathedral, Clonfert.

The distinctive 12th century High Cross displays a figure of a ‘clothed’ Christ om one side and Saint Cronan on the other.

The round tower in Roscrea is first mentioned in 1131, when it was struck by lightning.

The remainder of the church or cathedral in Roscrea was demolished in 1812, and many of the stones were used to build a new Saint Cronan’s Church of Ireland parish church.

Saint Cronan’s Church, the Church of Ireland parish church in Roscrea, was built in 1812 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Saint Cronan’s is a single-cell, gable-fronted parish church, with five-bay side elevations to nave, a four-stage tower and porch at the south-west elevation, and a vestry at the south-east elevation. The original building was funded by the Board of First Fruits with a gift of £100 and a loan of £775.

This church is a fine example of early 19th-century church architecture. The features include crenellated parapets, stone pinnacles at the gable ends and on the porch, a tower with crenellations and pinnacles, diagonal buttresses, pointed-arch windows with stained glass, and a timber battened double-leaf door.

The church was designed by a Roscrea-born architect James Sheane, whose name is inscribed on a datestone in the tower. He was buried in the churchyard when he died in 1816. His other known churches and glebe houses are in Modreeny and Kilrushall, in the Diocese of Killaloe.

The porch was added around 1813 by John Bowden (d. 1822), and the church was restored in 1879 by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (1828-1899) of Woodward and Deane.

The grounds include a graveyard and a replica high cross, enclosed by a rubble stone wall, cast iron gate and railings.

The Round Tower in Roscrea is first mentioned in 1131 and was inhabited until 1815 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Meanwhile, the neighbouring round tower is said to have been inhabited as late as 1815.

Until the M7 motorway was built, the main road from Limerick to Dublin cut through this monastic site, between the Round Tower on one side and the Romanesque doorway and the High Cross on the other side.

Despite the motorway taking traffic out of the centre of Roscrea, this is still a busy road with a blind and sharp bend, and I felt I was taking my life into my hands twice last week as I tried to cross the road from the road tower to the site of the church.

The arch of the Romanesque doorway at Saint Cronan’s Church, Roscrea, is of three orders (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

The joys of academic research in CITI return at an interfaith consultation

The Church of Ireland Theological Institute … the venue for today’s Interfaith Consultation

Patrick Comerford

It is more than a year since I left the staff of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. But I was back in CITI in Dublin today [7 September 2018] to take part in an interfaith Consultation organised by the Interfaith Working Group of the Church of Ireland.

The main speaker was Bishop Toby Howarth, Bishop of Bradford, who has worked extensively on interfaith relations in the Church of England. He spoke in the morning on the report Generous Love: the truth of the Gospel and the call to dialogue, produced by the Anglican Communion Network for Inter Faith Concerns (Nifcon) and discussed how the Church of England approaches interfaith issues.

Bishop Toby Howarth has worked extensively on interfaith relations in the Church of England. He was born in Kenya, and before his appointment as Bishop of Bradford, he worked in Pakistan, was a tutor at Crowther Hall and the Selly Oak colleges in Birmingham, Inter-Faith Adviser to the Bishop of Birmingham, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Secretary for Inter-Religious Affairs and the National Adviser for Inter-Religious Affairs for the Church of England.

After lunch, I was invited to chair the session at which the Revd Suzanne Cousins, of Moville, Co Donegal, presented her MTh dissertation, Generous Love in Multi-Faith Ireland, which was published earlier this year and was launched by Archbishop Michael Jackson in CITI [14 March 2018].

I had the privilege of supervising Suzanne’s research at CITI and TCD, and it is always a supervisor’s particular joy when a student’s dissertation is recommended for publication as a book by both the external examiner – in this case the Revd Dr Adrian Chatfield of Ridley Hall, Cambridge – and the Court of Examiners.

While she was working on this dissertation in 2015-2016, Suzanne also received the Oulton Prize for Patristics, which enabled her to join me at the summer school in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. The topic for the summer school that year was ‘Christian Faith, Identity and Otherness: Possibilities and Limitations of Dialogue in Ecumenical and Interfaith Discourse’ [31 August to 2 September 2015].

She quotes me in a number of places in her book, and she is generous when she says in her acknowledgements when she says: ‘I am especially grateful to my academic supervisor, the Revd Canon Patrick Comerford, for generously sharing with me his time, wisdom and expertise, and for his example of living engagement’ (p 5).

Her book identifies theological and pastoral challenges and concerns for clergy assisting their parishioners in everyday Christian-Muslim relationships. It is the eighth in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute’s ‘Braemor Studies’ series and is published by Church of Ireland Publishing (CIP).

This dissertation was a journey for both of us. It took Suzanne to many places I too enjoy, from Istanbul to Cambridge. Reading it once again this week in preparation for today’s consultation.

Listening to her presentation this afternoon also brought back many memories of the process of supervision, many cups of coffee in Dublin, and even discussions in Sidney Sussex College and in cafés in Cambridge.

Earlier this morning, at our opening worship, I was asked to read from the Old Testament: ‘For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts’ (Malachi 1: 11).

Later in the afternoon, the consultation discussed and ways forward for the Church of Ireland in the area of interfaith work, and we explored ways we can move forward towards a better future for all.

Today’s consultation was organised by the Church of Ireland Interfaith Working Group, which is chaired by the Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe, the Right Revd Kenneth Kearon. It had been planned for last March but was rescheduled because of severe weather problems.

The report Generous Love, which was central to our discussions today, is available HERE.

A book brings back memories of many cups of coffee and discussions in cafés in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)