A new biographical study of the ‘Rake of Rathfarnham’ reconnects with the Spanish branch of the Comerford family

José Antonio Peña Martínez has published a new biographical study of Philip Wharton (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

A new book is always a pleasant present that brings a smile to my face. It is even more welcome when the book is unexpected and when it is signed by the author. And the pleasures are added to when I find that I am referred to a number of times in the text and that I am fully referenced in the citations and the footnotes.

José Antonio Peña Martínez worked for most of his life in the pharmaceutical, agro-chemistry and food technology sectors in Spain. But since he retired, he has concentrated on historical research, particularly focussed on Aragon and on his home town of Llíria, 25 km north-west of Valencia.

Over the past 20 years or so, he has written and published a series of historical studies and biographies, and his latest book is a study of the infamous ‘Rake of Rathfarnham’, Philip Wharton (1698-1731), who became Duke of Wharton and Earl of Rathfarnham. Wharton inherited the Rathfarnham Castle and neighbouring estates, including Knocklyon and Scholarstown, when his parents died in 1716. His property in England included a large estate at Winchendon near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, about 20 miles south of Stony Stratford, where I now live.

Philip Wharton also inherited his parents’ great influence and wealth, with an estimated income of £14,000 a year. But within less than a decade, while he was still in his early 20s, he had dissipated a heritage that had passed to him from the Loftus family.

Later, Philip Wharton married his second wife, Maria Theresa Comerford, in Madrid in 1726 – just three months after the death of his sadly neglected and abandoned first wife Martha Holmes and after a very public affair with Lady Mary Montagu (1689-1762). Maria Theresa’s mother was Henrietta Comerford, her father was Colonel Henry O’Beirne, an Irish colonel in the Spanish army, and her step-father was Major-General John Comerford (ca1665-1723), of Finlough in Loughkeen, Co Tipperary, of Waterford, and of Madrid.

Despite having converted to Catholicism when he married to Maria Theresa Comerford, Wharton founded a lodge of English Freemasons in Madrid in 1728. He continued his dissolute life, and his health broke down completely in the winter of 1730. He died a destitute in the Cistercian Monastery of Saint Bernard at Poblet, near Tarragona, at the age of 32 on 31 May 1731, and was buried in the church there the next day. At his death, all his titles, apart from that of Baron Wharton, became extinct.

Alexander Pope wrote of him in his first Moral Essay, probably noting Wharton’s death, in 1731:

Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise …

Wharton appointed his widow as his ‘universal heiress’. But there was nothing for the widowed duchess to inherit. Some time after her mother died in Madrid in August 1747, the former Maria Theresa Comerford moved to London, where she subsisted on a small Spanish pension.

She died at her house in Golden Square, Soho, on 13 February 1777, and was buried in Old Saint Pancras churchyard. There were no children to inherit her claims to her husband’s former wealth and titles in Ireland, including the estates and castles he had disposed of at Rathfarnham Castle, Knocklyon Castle and Scholarstown House. The south Dublin estates had been returned to the Loftus family ten years earlier in a legal victory in 1767.

I have long been interested in Philip Wharton and this duchess related to the Comerford family, and I have spoken about them in lectures organised by Rathfarnham Historical Society and Knocklyon History Society about 20 years ago.

In his new biographical study of Philip Wharton, José Antonio Peña Martínez is particularly interested in his role in establishing freemasonry in Spain and in the masonic symbolism on his tomb in Poblet, one of the largest and most complete Cistercian abbeys in the world.

I am hardly equipped to critically engaged with these aspects of Philip Wharton’s life, but I am pleased that substantive portions of the genealogical details take account of my papers 20 years ago in Rathfarnham and Knocklyon and on my biographical details of the former Maria Theresa Comerford on the Comerford Genealogy site.

José Antonio Peña Martínez has been interested in history and historical figures since childhood. His first book, Edeta. Our Iberian Past (2007), was followed by Llíria in the 13th Century (2008); Martin I the Humane, a King without an Heir (2010); The Compromise of Caspe. A Historical Perspective 600 Years Later (2014); Roger de Lauria, a Titan of the Seas (2016); Saint Teresa of Jesus Jornet Ibars. Her Historical Context (2018); Charles of Trastámara and Évreux. The First Prince of Viana (2019); and The Prince Without a Kingdom (2020), and Marie Curie. La cientifica en un mundo de hombres 2022.

His latest book, a new biography, El Misterio del Masón Enterrado en Poblet (The Mystery of the Mason Buried in Poblet), was published this year. Although I am not descended from Philip Wharton or his Comerford duchess, I am related to her Comerford stepfather. That side of the Comerford family continued to be engaged in Spanish politics and life well into the late 19th century.

Perhaps the exotic and eccentric life of her half-brother’s granddaughter, Doña Josefa Eugenia Maria Francisca Comerford MacCrohon de Sales or ‘Josefina’ de Comerford) (1794-1865), who was involved in Spanish political intrigues in the early 19th century. She was given the title of Condesa de Sales and is the one figure in the history of the Comerford family in Spain who stands out as a femme fatale. She might even make a good subject for another biographical study.

My school-level Spanish helped me to read this well-researched and delightfully illustrated book. book. The author José Antonio Peña Martínez thanks me for sharing my research with him. But I have been more than delighted to be in touch again with this Spanish dimension to my family history.

Praying in Ordinary Time 2021: 2, Almudena Cathedral, Madrid

Madrid’s Catedral de Almudena was not completed until 1993 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During this time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

To mark Trinity Sunday yesterday (30 May 2021), my photographs were from the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Gibraltar. For the rest of this week my photographs are from six cathedrals in Spain.

Earlier in this series, I returned to the Cathedral of Saint James in Santiago de Compostela (31 March 2021, HERE), and the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (10 April 2021, HERE). This morning (31 May 2021), my photographs are from Almudena Cathedral in Marid.

The interior of the Catedral de Almudena (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Almudena Cathedral or Santa María la Real de La Almudena is the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Madrid. This is a modern cathedral, facing the Royal Palace or Palacio Real, and it was consecrated by Pope John Paul II as recently as 1993.

Madrid’s history really only begins in the year 852, when the Moors built a fortress near the banks of the Manzanares River. Those Moors had crossed from North Africa in the early eighth century, conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula within a few years, and established an independent emirate based in Córdoba.

In the year 852, as part of his plans to protect the northern approaches to Toledo, Emir Muhammad I built a fortress (alcázar) on the site of the present Royal Palace in Madrid. A small community grew up around this fortress or alcázar with the name Mayrit, which gives us the present name of Madrid.

In time, the resistance to the Muslim Moors grew, and Ramiro II briefly occupied Mayrit in the 932. Eventually, in their drive to capture Toledo, the sleepy outpost of Mayrit was taken by the army of Alfonso VI of Castile in 1085. Despite these upheavals and a failed attempt by the Moors to retake the fortress in 1109, Mayrit remained a sleepy village outpost. Its remote location attracted many monks and new monastic settlements, and Madrid soon had 13 churches – more than enough for its tiny population.

It was not until 1202 that Madrid acquired the status of a town. But it was still dominated by Church interests, and when a dispute arose over hunting rights in the area, a compromise was worked out recognising that the Church owned the soil but the local people, the Madrileños, had the rights to hunt everything above the soil.

The ruling Castilian royal families made the area their own hunting ground. The first royal cortes or parliament was called in Madrid in 1309, and in 1339 Alfonso XI held court in Madrid. However, Madrid remained a provincial town, long after Columbus reached America and the Inquisition expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492.

It was another seven decades before Felipe II moved the capital from Toledo to Madrid in 1561. However, the seat of the Church in Spain remained in Toledo and the new capital had no cathedral.

Plans to build a cathedral in Madrid dedicated to the Virgin of Almudena were discussed as early as the 16th century. But the cost of expanding and keeping the Spanish Empire came first and the construction of Madrid’s cathedral was postponed. Instead, for centuries, the Colegiata de San Isidro or Collegiate Church of Saint Isidore served as the cathedral of Madrid.

Saint Isidore’s was designed by the architect Pedro Sánchez in 1620. The church was consecrated on 23 September 1651, 13 years before its completion.

When the Archdiocese of Madrid was formed in 1885, Saint Isidore’s became the pro-cathedral of the city, and so it continued until the current Almudena Cathedral was completed in 1993.

The cathedral seems to have been built on the site of a mediaeval mosque that was destroyed in 1083 when Alfonso VI reconquered Madrid.

Francisco de Cubas, the Marquis of Cubas, designed and directed the construction in a Gothic revival style. The project ceased during the Spanish Civil War and was abandoned until 1950. Fernando Chueca Goitia then adapted the plans of de Cubas to a baroque exterior to match the grey and white façade of the Palacio Real, which faces the cathedral.

The cathedral was not completed until 1993, when it was consecrated by Pope John Paul II. Saint Isidore’s then returned to the status of a collegiate church.

The Neo-Gothic interior of the new cathedral is uniquely modern, with chapels and statues of contemporary artists, in a variety of styles, from historical revivals to ‘pop-art’ decor.

The Blessed Sacrament Chapel features mosaics by the artist Father Marko Ivan Rupnik. The paintings in the apse are the work of Kiko Arguello, founder of the Neocatechumenal Way.

The Neo-Romanesque crypt houses a 16th-century image of the Virgen de la Almudena. Nearby along the Calle Mayor excavations have unearthed remains of Moorish and mediaeval city walls.

Colegiata de San Isidro seen through an arch in Plaza Mayor … it served as the Pro-Cathedral of Madrid from 1885 to 1993 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 1: 39-49 (50-56) (NRSVA):

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’

46 And Mary said,

‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
48 for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

56 And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.

A street sign in old Madrid (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (31 May 2021, the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary) invites us to pray:

O Lord, let us remember that through you anything is possible. Bless our sisters and brothers in their Kingdom work.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The Royal Palace faces the cathedral … its grey and white façade is matched in the baroque exterior of the cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Scholarstown House, part of Knocklyon’s history, has been put on the market

Scholarstown House is on the market … rebuilt around 1909 but dating back to 1586 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I noticed during the week that Scholarstown House, just a short walking distance from my home in Dublin, is on the market through DNG, with an asking price of £2 million.

Scholarstown House is a handsome, well-proportioned period house with an interesting history and an attractive setting and it is listed on the register of Protected Structures due to its architectural and historical relevance.

Although Scholarstown House was built or rebuilt at the beginning of the 20th century, the house retains substantial original fabric and it shows the continuity of style and form with subtle modifications that are prevalent in buildings of this type.

This is a detached three-bay two-storey house with roughcast rendered walls. The timber sash windows are wider to the first floor and paired to the ground floor outer bays. The central glazed timber door has a segmental-arched radial fanlight above the flat projecting bracketed timber hood.

The pitched slate roof has gable chimney stacks. There is a large, three-storey, square-plan wing to the rere, with further ancillary buildings in the garden.

The original Scholarstown House was first built in 1588 for Archbishop Adam Loftus, after he acquired the townland of Scholarstown as part of the Manor of Rathfarnham following their confiscation from Lord Buttevant in 1583.

By the time of his death in 1605, Archbishop Loftus was the owner, landlord and controller of much of the lands and estates in the Rathfarnham and Knocklyon area, including Scholarstown, Oldcourt, Tymon, Woodtown, Killakee, Ballycragh, Ballycullen and Mount Pelier Hill or the Hell Fire Mountain.

His descendants soon became one of the most prominent, manipulative and long-tailed families among the landed aristocracy in Irish politics.

Over the past four or five centuries, the residents of Scholarstown House were mostly tenant farmers. The earliest recorded tenant, Henry Jones, was killed during the siege of Rathfarnham in 1641. In 1659, David Gibson was living in Scholarstown House.

The Rathfarnham estates, including Scholarstown, passed to Lucy Loftus in 1691, when her father, Adam Loftus (1625-1691) of Rathfarnham Castle, Baron of Rathfarnham and Viscount Lisburne, died fighting on the Williamite side at the Siege of Limerick in 1691. The cannonball that blew his head off is now in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

Lucy Loftus was his only daughter and heiress, and when she married Tom Wharton as his second wife the following year, in July 1692, she brought a vast fortune and estate to the marriage, augmenting Tom Wharton’s income by some £5,000 a year.

Her vast Rathfarnham estates included Knocklyon, Scholarstown, Woodtown, Ballyroan, Ballycragh, and other tracts of land in Whitechurch, Cruagh, Firhouse, Oldcourt, Tymon and Tallaght.

Tom and Lucy Wharton were the parents of the infamous ‘Rake of Rathfarnham,’ Philip Wharton (1698-1731), who became Duke of Wharton and Earl of Rathfarnham. He inherited the Rathfarnham estates, including Scholarstown, when his parents died in 1716. He also inherited his parents’ great influence and wealth, with an estimated income of £14,000 a year. But he would quickly dissipate this heritage within less than a decade.

In 1723, while he was still only 24, Philip Wharton first tried to sell Rathfarnham Castle and Estates, including Scholarstown, to Viscount Chetwynd for £85,000. But he was forced to reduce his asking price when eventually he sold them for £62,000 to the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, William Conolly.

Conolly would never reside at either Rathfarnham Castle or Scholarstown House, instead letting both to a number of tenants.

Later, Philip Wharton married his second wife, Maria Theresa Comerford, in Madrid in 1726 – just three months after the death of his sadly neglected and abandoned first wife Martha.

Maria Theresa’s mother, Henrietta Comerford, died in Madrid in 1747. Maria Theresa used the family name of her step-father, Major-General John Comerford (ca 1665-1725), of Finlough in Loughkeen, Co Tipperary, of Waterford, and of Madrid.

When she was widowed, Maria Theresa moved to London, where she subsisted on a small Spanish pension, and died in 1777. There were no children to inherit her claims to her husband’s former wealth and titles in Ireland, including his estates and castles at Rathfarnham Castle, Knocklyon Castle and Scholarstown House.

‘Speaker’ Conolly, who bought the Rathfarnham estate in 1723, including Scholarstown House, left his name in local memory, and a field in the area was known as ‘Connolly’s Freehold.’

The house is shown clearly on John Rocque’s map of Dublin in 1757.

In 1789, Scholarstown House was leased to the Somervell or Somerville family.

However, during the first half of the 19th century, the La Touche family of Marlay Park became the immediate lessor of Scholarstown, probably through defaults on mortgages held by their bank.

Transactions in the mid-19th century show Scholarstown House and farm formed a 92 acre estate. Scholarstown House was leased in 1836 by John David La Touche of Marlay Park to Patrick Dunne.

Between 1845 and 1847, Father Matthew Flanagan, Parish Priest of Francis Street parish in Dublin and secretary to the board of Maynooth College, was living in Scholarstown House.

Flanagan was instrumental in the design, building and decoration of the Church of Saint Nicholas in Francis Street. He brought in John Hogan and some of the great sculptors, painters and craftsmen in early and mid-19th century Dublin to work on the interior of his new church.

But he also left reminders of his own family tree around the church. In the west wall of the north transept there is a monument to his mother, Mary Flanagan, who died in 1830, and his brother, Stephen Flanagan, as well as a white marble sarcophagus on the east wall of the south transept.

However, the house had returned to the Dunne family, and Griffith’s Valuation shows a Mrs. Dunne was living in Scholarstown House in the 1850s.

The house later passed to Richard Duncan King, and in 1876 Michael Walsh acquired King’s lease of Scholarstown House.

Walsh later mortgaged the house to the Munster and Leinster Bank, but in the 1890s he tried to burn down the house in an insurance scam. He was arrested, tried, convicted and jailed, and died in Mountjoy Prison on 17 May 1899.

Scholarstown House then passed to his niece, Ellen Tierney, from Killeen, Birr, Co Offally.

The Jolly family was living in Scholarstown House by 1901. They owned a dairy yard and shop in Rathfarnham village, and rebuilt and restored the fire-damaged house in the 1900s. The Jolly family sold Scholarstown House to the O’Brien family in 1928.

The surrounding farmland has been sold off in recent decades for housing development, but the house today stands on a site of 0.67 ha (1.65 acres), which is being advertised as a ‘superb residential development site (subject to planning permission).’ DNG says it ‘would suit a medium density residential development which would be sympathetically designed to take account of the protected nature of Scholarstown House.’

The entire site is zoned ‘R2’ for residential development. But Scholarstown House remains an interesting part of the architectural and historical heritage of the Knocklyon and Rathfarnham area, and hopefully it survives the next stage of its history.

Scholarstown House is part of the architectural heritage of the Knocklyon and Rathfarnham area (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Franco’s funeral and refusing to whitewash his racism and oppression

Madrid was a riot of red flags and banners, interspersed with a sprinkling of black-and-red anarchist banners and a good measure of old Spanish republican flags of red, yellow and purple on May Day ten years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comeford)

Patrick Comerford

As I watched the news reports over these two days on the reburial of Franco, memories came back of waiting up on many long nights as a young journalist in The Irish Times, waiting for Franco to die so the city editions could run his obituary.

But the dictator died on 20 November 1975, on a night that I was off work. The same happened to me three months earlier when Eamon de Valera died on 29 August 1975, once again on a night when I was off after sitting through many late shifts.

I had joined the staff of The Irish Times from the Wexford People less than 12 months earlier the previous year. Who was I to complain at the time that after two consecutive runs of long, late-night shifts I never got to shout the old hackneyed phrase: ‘Hold the Front Page’?

And over these two days, memories came back too of spending May Day in Madrid ten years ago.

I had long avoided visiting Spain. At first, my excuse was the Franco regime and the lack of human rights. Later, in my own stupid snobbery, I pretended I was being deterred by images and prejudices created by popular package holidays and high-rise beach resorts.

Eventually, Ryanair persuaded me I was wrong, and I spent the May bank holiday weekend in Madrid in 2009. I quickly realised the city is one of the architectural capitals of Europe with some of the finest art galleries and museums, including the Prado, with its collections of Goya and Velazquez, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, which houses Picasso’s Guernica, and the Thyssen Bornemisza, with major works by Titian, Goya, Picasso and Rubens.

I set off early one morning to see some of those magnificent sights that I had seen from the outside from the top of the red bus the previous day. But I had forgotten it was May Day, and – of course – after the decades of fascism and oppression Spain had endured under Franco, May Day is celebrated with style in Madrid, and the workers have a day off.

From Plaza de Cibeles to Sol, Calle de Alcala was a riot of red flags and banners that May Day, interspersed with a sprinkling of black-and-red anarchist banners and with a good measure of old Spanish republican flags of red, yellow and purple.

If the right-wing can be triumphal in the Catedral de la Almudena, then at least on May Day the streets of Madrid belong to the left and to the workers. In Plaza de Cibeles, even Cybele and her chariot were bedecked in red and republican colours.

It is disturbing how politicians, journalists and amateur historians have tried to rewrite and sanitise Franco’s story since he died in 1975. The ‘fake history’ stories include a claim that Franco saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any other single person.

Franco may have had some Jewish ancestry on both his father’s and his mother’s sides, but no-one knows for sure … and even he may not have known. The name Franco is particularly associated with Jewish families in Spain before the Inquisition, and rumours of Franco’s Jewish ancestry were reported by Sir Robert Hodgson, a British diplomat, and repeated by Sir Samuel Hoare, the British ambassador in Madrid during World War II. The Nazis ordered an investigation, but this was inconclusive.

However, we know that Franco generally spoke in vile terms about Jews and openly expressed his antisemitic prejudices.

But we know that Franco generally spoke in vile terms about Jews and openly expressed his antisemitic prejudices.

At his victory parade in May 1939, Franco vowed to remain alert to the ‘Jewish spirit which permitted the alliance of big capital with Marxism.’ A few months later, he severely criticised Britain and France and justified the persecution of what he referred to as those races marked by the stigma of their greed and self-interest.’

Later, the Franco regime claimed there was an international conspiracy of Jews and Freemasons against Spain, the contubernio judeo-masonico.

Franco met Hitler on 23 October 1940 in Hendaye, near the Franco-Spanish border. Franco’s demands included Gibraltar and parts of French north Africa, but Hitler is reported to have furiously declared that he ‘would rather have three or four teeth pulled out’ than spend more time with Franco.

Throughout 1940 and 1941, Spain issued strict orders against allowing refugees to enter its territory. Despite this, about 20,000 to 30,000 Jews entered Spain. But they passed on through Portugal to Britain and the US. Many other Jews were arrested by the Spanish authorities who intended to return them to France. This would have meant certain death for them.

On 5 May 1941, Franco’s Dirección General de Seguridad ordered each civil governor to compile a list of ‘all the national and foreign Jews living in the province … showing their personal and political leanings, means of living, commercial activities, degree of danger and security category.’

Provincial governors were ordered to look out especially for Sephardic Jews, descendants of those expelled from Spain in 1492, because their Ladino language and Hispanic background helped them fit into Spanish society. ‘Their adaptation to our environment and their similar temperament allow them to hide their origins more easily,’ said the order issued in May 1941.

These lists of 6,000 members of ‘this notorious race’ helped to compile the Archivos Judaicos, which Franco’s regime maintained at least until 1944. El Pais claimed in 2010 that, as Spain negotiated its possible entry into the war on the side of the Axis powers, the list was handed to Heinrich Himmler.

Among the Sephardim, the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain by the Inquisition in the late 15th century, at least 550 Sephardim in Thessaloniki in Greece had Spanish papers.

In an example of singular bravery, the Spanish consul general in Athens, Sebastian Romero Radigales, mounted an heroic effort to save them, managing to move some to the relative safety of the Italian-controlled zone, and – despite their deportation to Bergen-Belsen – ensuring another 365 were brought to Spain by train in February 1944. However, Franco insisted the Sephardim could move through Spain but not remain there.

In German-occupied Hungary in March 1944, two Spanish diplomats in Budapest, Angel Sanz Briz and Giorgio Perlasca, issued passports, letters of protection and placed Jews in rented buildings under the Spanish flag. These two men saved the lives of around 5,200 Hungarian Jews. Sanz Briz was later honoured at Yad Vashem.

I am reminded this week too of the story told by Ronnie Drew in Sez He and by many others of how Brendan Behan decided to go to Spain on holidays while it was still struggling Franco’s brutal regime.

When he arrived at Madrid Airport, Behan found the police had obviously been advised about his political views and were waiting for him at the passport checkpoint.

‘What is the purpose of your visit to Spain, Mr Behan?’

‘I have come to attend General Franco’s funeral.’

‘But the Generalissimo is not yet dead.’

‘In that case,’ says Brendan, ‘I’ll wait.’

It is said he was deported soon afterwards.

As I strolled in the atmospheric streets south of Plaza Mayor that May Day ten years ago, elderly couples proudly displayed lapel pins with the flag of Republican Spain. They had endured decades of suffering and oppression and cruelty throughout the Franco years, and now they were having their day in the sun. Those who survive must be relieved that Franco has been removed this week from his place in the sun in the Valley of the Fallen, built built by the forced labour of political prisoners.

Franco’s planned burial in Madrid’s Catedral de Almudena has not taken place (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

How the Round House in Limerick became home to the O’Malley political clan

Mother Mac’s on High Street, Limerick … still known affectionately as the Round House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Limerick this morning to buy Advent candles for the four churches in the group of parishes, and to buy some theological books.

In a short gap before catching the bus back to Limerick, I wandered through the streets of the city and found myself at the Round House, at the corner of Denmark Street and High Street, where High Street splits in direction – High Street and Back Lane.

The Round House, which was built just outside the walls of Irishtown, is a landmark building because of its location and because of its curved brick façade. This pub forms an island junction at High Street and Back Lane, and provides an interesting vista along High Street.

The date when it was built is uncertain, but it was probably built in the 1780s as it appears on a map in the 1787 edition of James Ferrar’s History of Limerick.

This is a terraced, nine-bay, three-storey building, with a curved bay wrapping around the two streets. The replacement curved hipped artificial slate roof is set behind a curved parapet.

The red brick faced façade is laid in Flemish garden wall bond, and there are red brick arches above the window openings.

There is a curved timber shopfront at the ground floor level with cast-iron cresting above a curved fascia board. Raised and fielded timber door open into the public house, with an overlight above.

The cast-iron cresting which has been retained adds an artistic detail to an otherwise altered façade.

This is an iconic Limerick building. Since it was acquired by Michael McMahon in 2015 it has been known as Mother Mac’s, but it is still known locally and affectionately as the Round House.

The distinctive signage of Mother Mac’s seen today is the work of the local and internationally renowned sign writer Tom Collins. This has given the pub a new look and helped Mother Macs win the Overall Tidy Towns Award last year [2016].

Kate Fleming O’Malley (1820-1901) the matriarch in the family associated with the Round House for generation, came from a small cottage in Madaboy, Murroe, in Famine-struck rural Co Limerick. Kate sent her son Thomas from Murroe to Limerick City to work in the Round House. After two years, the elderly proprietor left the business to Thomas O’Malley in his will in 1871. Thomas died young, but the Round House stayed in Kate’s family.

Kate O’Malley held on to the Round House, making it a successful pub, grocery and spirit business in Limerick. Through strategic decisions, she transformed her family’s fortunes, ensuring the education of her large family of 12 children and securing their place in the social and political life of Limerick.

Her four daughters became nuns, but the rest of her family and her descendants included three Irish government ministers Donough, Des and Tim O’Malley; two Mayors of Limerick, Dessie and Michael B O’Malley; and two other Limerick Corporation members, Patrick O’Malley and his son Charlie.

Kate’s granddaughter, Dr Pamela O’Malley, moved to Barcelona in 1952, and was imprisoned twice in Spain by Franco’s regime. Her husband, Gainor Crist, an American who had studied in Ireland, was the model for the protagonist of JP Donleavy’s novel The Ginger Man. They married in Gibraltar and made their final home in Madrid, where she was a teacher in the British School.

The general who sentenced Pamela also told the school to reinstate her once she got out: ‘She is the best teacher my daughters have ever had.’ After the restoration of democracy, the same general was murdered by the Basque terrorist group ETA. Pamela attended his funeral, and comforted his widow.

She returned to Ireland frequently, visiting many friends in Dublin and Limerick, and spending holidays every summer on Achill Island, where I met her, and taking part in the Merriman Summer School and the Kate O’Brien Weekend.

Gainor died in 1964, and Pamela died in 2006.

Kate’s family also included rubber planters in Malaya, an unlikely sheepshearer swagman in New Zealand, and a branch of the family in the US.

They became lawyers, doctors, writers, tramps, poets, priests and journalists – the late Peter O’Malley was a colleague in The Irish Times for many years.

Grace O’Malley Cantillon, who completed her master’s degree in the history of art when she was 70, and became a guide in the Hunt Museum, tells the family story in her book The Round House O’Malleys – the Power of One Woman (2014).

A May Day walk by an old railway line with swallows, Aristotle and a light sabre

The old railway line and railway station south of Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

There is an aphorism that ‘one swallow does not a summer make.’ The saying is based on an observation by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια):

‘The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them. One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly, neither can one day or brief time of happiness does not make one blessed and happy’ (Nicomachean Ethics, I.7.1098a).

But May Day is supposed to be the first day of summer, and there was a large cluster of swallows – a dozen or more – swirling and swooping across the fields and roads as I walked out of Askeaton this afternoon, passing the old quarry and the Kingspan factory, walking on south through fields of green, with grazing cattle and horses, as far as the old railway station and the old railway line.

The former railway station building south of Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The detached former railway station building, now in use as a house, was built around 1857. It is a three-bay, single-storey block with a gable-fronted projecting single-bay one-and-half-storey west bay, and a lean-to to the west of the elevation. There is a gabled outbuilding to the west of the building.

There is still an old station platform to the south of the building, and the old railway track is still in position to the south of the platform, a square-profile water tower and a double-height machinery shed to the west of the station building.

This station house was in use on the Limerick to Foynes railway line until 2003, with a resident station master. The building retains its original form and is characteristic of railway stations of the early Victorian period.

Like the old Harcourt Street line in Dublin, this railway line could be renovated with some imagination, and as a suburban railway line from Limerick, like the DART or the Luas in Dublin, it could breathe new life into this part of west Limerick, and to Limerick city too.

Meeting a horse and rider on the way back into Askeaton this afternoon (Photograph: Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Walking back into Askeaton, I basked in the early summer sunshine, enjoying the company of horses and swallows, I recalled past May Days spent in Beaumaris, Portmeirion and Llfair PG in Wales last year, in Madrid in 2009, and in Bucharest in 1991. And I recalled too that today, as well as being May Day and the first day of summer, is also the Feast of Saint Philip and James in the Anglican calendar, although they are celebrated on 3 May in the Calendar of the Roman Catholic Church.

Saint Philip and Saint James appear in the list of the twelve apostles in the first three Gospels but are frequently confused with other early saints who share their names. In Saint John’s Gospel, Saint Philip has a more prominent rôle, being the third of the apostles to be called by Christ and then himself bringing his friend Nathanael to the Lord.

Saint Philip is the spokesman for the other apostles who are questioning the capacity for feeding the 5,000 and, at the Last Supper, enters into a sort of dialogue with Christ that leads to the Farewell Discourses in the Fourth Gospel. Saint James is said to be the son of Alphaeus, and is often known as ‘James the Less’ to distinguish him. He may also be the ‘James the Younger’ who, in Saint Mark’s Gospel, is a witness to the Crucifixion.

They are celebrated on the same day because the church in Rome, where their relics rest, was dedicated on this day in the year 560.

An ancient inscription shows the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles in Rome had an earlier dedication to Philip and James. In Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure (III, ii, 204), a child’s age is given as ‘a year and a quarter old, come Philip and Jacob,’ meaning, ‘a year and a quarter old on the first of next May, the feast of Philip and James.’

There is Pip ’n Jay Church in Bristol, whose official dedication is to these two saints as Saint Philip and Saint Jacob. But this day has also given us the word ‘popinjay’ for a vain or conceited person or ‘fop.’

Yet, despite the cultural legacy they have left us, the Philip and James we remember today are, to a great degree, small-bit players – almost anonymous or forgotten – in the New Testament, and in the Church calendar.

The Western Church commemorates James the Greater on 25 July, James the Brother of the Lord on 23 or 25 October, but James the Less has no day for himself, he shares it with Philip, on 1 May. Philip the Apostle, who has to share this commemoration, is frequently confused with Philip the Deacon (Acts 6: 7; 8: 5-40; 21: 8 ff) – but Philip the Deacon has his own day on 6 June or 11 October. Indeed, apart from sharing a day, Philip and James have also been transferred this year because yesterday was Ascension Day.

The James we remember today is James, the Son of Alphaeus. We know nothing about this James, apart from the fact that Jesus called him to be one of the 12. He is not James, the Brother of the Lord, later Bishop of Jerusalem and the traditional author of the Letter of James. Nor is he James the son of Zebedee, also an apostle and known as James the Greater. He appears on lists of the 12 – usually in the ninth place – but is never mentioned otherwise.

Yet, despite the near-anonymity of James and the weaknesses in Philip, these two became foundation pillars in the Church. They display total human helplessness yet become apostles who bring the Good News into the world. Indeed, from the very beginning, Philip has an oft-forgotten role in bringing people to Christ. Perhaps because he had a Greek name, some Gentile proselytes came and asked him to introduce them to Christ.

We see in James and Philip, ordinary, weak, everyday human men who, nevertheless, became pillars of the Church at its very foundation.

Perhaps because they are often seen as such ordinary, even weak, men among the apostles, I was surprised the week before last to see that in his statue on the West Front of Lichfield Cathedral, Saint James the Less appears to be holding a light sabre.

But no, he has not declared ‘Jedi’ as his religion on the census returns. He is, in fact, holding a book and club, which are his traditional symbols, but the copper handle of the broom has changed in colour with the weather – another reminder that summer is on the way.

Saint James the Less with his ‘light sabre’ on the west façade of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Collect:

Almighty Father,
whom truly to know is eternal life:
teach us to know your Son Jesus Christ
as the way, the truth, and the life;
that we may follow the steps of your holy apostles
Philip and James,
and walk steadfastly in the way that leads to your glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.

Making mission and pilgrim links with southern Europe

With Bishop Carlos López Lozano at the Dublin and Glendalough diocesan synod

Patrick Comerford

I was at the diocesan synod of Dublin and Glendalough last night [11 October 2016] in Templecarrig School in Greystones, Co Wicklow, and it was interesting to share stories of mission and pilgrimage.

During the debate on the report of the Diocesan Council for Mission, I was able to tell the synod that USPG had returned to using the traditional and long-loved initials describing the mission agency. With recent changes in the structuring USPG in Ireland, I spoke of USPG’s continuing work in mission, and encouraged support in particular for USPG’s work with refugees in Greece.

But it was good too to make links between the mission of the Church today and a mission story that links the Church of Ireland with two other southern European countries, Spain and Portugal.

Two guests at the synod were the Right Revd Carlos López Lozano, Bishop of the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church, and the Right Revd Dr Fernando da Luz Soares, Bishop of the Lusitanian Church or Portuguese Episcopal Church. Both are also Honorary Assistant Bishops in the Diocese in Europe, and Bishop Carlos is a long-time Facebook friend.

The two bishops are visiting the Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough at the invitation of Archbishop Michael Jackson as part of the programme marking the 800th anniversary of the unification of the two dioceses in 1216 under a Papal Bull received by Archbishop Henry de Loundres after the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome.

Both bishops spoke last night of how these two churches on the Iberian peninsula have strong historic links with the Church of Ireland.

After Vatican I, several congregations emerged in Spain and Portugal under the leadership of former Roman Catholic priests, seeking to follow Anglican teaching and order. When one of these priests, Father Juan Bautista Cabrera Ivars (1837-1916), approached Lambeth Palace and the Church of England in 1878 requesting the consecration of a bishop, he received a negative response.

In 1880, the Bishop of Mexico, Henry Chauncey Riley (1835-1904), a missionary bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US, visited Spain and Portugal and accepted the new congregations under his care. This was the beginning of the organisation of both the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church and the Lusitanian Catholic Apostolic Evangelical Church, each with its own synodical government.

The Lambeth Conference in 1888 opposed any episcopal consecrations in Spain and Portugal that offended the Roman Catholic Church, saying such consecrations would not ‘regard primitive and established principles of jurisdiction and the interests of the whole Anglican Communion.’

When the bishops of the Church of Ireland were approached, William Magee, the Irish-born Bishop of Peterborough, warned them that if they consecrated a bishop for Spain they risked severing relations between the Church of Ireland and the Church of England.

But William Conyngham Plunket (1828-1897), 4th Baron Plunket, successively Bishop of Meath (1876-1884) and Archbishop of Dublin (1884-1897), had a long-standing interest in Spain, and in 1891 he ordained his private chaplain, Andrew Cassels, for the newly-formed Lusitanian Church in Portugal.

In September 1894, Archbishop Plunket, with Charles Maurice Stack (1825-1914), Bishop of Clogher (1886-1902), and Thomas James Welland (1830-1907), Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore (1892-1907), consecrated Juan Bautista Cabrera in Madrid as the first bishop of the Spanish Church. Since then, the Spanish Church has maintained apostolic succession through the bishops of the Church of Ireland.

After Cabrera’s death in 1916, the church remained without a bishop for a time and was placed under the authority of the Church of Ireland. Archbishop Gregg regularly visited Spain and Portugal from 1924 to 1934.

The Spanish and Portuguese churches experienced persecution under the Franco and Salazar regimes. In 1954, Santos M. Molina, who had been jailed in Burgos by the Franco regime, was consecrated a bishop by James McCann, Bishop of Meath and later Archbishop of Armagh, with two North American bishops. Bishop McCann visited Madrid by travelling on a tourist visa.

Meanwhile, the bishops of the Church of Ireland undertook in the Lusitanian Church until the first Portuguese bishop was consecrated by Bishop McCann of Meath, also in 1958. Since then, the two churches have experienced a resurgence, and in 1963 they entered into full communion with both the Church of Ireland and the Church of England.

The Right Rev Jack Coote Duggan (1900-2000), former Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry (1970-1985), was committed to building links between the Church of Ireland and the Episcopal churches in Spain and Portugal. His intimate connections with these churches began in September 1971, when he and his wife, Mary, were on holiday near Marbella and attended an English-language service in Saint George’s Church, Malaga. Introductions followed and Bishop Duggan built on the traditional links with the Church of Ireland, taking an active role in the Spanish and Portuguese Church Aid Society, and acting as locum tenens in Saint George’s, Malaga, which was shared by the Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church.

In 1978, he represented the bishops of the Church of Ireland at the Partners-in-Mission Consultation on behalf of the Iberian Churches, in Lisbon, and supported the request made at that conference for the two Churches to be integrated into the Anglican Communion as full members – a move approved at the Primates’ meeting in November 1979.

In 1980, he took part in the consecration of Bishop Fernando da Luz Soares for the Portuguese or Lusitanian Church, and he was present at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Lisbon, in 1980 when the Lusitanian Church was formally received into the Anglican Communion. Since 1980, these two churches have been ‘extra-provincial’ churches in the Anglican Communion under the metropolitan authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Spanish Episcopal Reformed Church has its cathedral at the Cathedral of the Redeemer in Madrid. It cherishes the sacramental tradition handed down through the Mozarabic Rite, which dates back to the 7th and 8th centuries. Saint Isidore of Seville, who was influential at the Fourth Council of Toledo 633, gave the Hispanic rite its final form before the Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula. Mozarab is the term used for the Christian population living under Muslim rulers in Al-Andalus.

The church is one diocese, and for administrative purposes it is divided into three zones: Catalonia, Valencian Country, and the Balearic Islands; Andalusia and the Canary Islands; and the Centre and Northern Spain.

In 1998, the two churches became full members of the Communion of Porvoo Churches, which brings together the Anglican and Episcopal Lutheran churches in Europe.

Bishop Carlos was born in Madrid in 1962. He has degrees in history from the Autonomous University, Salamanca (1984) and in theology from the United Evangelical Seminary, Madrid (1985) and the Pontifical University, Salamanca (1991).

He worked as an accountant with the Bible Society Spain in Madrid (1987-1990), before becoming an assistant to the bishop of the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church (1990-1991) and then a parish priest in Salamanca (1991-1995). He was archdeacon (1992-1994) and Vicar-General (1994-1995), and was consecrated bishop in Madrid in 1995. He is the author of three books: Introduction to the Psalms (1987), Study on the Temptations of Christ (1989), and Beginnings of IERE (1991).

Last night, Bishop Carlos told us how his Church is planning to build an Anglican Centre at Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain, which is the third most popular site for Christian pilgrims, after Jerusalem and Rome. But while there are long-established Anglican centres in Jerusalem and Rome, there is none in Santiago de Compostela.

Bishop Carlos said last night that there are more Protestants on the Camino than Catholics. However, he said, there is no place for Protestant pilgrims to receive Eucharist when they finish the Camino. The new Anglican Centre at the end of the Camino de Santiago will cost an estimated $5 million.

Bishop Carlos López Lozano, Bishop Fernando da Luz Soares and Archbishop Michael Jackson at the Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Synod (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Finding relics of Shakespeare in Cambridge and Donabate

The Cobbe portrait … supposed to be William Shakespeare, who died 400 years ago in 23 April 2016 (Photograph: Wikipedia)

Patrick Comerford

Today [23 April 2016] marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. His great Spanish contemporary Miguel Cervantes died in Madrid on 22 April 1616.

To celebrate this unusual coincidence, UNESCO marks 23 April as the International Day of the Book. However, these dates are a little further apart than it appears: Spain adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582, but England was still using the Julian calendar in 1616. So Shakespeare’s death on 23 April 1616 in the Julian calendar was the equivalent to 3 May 1616 in the Gregorian calendar. In other words, Shakespeare did not die on the day Cervantes was being buried, for the two great writers died 11 days apart.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on a monument to Miguel Cervantes in Madrid (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But there are still some coincidences that survive for pub quizzes. For example, it is also claimed that Shakespeare was born on 23 April, and everyone knows that today is also Saint George’s Day.

Saint George is not only the patron saint of England, but also the patron saint of many other places, including – as I found out during recent visit – both Lisbon and Barcelona.

But, how many people realise that on the day William Shakespeare died in Stratford-upon-Avon Oliver Cromwell was being admitted to Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge University?

Oliver Cromwell’s portrait in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Thomas Carlyle noted: “Whilst Oliver Cromwell was entering himself of Sidney Sussex College, William Shakespeare was taking his farewell of this world … Oliver’s father saw Oliver write in the album at Cambridge; at Stratford, Shakespeare’s Anne Hathaway was weeping over his bed … They have their exits and their entrances and one people in time plays many parts.”

Two days after his admission to Sidney Sussex, Oliver Cromwell marked his 17th birthday. I have often sat beneath Cromwell’s portrait in the College Hall, but I can hardly imagine him as the sort of man to celebrate this event with a wild undergraduate party, or even crossing Sidney Street to buy a bottle of wine in Sainsbury’s. On the other hand, if he had a little more sense of fun and was a little more engaged with life, he might not have left Sidney Sussex without a degree.

Shakespeare’s contribution to the English language and literature is rivalled only, perhaps, by the language of the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Version or Authorised Version of the Bible.

Now a handwritten manuscript, hidden for years in an archive in Cromwell’s old college, is bringing new insights into the way the Bible was translated into English. Scholars recently found a draft of the King James Bible that was produced between 1604 and 1610 by Samuel Ward (1572-1643), a Cambridge theologian who was the Master of Sidney Sussex College at the time Cromwell was admitted as a fellow commoner.

Professor Jeffrey Miller of Montclair State University, New Jersey, found a notebook containing the writings late last year (2015) and has been working since then to verify its contents.

Dr Nicholas Rogers, the archivist at Sidney Sussex, was present when the discovery was made. “It is a delightful surprise,” Dr Rogers has said. “It is nice to find something other than Cromwell documents, for which the college is known.”

Samuel Ward was elected Master of Sidney Sussex College in 1610, six years before Cromwell arrived. This small notebook is in his own handwriting from that time. The manuscript had once been catalogued in the college archive as annotations for a single section of the Bible. But it now casts light on how the edited text of the King James Bible was put together.

The King James Bible was eventually completed in 1611. The discovery of the manuscript indicates Ward worked on the draft while he was the Master of Sidney Sussex. The evidence shows how he took on various segments of the Bible to translate and compile from existing Hebrew and Greek documents. He also worked on the Apocrypha, which was published as part of the original King James Bible although is often omitted from later editions.

In 1623, Samuel Ward was appointed Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity in Cambridge. But he lost his Calvinist friends when the First English Civil War broke out, and because of his sworn allegiance to the crown he refused to take the Oath of the Solemn League and Covenant.

In 1643, Cromwell’s sympathisers made Ward a prisoner in Saint John’s College. When his health gave way, Ward was allowed to retire to Sidney Sussex College. On 30 August 1643, while he was in the chapel in Sidney Sussex, he was gripped by a seizure. He died on 7 September and was buried in the college chapel – three centuries later, Cromwell’s head was buried nearby in the ante-chapel on 25 March 1960.

The plaque in the ante-chapel in Sidney Sussex College marking the burial of Cromwell’s head in his old Cambridge collge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Earlier this month, I was writing about Shakespeare’s Irish connections, including the Irish characters in his plays, his supposed use of Irish idiomatic and colloquial terms, and the legend about his connections with Dalkey through the composer John Dowden.

But there is also another connection between the Bard and Ireland through the Cobbe Portrait, an unattributed panel painting of William Shakespeare painted from life, and believed by some to be the only surviving painting of Shakespeare.

The portrait was inherited by the Cobbe family of Newbridge House in Donabate through an association with Shakespeare’s patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

Above the subject’s head, the Cobbe portrait is inscribed with the Latin words ‘Principum amicitias!’ – “the friendships of princes” or “the alliances of princes.” This may be an allusion to Horace’s Odes 2.1, where the words are addressed to Asinius Pollio, a poet and playwright.

Archbishop Charles Cobbe’s portrait in the Chapter House, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The Cobbe family came to Ireland when Charles Cobbe (1689-1765) was appointed a chaplain to his cousin Charles Paulet, 2nd Duke of Bolton and the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Charles Cobbe later became Archbishop of Dublin (1743-1765), and I found myself sitting beneath his portrait during a board meeting in the Chapter House in Christ Church Cathedral on Tuesday evening.

The Lynders family came to Portrane about the same time as the Cobbe family came to Donabate, and my grandmother's family and the Cobbe family were said at one time to be the only freeholders on thaat peninsula.

The Shakespeare portrait is said to have passed to the Cobbe family through the wife of the archbishop’s cousin, Southampton’s great-granddaughter, who inherited some Wriothesley heirlooms.

Later generations of the Cobbe family of Donabate have included several prominent Irish politicians, clergy, writers, activists and soldiers, including the writer and social reformer Frances Power Cobbe, and General Sir Alexander Cobbe VC. The Newbridge Estate, acquired by Archbishop Cobbe in 1736, remained the Cobbe family home until 1985. It was then acquired by Fingal County Council in a unique arrangement with the family, who continue to maintain it as a family home.

However, until 2006, the portrait was completely unknown to the literary and arts world, and generations of the Cobbe family thought that it might be Sir Walter Raleigh. It was identified as Shakespeare only 10 years ago, although not all art and literary exerts are convinced. The Cobbe portrait is now displayed at Hatchlands Park in Surrey, a National Trust property, and has been the centrepiece of two exhibitions in Stratford-upon-Avon and New York.

Newbridge House, Donabate, Co Dublin … the Cobbe portrait was identified here in 2006 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘God of our pilgrimage, you have led us to the living water. Refresh and sustain us’

‘The Feast of Herod with the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist,’ Prado, Madrid. This enormous painting, almost 10 metres wide, is probably the work of Bartholomeus Strobel the Younger (Image from Wikipedia, click image to enlarge)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin,

12 July 2015,

The Sixth Sunday after Trinity,

11 a.m., The Parish Eucharist

Readings: II Samuel 6: 1-5, 12b-19; Psalm 24; Ephesians 1: 3-14; Mark 6: 14-29.

May I speak to you in the name of + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

For many years, I have been engaged in Christian-Muslim dialogue.

When I first became involved in this dialogue in the 1980s, I was worried that some people in Europe were then talking about Muslims in the same way that some people in Europe were talking about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s.

Today, the world has become more polarised. We have had 9/11; we have been reminded this week of the underground bombings in London on 7/7.

This polarisation has seen the extremists become more extreme – from one extremism to the next, from the Taliban, to al-Qaeda, to Boko Haram and the self-styled Islamic State with its beheadings.

It was brought home in the past few weeks when three Irish people were among the tourists murdered in the sunshine in Tunisia.

With this widening chasm between what is being delineated as the Christian world and the Muslim world, it is more and more difficult to talk about what we share in common, rather than our differences.

It is increasingly common in many societies to see religion either as an ideological servant of the dominant political forces, or as a minority interest that should be expressed privately, in the home and the family, but not in public.

With these dual polarisations, dialogue has become an exercise where we exchange arguments and compare differences, rather than a dialogue of companionship, in which we retain our integrity but realise that the other partner has something to offer as gift.

For example, I am impressed how the daily life of the average pious Muslim is regularly punctuated by prayer, five times a day, more than most of us manage.

I am impressed by the way Muslims fast once a year for the month of Ramadan, which this year comes to an end next Saturday [18 July 2015]. In the Church of Ireland, The Book of Common Prayer notes that all Fridays are “Days of Discipline and Self-Denial” (see The Book of Common Prayer 2004, p. 20). But this is a practice that is seldom honoured or observed.

And I am impressed by the way Muslims see pilgrimage as an essential religious obligation. Apart from the haj or once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, many Muslims also make pilgrimages to places like Jerusalem, Damascus, or the tomb of Rumi in Konya.

As a Christian, as a priest, I was surprised – but ought not have been – by the welcome I received in Konya three months ago. Would we, as Christians, be so welcoming to a Muslim visiting one of the sacred places of Christianity, I wondered.

Our Post-Communion Prayer this morning addresses God as “God of our pilgrimage,” thanks God for leading “us to the living water,” and asks God to “refresh and sustain us as we go forward on our journey.”

Where are your places of pilgrimage?

Are there places where you find living water and refreshment?

Have you found places where you are sustained on the journey through life?

Is there some place you can go to and find refreshment for your soul, either on pilgrimage or on retreat?

Inside the chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Two of my own places for regular pilgrimage, retreat and renewal are the Chapel of the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist in Lichfield, where I had my first adult experience of being filled with the light and love of God, and where I was invited to preach a few weeks ago at the Festal Eucharist on the Feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist; and the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Tollenshunt Knights, which I try to visit once a year when I am on study leave in Cambridge.

In Our Old Testament reading this morning (II Samuel 6: 1-5, 12b-19), David sets out on a pilgrimage to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Mount Zion, to Jerusalem. But it is not a journey without cost. Seeing David’s behaviour, his wife Michal despises and loathes him in her heart (verse 16).

In our Gospel reading (Mark 6: 14-29), we are caught in an in-between time.

At one bookend, we have last Sunday’s reading, when Jesus is faced with rejection when he returns home to Nazareth and when he warns the disciples that they too face rejection in their ministry and mission.

The other bookend is an episode later in this chapter (30-32), when Jesus calls his disciples together to go with him to a deserted place and to rest a while.

Pilgrimage and retreat are not necessarily about spiritual comfort and solace. Sometimes they are about preparing to face the truth, to face the world as it really is.

And this morning’s Gospel story is full of stark, cruel, violent reality. To achieve this dramatic effect, it is told with recall, or with the use of the devise modern movie-makers call “back story.”

Cruel Herod has already executed Saint John the Baptist – long ago. Now he hears about the miracles and signs being worked by Jesus and his disciples.

Some people think he is Saint John the Baptist, even though John has been executed. Others think Jesus is Elijah – and popular belief at the time expected Elijah to return at Judgment Day (Malachi 4: 5).

On the other hand Herod, deranged Herod, who has already had John beheaded, wonders whether John is back again. And we are presented with a flashback to the story of Saint John the Baptist, how he was executed in a moment of passion, how Herod grieved, and how John was buried.

At this point, the story reminds us of the cost of discipleship, and prepares us for the accounts later in this Gospel of the arrest of Jesus, his trial, including being brought before Herod, his execution, and his burial.

Saint John the Baptist remains a key figure for all traditions in the Middle East and beyond. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, he is the last of the prophets, providing the bridge between the Old and New Testaments.

Several places claim they have the severed head of Saint John the Baptist, and have become centres of pilgrimage, including a church in Rome, in the past two churches in England, the Monastery of Saint Macarius in Wadi Natrun in Egypt, and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.

When the late Pope John Paul II took off his shoes and prayed at the shrine of Saint John the Baptist in the Umayyad Mosque on a pilgrimage to Damascus in 2001, he sent out a clear message that Christians and Muslims can work together and can find more that unites us than divides us.

Father Irenaeus, a monk in the Monastery of Saint Macarius in Wadi Natrun, showing the relics in the crypt of Saint John the Baptist below the northern wall of the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I have also visited the Monastery of Saint Macarius. Each day, this monastery receives large numbers of Egyptian and foreign visitors, sometimes as many as 1,000 a day, both Christian and Muslim. Despite the upheavals and violence in Egypt, this monastery is playing a significant role in the spiritual awakening of the Coptic Church.

The monastery website says: “We receive all our visitors, no matter what their religious conviction, with joy, warmth and graciousness, not out of a mistaken optimism, but in genuine and sincere love for each person.”

Going out into the desert to this monastery is not a retreat from the world; it is an invitation to a new commitment to renewal, ecumenism and dialogue.

Those places associated with Saint John the Baptist can be reminders that pilgrimage and retreat are not withdrawals from the world, but are challenges to the ways of the world, particularly at times of injustice and violence.

Those places associated with Saint John the Baptist in the Middle East, including Syria and Egypt, remind us that there is another way. That we are not disciples of Herod, that blood-letting for the sake of power and victimising people of religion is not the way for people of religion who share a vision of peace.

And of course, this morning, these places must be in our prayers as we pray that integrity, morality and honour should triumph over arrogance, vengeance and the tyrannical abuse of power, that, in the words of this morning’s Collect, love may be poured into our hearts so that we may obtain God’s promises, “which exceed all that we can desire.”

And so may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Saint John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary … a scene in the chancel of Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Collect:

Merciful God,
you have prepared for those who love you
such good things as pass our understanding:
Pour into our hearts such love toward you
that we, loving you above all things,
may obtain your promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

God of our pilgrimage,
you have led us to the living water.
Refresh and sustain us
as we go forward on our journey,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy, and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This sermon was preached at the Solemn Eucharist in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbirdge, Dublin, on Sunday 12 July 2015.

Art for Lent (33): ‘The Raising of Lazarus’ (ca 1510-1518), by Juan de Flandes

The Raising of Lazarus, Juan de Flandes, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Patrick Comerford

This Sunday [6 April 2014] is the Fifth Sunday in Lent. The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary are: Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8: 6-11; John 11: 1-45.

John 11: 1-45

1Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus,‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ 4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ 5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

7 Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ 8 The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ 9 Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ 11 After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’12 The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ 13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. 14 Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ 16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’

17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21 Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ 23 Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24 Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ 25 Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ 27 She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’

28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ 29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37 But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ 40 Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

The story in the painting

This Lazarus was a friend of Jesus. He dies of a disease after being seen by Christ. His sisters Martha and Mary are convinced that Lazarus would still be alive if Christ had not left. Christ, deeply touched by their sadness, raises Lazarus from the dead.

The Jewish high priests may be the men looking on from underneath a wicket door. When they hear of this miracle they conclude that Christ has become a threat to their position. They decide that the insurgent must be removed, once and for all.

I have chosen as my work of Art for Lent this morning ‘The Raising of Lazarus’ by Juan de Flandes. This painting, which was completed ca 1510-1518, is in oil on panel, measures 110 × 184 cm (43.3 × 72.4 in) and is in the Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Juan de Flandes (ca 1460-1519) was a Flemish painter who was probably trained in Ghent ca 1480. He produced many paintings in Spain, from 1496 until he died in 1519. He is considered a master of the High Renaissance, working in a style like that of Van der Goes.

His best-known religious paintings include ‘The Raising of Lazarus’ (1518, Museo del Prado, Madrid), ‘The Revenge of Herodias’ (Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp), and ‘The Capture of Christ’ (1500, Palazzo Reale, Madrid).

The name Juan de Flandes means John of Flanders, but his actual name is unknown. However, an inscription Juan Astrat on the back of one work suggests a name such as Jan van der Staat. The name of Jan Sallaert, who became a master in Ghent in 1480, has also been suggested.

Juan de Flandes was born ca 1460 in Flanders, in present-day Belgium, and probably trained in Ghent. His work shows similarities to that of Joos van Wassenhove, Hugo van der Goes and other artists in Ghent.

He became an artist in the court of Queen Isabella I of Castile ca 1496, and by 1498 he is described as a “court painter.” He continued to work for Queen Isabella until she died in 1504.

He painted many portraits of members of the royal family, as well as panels for an altarpiece for the queen.

After Queen Isabella died in 1504 began painting for churches in Salamanca (1505-1507), and then in Palencia, where he painted a large reredos in the cathedral.

Most of his work is now held in collections outside Spain and they are mainly religious themes. Panels from a large altarpiece from a church in Palencia are divided between the Prado and National Gallery of Art, Washington, who have four panels each.

In this painting, Lazarus comes out of his tomb. Around him, we see two groups: Jesus and his disciples, and the two sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary.

Christ holds out his hand while he commands Lazarus to come out. His disciples are listening to him but they remain passive while the women are weeping and kneeling or prostrate.

The scene takes place in the open, in front of the house. Some of the onlookers put their hands to their faces because, as this Gospel reading tells us, the corpse already stinks.

The Risen Lazarus is looking at Christ as if struck with astonishment.

Rembrandt, The raising of Lazarus, ca 1630, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Reading the story:

This story is well-known because it once contained the shortest verse in the Bible: Jesus wept (John 11: 35, AV). Of course, the word used for Jesus weeping is not the same word used to describe formal weeping at a Jewish funeral. It means to shed tears, and indicates that Jesus is not just formally acknowledging the death of his friend, but is sharing in the human emotions of grief and sorrow.

Jesus loved Lazarus, who had died in Bethany. When Jesus arrives in Bethany, he finds Lazarus has been dead four days. Jesus comes to his tomb, and despite the objections of Martha, he has the stone rolled away, prays, and calls on Lazarus to come out. This Lazarus does, wrapped in his grave clothes.

The Raising of Lazarus illustrates the two natures of Christ: his humanity in weeping at the death of his friend and in asking: “Where have you laid him?” (John 11: 35); and his divinity in commanding Lazarus to come forth from the dead (John 11: 43).

The name Lazarus means “God helps,” the Greek Λάζαρος (Lazaros) being derived from the Hebrew Eleazar, “God’s assistance,” or “God has helped.” So, already the name of the principal character in the story introduces us to expectations of God’s actions.

When the news of Lazarus is brought to Jesus, it is brought with no specific request to come or to act. His reply is enigmatic, and we are offered a comparison between physical death, which is inescapable, and spiritual death, which comes by choice.

There is a tenderness here that counters any harsh interpretation of Christ’s words – we are told Christ loves Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus. Christ does not delay going to Bethany out of callous disregard for the plight of Mary and Martha. What he is going to do is not as a reaction, but on his own initiative, so that Christ is proactive rather than reactive.

We are confronted too with the Johannine contrast between light and dark, a Johannine theme we encountered in recent weeks in the lectionary readings, for example, about Nicodemus and the blind mean healed at the pool of Siloam.

We are confronted too with the Johannine theme of seeing and believing. We can contrast Thomas’s apparent faith at this point, with his refusal to believe until he sees for himself after the Resurrection.

Here, as in Saint Luke’s Gospel, Martha is the active sister, while Mary is the contemplative member of the household in Bethany (see Luke 10: 38-42). Martha has moved beyond personal interest in seeking for her brother; now she moves beyond even that wider but limited circle of want and need to accepting what God wills.

Martha addresses Jesus as “Lord.” But notice then how she uses three distinct titles in affirming her faith in Christ: Messiah, Son of God, and “the one coming into the world.” After that, the title “the Teacher” appears to be quite a mundane title for Martha to use. Yet this is also the title Mary Magdalene uses at the tomb on Easter morning (John 20: 16).

When Jesus asks: “Where have you laid him?” he asks precisely the same question the women ask when they arrive at the empty tomb on Easter morning (John 20: 2), and when Mary approaches Jesus in the garden (John 20: 13). So can we draw parallels between what is happening at this grave, and what we can expect two weeks later on Easter Day?

This chapter also includes the fifth of the “I AM” sayings in this Gospel: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live” (John 11: 25). This incident also reminds us that death is not the end. Indeed, I am reminded of how Archbishop Desmond Tutu used to say that there are things that are worse than death for a Christian … including the loss of values, commitment and faith.

Collect:

Most merciful God,
who by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ
delivered and saved the world:
Grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross,
we may triumph in the power of his victory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

God of hope,
in this Eucharist we have tasted
the promise of your heavenly banquet
and the richness of eternal life.
May we who bear witness to the death of your Son,
also proclaim the glory of his resurrection,
for he is Lord for ever and ever.

Tomorrow: ‘The Bosworth Crucifix’