This alabaster image of the Holy Trinity from the Black Abbey in Kilkenny represents the towering figure of the seated and crowned God the Father, with his right hand raised in blessing, in front of him is the crucified Christ, whose cross hovers over the knees of the Father, while a dove of the Holy Spirit rests on the top shaft of the cross. The Father’s elaborate crown stresses the heavenly glory of the Trinity, while Christ’s crown of thorns emphasises the Son’s human suffering.

This iconographic type of Trinity combined with the Crucifixion has been described since the nineteenth century as the Throne of Grace or the Seat of Mercy (Gnadenstuhl): in such images God the Father holds or projects the cross, his gesture gives prominence to the gifting aspect of Christ’s sacrifice and emphasises the Father’s sacrifice of his Son. The term ‘Throne of Grace’ originates from the Bible; in the Letter to the Hebrews, St Paul writes ‘Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid’ (Hebrews 4:16). The throne of grace (‘thronum gratiae’) metaphorically refers to God reigning in heaven, and through the accompanying Pauline verses that name Christ as a high priest (Hebrews 4:15, 5:1), the throne of mercy obtains a Eucharistic meaning. Unsurprisingly, the Throne of Mercy iconography from the twelfth century became frequently associated with the bloodless sacrifice of Mass and was depicted in missals and on liturgical objects. The original position of the Trinity, possibly above the main altar in Kilkenny’s priory, would have highlighted the sacramental aspect of the image.

In the Kilkenny sculpture, which stands at c. 82 cm in height, the facial features of the Father and the Son, their hollow cheeks, beards and long hair create a visual unity between the two persons of the Trinity, and dramatically emphasise their shared pain. The humane and palpable sense of suffering is achieved with the help of alabaster as a medium – alabaster’s light colouring and translucence, and its relative softness in carving contributed to its frequent use in devotional imagery. Here, the interplay of light and shadow on the Father’s and the Son’s faces, on Christ’s emaciated body – all amplify the dramatic expressionism of the scene.

This fifteenth-century alabaster depiction of the Holy Trinity came to Ireland from an English workshop. In the late Middle Ages, England became an important centre for the manufacture and export of religious alabasters. Great workshops existed in London, Nottingham, Burton-on-Trent and York, with alabaster being quarried in the Midlands. Similar Trinity alabasters were produced in large numbers and many can now be seen in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, it is therefore unlikely that the piece was specially commissioned by the Dominican friars from Ireland, although it may have been purchased for a special occasion.

The Dominican priory in Kilkenny, commonly known as the Black Abbey, was founded by William Marshall in 1225, within a year of the Friars Preachers’ arrival in Ireland. The Kilkenny foundation, the third Dominican establishment on the island after Dublin and Drogheda, was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, probably at the wish of the founder. The Trinitarian theology was central to Christology and was formulated during the early centuries of Christianity. The leading thinkers of the medieval mendicant orders, including Bonaventure (1217/1221-1274) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), positioned Trinitarian theology at the centre of their thought. For Thomas Aquinas, it was that foundational belief in triune God which made it possible to correctly understand both creation and salvation – the times when the presence and the workings of the entire Trinity were manifested.

The dedication of Dominican foundations to the Holy Trinity was not uncommon, medieval priories in Cambridge (c. 1238) in England and Kraków in Poland (1222) held such dedications. It is possible that the Kilkenny friars obtained the representation of the Holy Trinity, to mark the church’s dedication and its 200^th anniversary of establishment. It is also likely that the sculpture was displayed in the priory above the main altar from the time of its arrival in Kilkenny in the fifteenth century to the time of the priory’s dissolution in 1540. At some point the sculpture was hidden for safe keeping in a niche located in the transept, where it was discovered in the nineteenth century during restoration works. The Black Abbey is the only medieval Dominican house still used in Catholic worship, its walls and surviving medieval statues of the Holy Trinity and St Catherine of Alexandria provide material links to the Order’s rich history in Ireland and its connections to Europe’s artistic and intellectual networks.

Author: Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton is Senior Lecturer in the School of History, University College Cork. She specialises in the cultural and religious history of the later Middle Ages. She co-edited Monastic Europe: Medieval Communities, Landscapes, and Settlements (Brepols, 2019). She is now preparing a monograph titled Image and Identity: Franciscan Ideologies in Medieval Ireland.

There is a book circulating in the Studium of the Irish Dominican Province that has been around for most of the last hundred years of the eight that we are celebrating. It can tell a tale of how some of those who taught there related to the theological life of the Church in the years before and after the Second Vatican Council.

The three names hand-written on the inside of the front cover page are of men who taught the part of Theology called Dogma in the Studium from 1930s to 1970s. The book has been marked and underlined in a way that tells something about them and the Studium in which they worked. As well as the marks it bears, it also has paper-clipped into it a faded, half-page letter. It is from the author of the book, the French Dominican M.-D. Chenu, and tells something about the man who wrote it. Along with the letter there is a cutting from a newspaper which tells something of how that man was seen by Church authorities in his day.

At the time he wrote this letter Chenu had become famous – to some infamous – for being one of the leaders of a school of theology which was emerging during the 1930s in the Studium of his Province, that had been exiled from France at the beginning of the century and made its home in Belgium in a priory called Le Saulchoir. He became a spokesperson for the school by writing, in 1937, the book that he entitled Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir (A School of Theology: Le Saulchoir).

That was an era when the dominant school of Catholic Theology was that called Neo-Scholasticism. Many neo-Scholastic theologians, among whom was the best-known Dominican theologian of the day, fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, reacted negatively to the kind of thinking being done at Le Saulchoir. They saw it as belonging to a movement to which they were giving the derogatory title la nouvelle théologie, ‘the new theology’. They knew they had the Roman Magisterium  (of which they themselves were the principal advisors) on their side. The Holy Office of the Inquisition would eventually, in 1942, put Chenu’s book about Le Saulchoir on the Index of Forbidden Books.

The Dominican who was teaching Dogma in Tallaght in the 1930s, fr Francis Smith, would have known about the controversy surrounding Chenu’s book. The Studium had links with colleagues of the Paris Province, one of whom, fr. André-Jean Festugière, had come on loan to teach Philosophy in Tallaght. Smith asked him to tell Chenu he would like to have a copy of his book. Chenu obliged and sent it with the letter to Smith that is still clipped into it. Evidence that Smith gave the book a thoughtful reading can he found in the careful underlining of many of its key passages. But it was a critical reading. There is, indeed, one ‘NB’ written in with a positive tick mark beside it, and a few other such tick marks. But more often the underlining is accompanied by a neat question mark in the margin. It is likely Smith was still on the side of the Neo-Scholastics and would have had problems with some of the things Chenu was saying about Theology.

Smith seems to have passed the book on to William Barden, who succeeded him in the teaching of Dogma. Barden was not, apparently, a book-marking man and did not even put his name on it. But, the way he himself is remembered to have taught Dogma suggests that if he had marked the book none of the marks have been question marks. Although he is not known to have said so, his Theology was entirely in keeping with what Chenu was prescribing.

When Barden left Tallaght in 1961, to launch the new mission being undertaken by the Irish Dominican Province in Tehran, and when I succeeded him in the teaching of Dogma, he gave me the book. I had been a student of his. In 1956, after two years of being taught Dogma by him in Tallaght, I had been sent to Paris, where the French Studium had by now been able to move from Belgium, to complete my theological studies. There, I found that the teaching and mentoring I had been given by Barden made me totally at home with the way Theology was being done – which was still the way described by Chenu in his book.

When I came back to Tallaght to teach in 1958 I brought that way of doing Theology with him, and especially when, after the departure of Barden, I was appointed to teach Dogma from the Summa. I did so during the years of the Second Vatican Council – which had drawn on, among others, the friend of Chenu and one of the giants of Le Saulchoir, fr. Yves Congar – and the following ten years. I added a few lines down the margins of some paragraphs, especially in the chapter on Theology. They were to remind me of certain passages that I thought important, but that had not been highlighted by Smith.

I was reminded from time to time that the Neo-Scholastics had not entirely given up their suspicions of LeSaulchoir-style theology. The Irish Dominican who was Master of the Order, fr. Michael Browne, let it be known that he thought I, after my years at Le Saulchoir, should be sent to Rome to do my doctorate – making no secret of his concern that I might have picked up some strange ideas in Paris that would be set right by exposure to Roman theology. Again, in an article about post-Vatican II theology that I wrote for Doctrine & Life, I made an inconsequential remark about fr. Garrigou-Lagrange. It was taken up by one of the brethren, the distinguished theologian and first Regent of the Tallaght Studium when it became a Studium Generale in the 1930s, fr Aegidius Doolan. In an article in Doctrine & Life  he suggested my article was an unwarranted discrediting of Garrigou’s way of doing theology. I tried to correct that impression in a further article.

When I, in my turn, was leaving Tallaght in 1975, I passed the book on to Paul O’Leary, who would be teaching Dogma after me. Paul returned it to me, without putting his name on it, when he was coming to the end of his teaching in Tallaght. I subsequently made it available to some others who, in the succeeding years, taught various parts of Dogma in the Studium. None of them has as yet added his name to it. It may be hoped that it was because they were following,  and not just in that, the legacy of the great teacher of Irish Dominicans who was fr. William Barden!

Author: Liam Walsh OP, St Saviour’s Priory, Dublin.

Writing in the wake of the dissolution of the monasteries, the scribe of the Annals of Loch Cé laments that ‘there was not in Erinn a holy cross […] over which [English protestant] power reached, that was not burned’ (1538).  Be it through iconoclasm, loss, or choice of materials, few crosses from medieval Ireland have survived to the present day.  One survivor is a fifteenth-century floriated latten cross with a gilt figure and blue champlevé enamel terminals with symbols of the Evangelists associated with the Dominican friary in Sligo.  The cross was purchased by the National Museum of Ireland in 1982 from the Dominican Fathers in St Mary’s, Tallaght for the sum of £2,500.

Over the years the Sligo Friary Cross has suffered damage and undergone repairs. The original tang was broken and replaced, the socket has been lost, the cross was remounted on a wooden base coated in polychrome plaster, and a projecting tang at the back of Christ’s head suggests the figure was originally nimbed.  The original socket of the Sligo Cross may also have had projecting arms supporting smaller figures of the Virgin and St John the Evangelist as on the Multyfarnham Cross.

The figure of Christ is depicted as suffering – his body emaciated, oversized nails pierce his hands and feet, and sharp thorns pierce his forehead – but also as resilient, with an upright position and the eyes open.  The broken body but enduring spirit reflects the dual symbolism of Christ on the Cross in the late Middle Ages as both sacrificial victim and triumphator over death.  The figure is very close in design to both the Sheephouse Cross and a crucifix figure in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A, M.116-1956). All three offer a similar upright pose, facial features, hairstyles, gaunt frames, and loincloths, and wear spiked Crowns of Thorns.  They were likely produced by the same metalworker or workshop.  The floriated outlines and overall forms of both the Sligo Friary and Sheephouse Crosses have strong parallels with contemporary English examples. Likewise a fragment of a decorated copper strip above the head of the Sligo Christ which may have originally been a scroll or titulus board is also suggestive of English production or influence as Irish inclusions of the titulus board are rare. 

The 1453 Synod of Cashel stipulated that all altars must be furnished with a crucifix, indicating perhaps that this was not always the case.  For reasons of economy, the majority of crosses in late medieval Ireland likely served a multipurpose role as both altar and processional crosses.  This is especially practical in a Dominican context where not only may the cross act as a focus for prayer and meditation on the altar, or side altar before the Rood, it may also serve in the daily Salve procession after Compline.  During the procession the friars passed from the chancel into the nave carrying aloft a cross and singing the Salve Regina.  This practice was popular with the wider community especially on feast days such as Easter and Christmas.

Wooden crosses have not survived from the period but they are known to have been venerated. The ‘Holy Cross’ of Raphoe Cathedral, Co. Donegal, was said to have cured eyesight problems in 1397.  Wooden crosses would have also offered a more economical option as metal crosses of all types were expensive items.  The late fifteenth-century churchwarden’s accounts of St Werburgh’s in Dublin provide for the repair of a silver gilt cross, as well as a new staff for the cross, rather than commission a new object altogether.  Gifts and bequests to abbeys often took the form of crosses.  The Ballymacasey Cross (1479) for instance seems to have been commissioned by one of the O’Conors to coincide with his father’s founding of the Franciscan Friary in Lislaughtin, Co. Kerry.  Likewise the Register of Athenry records gifts of crucifixes to the Dominican friary there.  How the Sligo Cross came to be associated with the community cannot be said for certain, but Sligo Friary benefitted from the patronage of a number of local families such as the O’Conors, O’Rourkes, McDonaghs, and O’Creans and so it may have been the product of such generosity.

A practical, utilitarian object for a medieval Dominican community, the Sligo Friary Cross is also a thoughtful, valuable object.  Its iconography reflective of contemporary religious thinking, its design indicative of the strong artistic dialogue between late medieval Ireland and Britain, its survival precious to students and enthusiasts of Irish and Dominican history and culture. 

Measurements

Total height (including base), 49 cm
Height of cross, 40.5 cm
Width of cross, 33.5 cm
Length of figure, 15 cm
Width across arms of figure, 13 cm
Diameter of medallions, 7 cm

Author: Karen Ralph.

Further Reading:

Armstrong, E.C.R., ‘Processional Cross, Pricket-Candlestick and Bell, Found Together at Sheephouse, near Oldbridge, Co. Meath’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, volume 5, number 1 (March 31, 1915), 27-31

Carpenter, Andrew and Rachel Moss (eds), ‘Art of Worship and Devotion’ in Carpenter, Andrew and Rachel Moss (eds), Art and Architecture of Ireland: Medieval c.400-c.1600, volume 1 (Dublin, 2005: Royal Irish Academy), 224-327

Coleman, Ambrose (ed.), ‘Regestrum Monasterii Fratum Praedicatorum de Athenry’, Archivium Hibernicum or Irish Historical Records, volume 1 (1912), 201-221

Hourihane, Colum, “Holye Crosses’: A Catalogue of Processional, Altar, Pendant and Crucifix Figures for Late Medieval Ireland’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature, volume 100C, number 1 (2000), 1-85

Mould, Daphne, The Irish Dominicans: The Friars Preachers in the History of Catholic Ireland (Dublin, 1957: Dominican Publications)

Ó Clabaigh, Colmán, The Friars in Ireland 1224-1540 (Dublin, 2010: Four Courts)

Ó Floinn, Raghnall, ‘Irish Goldsmiths’ Work of the Later Middle Ages’, Irish Arts Review Yearbook, volume 12 (1996), 35-44 

O’Sullivan, Benedict, and Hugh Fenning (ed.), Medieval Irish Dominican Studies (Dublin, 2009: Four Courts)

Ralph, Karen, “Behold the Wounds on Christ’: Crucifixion Imagery in Late Medieval Ireland’, Religions, volume 13 (2022), article 570, 1-33

Robinson, John L., ‘Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1484-1600, St. Werburgh’s Church, Dublin’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, volume 4, number 2 (June 30, 1914), 132-142

The grant coincides with preparations for the celebrations of the 800^th anniversary of the arrival of Dominican friars in Ireland in 1224, a milestone in Irish history, and the history of Christianity in Ireland. Since their arrival, Dominican friars have been active across Ireland, in towns and in the countryside, across boundaries of class, and ethnicity, and language, shaping the moral and spiritual imaginations of Irish people through their preaching, liturgy, and pastoral work.

With the help of this grant, Dr Giraud and her Dominican collaborators will create a network of scholars interested in the medieval heritage of Irish Dominican friars, and will oversee the digitisation of extant manuscripts which once belonged (or probably belonged) to Irish Dominican communities, and are now found in various British libraries. These manuscripts include two 13th- or 14^th-century Bibles, with fascinating paratextual material; a book from Limerick containing French-language material and an abundance of marginal doodles; and a book containing early Hiberno-English and some wonderful caricatures of Dominican friars. Once they’re digitised, these manuscripts will be freely accessible to the scholarly community, and to the public.

To stay up to date with the project, keep an eye on our website (dominicans.ie) and on our social media accounts (‘Irish Dominicans’ on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).

As a deacon, Br Ruaidhri’s task will include ‘assisting the bishop and priests in the celebration of the divine mysteries, above all the Eucharist, distributing Holy Communion, assisting at and blessing marriages, proclaiming the Gospel and preaching, presiding over funerals, and dedicating himself to various ministries of charity’ (CCC 1570).

During the ordination, Bishop Eamonn laid hands on Br Ruaidhri and asked God to bless him with “[an abundance of] every Gospel virtue: unfeigned love, concern for the sick and poor, unassuming authority, the purity of innocence, and the observance of spiritual discipline”.

Fr John Harris OP, the Prior Provincial, has assigned Br Ruaidhri to our priory in Tralee, where he will exercise his diaconal ministry before his ordination as a priest.

(Photos by Br Sean Blackwell OP).

As these brothers were being clothed in the habit, the ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ was sung, calling down the Spirit on them as they begin this year of walking in the footsteps of St Dominic. Please continue to call on the aid of the Holy Spirit for these novices, as they grow in the life of grace.

The vows themselves included, as is traditional, a promise of obedience to God, to the Blessed Virgin, to St Dominic, and to the Master of the Order and his successors. In a particularly powerful moment, after the Gospel, the brothers making profession prostrated themselves on the floor and were asked by the Provincial: “What do you seek?” Together they answered: “God’s mercy and yours”.

Drawing on the Gospel of the Day, the parable of the Prodigal Son, Fr Harris called on these four friars to live their Dominican lives imitating the mercy of the father in that parable, the mercy that they themselves had sought in joining the Order of Preachers.

All four brothers are also preparing for priestly ordination. Please keep their continued formation in your prayers, and pray for more Dominican vocations!

Bishop Tom Deenihan of Meath the ordaining prelate, preached a homily on the importance of generosity, determination, and sacrifice in the life of a priest today. Drawing on the Gospel of the day (Luke 14:25-33), Bishop Deenihan reminded the ordinands that they were called by Christ to take up their crosses, and to willingly and lovingly make sacrifices each day of their priestly lives.

The newly-ordained priests have received their first assignations from the Prior Provincial, Fr John Harris. Fr Kellan will be going to San Clemente, Rome, to complete his studies, and Fr Anthony will begin work as chaplain at Newbridge College.

We ask your prayers for these brothers of ours as they begin their priestly ministry.