The Rock of Cashel

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 45, 16 November 1922, Page 15

The Rock of Cashel

/;!■ : . (By AV. 11. N. Downer, in the Irish World.)

There are few more imposing ruins in the world, certainly there is none in Ireland, than the splendid group which crowns the summit of the Hock of Cashel. “Nothing,” says Sephen Gwynn, “is better worth seeing, nothing less often seen by tho tourist.” Situated in the Golden Valo of Tipperary, and rising abruptly from the smiling plain which stretches from Slicvenamou to Slieve Phelim, this great, solitary, ruin-crowned rock is;,a. never to be forgotten sight. Once a. military position of great importance, it is just the size of the “bit” which is missing from the Devil’s Bit Mountain near Templemore, and tradition has it that, in order to let his sheep cross the top more easily, his Satanic Majesty bit this substantial chunk out of the mountain.

Tiring, however, of such a weight, he dropped it at Cashel, a little over 20 miles South. How fondly writers have described the glories of Cashel —Stephen Gwynn in Munster and the Fair Hills of Ireland, and the Rev. G. N. Wright in his Scenes in Ireland, and if the writer of this little sketch has in several places quoted from them it is' because he feels that he could not equal, much less excel, their singularly striking and beautiful languages.

It -is not with the town, or, rather, with the City of Cashel (which Sir Robert Peel represented in the Imperial Parliament), that we are at present concerned. It is not with the cathedral of recent date, nor the stately bishop's palace (a Georgian mansion) nor do the two old abbeys at the foot of the rock itself attract us just now — chief interest is in the great rock, and the wonderful group of ruins on its bare two —ruins which have been described as “the noblest assemblage of monastic ruins in the Insula Sanctorum.”

Yet they are not all ruins, for the Round Tower is perfect, and the Chapel of King Cormac nearly so, and it is a curious fact that these two, which are amongst the oldest buildings, should be the most perfect now. A gate in a building which was once the residence of the Vicars Choral gives access to the top of the rock. Before you is the door of the great Cathedral, and in going over to it you pass the Coronation Stone of the Kings of Munster, and above it a- cross with an effigy of St. Patrick upon the east side.

-: A huge block of solid masonry, weighing some tons, which fell from the castle, lies near by. Over to the right, against the huge Avail of the Cathedral, is the beautiful Chapel of King Cormac, which (says GAvynn) “represents the final development of building carried out by Irish workmen and designers on purely Irish lines. The craftsmen who built Cormac’s Chapel could build anything under competent direction.” And truly it is a lovely relic, with its stone,roof, its two steeples, and its wonderful doorway, so often photographed and so often sketched adorned with zig-zag and bead ornaments, with an effigy of an archer in the act of shooting carved above the archway. The building is small,' but the beautiful stone arcades along the •walls and tho exquisite carving of the stones, produce an effect of almost dazzling richness.

; The great Cathedral is of later date—it stands on the site of a former building, dedicated to St. Patrick, and is f, of largo dimensions. The back of the nave, however, is . peculiar, in that it terminates in a castle— Cashel was sometimes the scene of bloody warfare. It was fortified in 1647, but taken by Lord Inchiquin. About the year 1495 the .Cathedral.was burned by the eighth Earl of Kildare the “Great Earl” — and it was on his being summoned before the King to Aver several charges which had been . made against him that the following well-known incident occurred.'

>, 'Replying to the charge of having burned Cashel Cathedral, Kildare said that ho never would have done it but that ho. thought Archbishop Creagh was within it at the time. w, This prelate was at that time one ’ of Kildare’s accusers, but when one of those ; present said: “All Ireland cannot rule this , man,” Henry, convinced that Kildare was not guilty of all with which he was charged, and no .doubt,' 51 used; by his blunt reply, exclaimed : “Then, he shall rule all Ireland,” and appointed him Lord • Lieu- ; tenant.. ■./ v . >. f);h v h; : . r: \•;,: ; y;.

,> The ; Cathedral w its Used for Protestant Worship until

the “Gothic . reign of .Archbishop Price”—ever since anathematised for his act of vandalism in having the choir unroofed, in which destructive work a regiment of soldiers was engaged. The Rev. G. N. Wright said, nearly a century ago, that Archbishop Price, who succeeded to the See of Cashel in 1774, “commenced the Cromwellian mode of beautifying a country by converting its noblest structures into picturesque ruins.” Price’s predecessor, Archbishop Bolton, wrote to Dean Swift: “I design to repair a very venerable old fabric that was built hero in the time of our ignorant, as we are pleased to call them, ancestors. 1 wish this ago had some of their - piety, though wo gave up, instead of it, some of our immense erudition.” -

By means of little spiral staircases and passages in the great walls one can climb to the very top of the Cathedral tower, and what a magnificent view rewards the effort! How well the writer remembers the great rugged range of Galtee mountains, culminating in Galtymore (3015 feet) stretching right across from south-east to southwest, about 20 miles to the south, and in the immediate foreground the fertile “Golden Vale,” while up northwards the Devil’s Bit looms large. Glance down at the buildings on the rock, the different ages are hero illustrated, as in a splendid gallery of arts, by the.works that were peculiar to each; while the majestic group looking down in silent but sublime language relates their history.

Cashel was to the South of Ireland what Tara was to the North —“the heart of Munster, whence principalities radiated out”—Thornond to the west, Ormond to the east, Desmond to the south. It dates back to the remote ages, and it was to Cashelthe royal residence of the Munster —that St. Patrick went about the year 450., Tradition has it that it was then, whilst preaching to King Aengus and his household, that he explained the doctrine of the Trinity by means of the shamrock.

But the greatest interest of Cashel begins when it ceased to be a royal residence and became the seat of religion. In 1101 Murtough O’Brien, King of Munster, before one of several expeditions into Ulster, convened a meeting of the clergy and laity of Death Mogh at Cashel, and “granted Caiseal of the Kings to the religious, without any chum of laymen or clergymen upon it but the religious of Ireland in general.” The most important event, however, that happened at Cashel was the famous Synod of 1172. Henry 11. had landed at Waterford, and going by Lismore had crossed the Galties and marched to Cashel, where he was well received by Archbishop O’Lonergan. To Cashel Irish. princes flocked to pay homage to the new sovereign, who had come to Ireland armed with the'Bull of Pope Adrian IV., which plainly stated that the Pope made over Ireland to England, that it might be brought into complete conformity with Catholic usages. Under Henry’s auspices the Synod of Cashel was convened early in 1172, and was attended by the archbishops and bishops of Ireland and several Anglo-Norman ecclesiastics. In this year the fate of the independence of the Catholic Church was sealed.

Few places in Ireland have witnessed so many important events; in fact, the history of Cashel is both a symbol and a. synopsis of the history of Ireland, and many of the great events in tho latter, stage by stage, century by century, have either been enacted at Cashel or have been closely connected with it.

These striking parallels are worthy of notice. First of all, St .Patrick’s visit to Cashel corresponds to the beginning of the spread of Christianity in Ireland. Then shortly after Ireland’s “golden era” of learning a bishop ascended the throne of Cashel in 900; this was King Cormac MacCullinan, the author of the Glossary, and at least a portion of the Psalter of Cashel, some of which is still extant. Then in 1172 Cashel witnessed a memorable event in the history of the Irish Church which took place at the same time as the tremendous political change in the country’s government, while omitting the events in the long intervening period the removal of the roof of Cashel , Cathedral might be said to symbolise the final suppression of the

native Irish, when, according to Lecky, “the last spasm of resistance had ceased.” Cashel is ;no ordinary ruin each of its wonderful antiquities is a sight in itself, and when grouped together and crowning the summit of/ a

singularly striking natural rock their charm is irresistible and their beauty urisUrpassed. : ■. ; . . > - r;; Thus for .13'dong centimes,', from The. middle of the

fifth until the middle of the 18th, Cashel was a place of importance. Priests ;- of Church and State no longer hold courts and synods in its splendid halls, but Cashel still makes its mute but eloquent'appeal to all who love dignity and beauty. “Here,” exclaimed Slieil, in an address to the electors of Tipperary in 1832, “my cradle Mas first rocked, and the first object that in my childhood I learned: to admire was that noble ruin, an emblem as well as a memorial of Ireland, which ascends before —at once a temple and a fortress, the scat of religion and nationality, where councils were held, where princes assembled, the scene of courts and of synods and on which it is impossible to look without feeling the heart at once elevated and touched by the noblest as well as the most solemn recollections.’’