Part 12 (1/2)
Here again, what a picture of the camp-life of the age; the darkness of night, the great central fire with the sixty grim and redoubtable warriors armed with keen axes, terrible and ready for action, and the sixty stern and terrific Scots with their ma.s.sive swords. The admirable manner of the narrative is as striking as the fierce vigor of the life portrayed. So we might go on, adding red pages of martial records, but in reality adding nothing to our understanding of the times. The life of the land was as full and abundant as of old, and one outcome of that life we may touch on rather more at length.
We have said much of the old religious schools of Ireland, with their fine and vigorous intellectual life, which did so much to carry forward the torch of culture to our modern world. For nearly seven hundred years these great schools seem to have developed wholly along indigenous lines, once they had accepted the body of cla.s.sical culture from the Roman Empire, then tottering to its fall. The full history of that remarkable chapter in the world's spiritual life has yet to be written; but this we can foretell, that when written, it will abound with rich material and ample evidence of a sound and generous culture, inspired throughout with the fervor of true faith.
About the time when the Norman warriors began to mingle with the fighting chieftains of the old native tribes, a change came over the religious history of the country. After sending forth men of power and light to the awakening lands of modern Europe, Ireland began to receive a returning tide, to reap a harvest from these same lands, in the friars and abbots of the great Continental orders founded by men like Saint Bernard, Saint Dominick and Saint Francis of a.s.sisi. A change in the church architecture of the period visibly records this spiritual change; continental forms appear, beginning with the rounded arches of the Normans, and pa.s.sing gradually into the various forms of pointed arches which we know as Gothic. Very beautiful Abbeys belonging to this epoch remain everywhere throughout the island, making once more evident--what strikes us at every point of our study--that no country in the world is so rich in these lasting records of every step of our national life, whether in pagan or Christian times.
We have said much of the archaic cromlechs. We have recorded the great Pyramids by the Boyne telling us of the genius of the De Danaans. The Milesian epoch is even now revealed to us in the great earthworks of Tara and Emain and Cruacan. We can, if we wish, climb the mound of heaped-up earth where was the fortress of Cuculain, or look over the green plains from the hill of Find.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Mellifont Abbey, Co. Louth.]
In like manner, there is an unbroken series of monuments through the early Christian epoch, beginning with the oratories of the sixth century, continuing through the early churches of Killiney, Moville, Dalkey, Glendalough and Monasterboice, from before the Norse inroads; followed by the epoch of Round Towers, or protected belfries, with their churches, nearly three score of these Round Towers remaining in fair preservation, while many are perfect from base to apex; and culminating in Cormac's chapel and the beautiful group of buildings on Cashel Rock.
For the next period, the age of transition after the waning of the Nors.e.m.e.n and the coming of the first Normans, we have many monuments in the Norman style, like the door of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, with its romance of Danish conversion and Norse religious fervor.
Finally, we come to the age whose progress we have just recorded, which covers the whole of the Middle Ages. For this period, which was for Ireland an epoch of foreign influence much more than of foreign rule, we have many beautiful Abbeys, built for those foreign orders whose coming was in a sense a return tide, a backward flow of the old missionary spirit which went forth from Ireland over nascent modern Europe. The life of these abbeys was full of rich imaginative and religious power; it abounded in urbanity and ripe culture of a somewhat selfish and exclusive type. Yet we cannot but feel a limitless affection and sympathy for the abbots and friars of the days of old who have left us such a rich heritage of beauty and grace.
All these abbeys seem to have been formed on a single plan: a cruciform church symbolized the source of all their inspiration, its choir extending towards the east, whence the Light had come; the nave, or main body of the church, was entered by the great western door, and the arms of the cross, the transepts, extended to the north and south. Here is a very beautiful symbol, a true embodiment of the whole spirit and inspiration of the monastic orders. From one of the transepts a side door generally led to the domestic buildings, the dormitory, the refectory, the chapter house, where the friars a.s.sembled in conclave under the presidency of the abbot. There were lesser buildings, store-rooms, granaries, work-rooms, but these were the kernel of the establishment. The church was the center of all things, and under its floor the friars were at last laid to rest, while brother friars carved tombs for them and epitaphs, adding a new richness of decoration to the already beautiful church.
We may record a few of these old foundations, showing at the same time the present state of the old abbey buildings. At Newtown on the northern bank of the Boyne, about a mile below Trim, Simon Rochfort founded an abbey for the Augustinian Canons in 1206, dedicating it to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. The capitals of the pillars in the church, the vaulting of the roof and the shafts of the arches which supported the tower are full of singular grace and beauty, even now when the abbey is roofless and in part destroyed, while the corbels and mouldings round the lancet-shaped windows are full of luxuriant fancy and charm. We can divine from them the full and rich spiritual life which brought forth such exquisite flowers of beauty; we can imagine the fine aroma of fervor and saintly peace which brooded over these consecrated aisles.
A few miles below Trim, and an equal distance from the old royal palace of Tara, Bective Abbey stands on the northern bank of the Boyne, with a square, battlemented tower overshadowing its cloistered quadrangle. The cinque-foil cloister arches, the fillets that bind the cl.u.s.tered shafts of the pillars, the leaf ornaments of the plinths at their base all speak of a luxuriant sense of beauty and grace, of a spirit of pure and admirable artistic work. This rich creative power thus breaking forth in lovely handiwork is only the outward sign of a full inner life, kindled by the fire of aspiration, and glowing with the warm ardor of devotion.
Bective Abbey dates from about 1150. We are told that the king of Meath who founded it for the Cistercian order ”endowed it with two hundred and forty-five acres of land, a fis.h.i.+ng-weir and a mill.” From this meager outline we can almost restore the picture of the life, altogether idyllic and full of quiet delight, that the old Friars lived among the meadows of the Boyne.
Grey Abbey was founded a little later, in 1193, for the same Cistercian order, where the promontory of the Ards divides Strangford Lough from the eastern sea. Over the waters of the lough, the red sandstone hills of north Down make a frame for the green of the meadows, as the tide laps and murmurs close to the old monastic church. Grey Abbey owes its foundation to the piety of a princess of the Isle of Man, wedded to De Courcy, the Norman warrior whose victories and defeats we have recorded.
The great beauty of its church is due to the soaring loftiness of the eastern window, and the graceful daring of the arches which in former days upheld the central tower.
Other Cistercian foundations are commemorated in the names of Abbey-leix in Queen's county, and Abbey-dorney and Abbey-feale in Kerry; all three dating from after the reformation of the order by Saint Bernard the Younger, though the work of that ardent missionary did not apparently extend its influence to Ireland until a later date. This reformer of the Cistercians must not be confused with the elder Saint Bernard, whose hospice guards the pa.s.s of the Alps which bears his name.
Saint Bernard of the Alps died in 1008, while Saint Bernard the reformer was born in 1093, dying sixty years later as abbot of Clara vallis or Clairvaux, on the bank of the Aube in northern France. It was at this Abbey of the Bright Vale, or Clara vallis, that Archbishop Maelmaedog resigned his spirit to heaven, five years before the death of the younger Saint Bernard, then abbot there. This is a link between the old indigenous church and the continental orders of the Friars.
Killmallock Abbey, in Limerick, belonged to the order of the Dominicans, founded by the scion of the Guzmans, the ardent apostle of Old Castile, known to history as Saint Dominick. Here again we have a beautiful abbey church with a square central tower, upborne on soaring and graceful arches from the point where the nave joined the choir. There is only one transept--on the south--so that the church is not fully cruciform, a peculiarity shared by several other Dominican buildings. The eastern window and the window of this transept are full of delicate grace and beauty, each containing five lights, and marked by the singularly charming manner in which the mullions are interlaced above. Enough remains of the cloister and the domestic buildings for us to bring back to life the picture of the old monastic days, when the good Friars worked and prayed there, with the sunlight falling on them through the delicate network of the windows.
Holycross Abbey, near Thurles in Tipperary, was another of the Cistercian foundations, its charter, dating from 1182, being still in existence. Its church is cruciform; the nave is separated from the north aisle by round arches, and from the south aisle by pointed arches, which gives it a singular and unusual beauty. The great western window of the nave, with its six lights, is also very wonderful. Two chapels are attached to the north transept, with a pa.s.sage between them, its roof supported by a double row of pointed arches upheld by twisted pillars.
The roof is delicately groined, as is the roof of the choir, and the whole abbey breathes a luxuriant richness of imagination, bearing everywhere the signs of high creative genius. The same lavish imagination is shown everywhere in the interlaced tracery, the black limestone giving the artist an admirable vehicle for his work. Though the charter dates from the twelfth century, some of the work is about two centuries later, showing finely the continuity of life and spiritual power in the old monastic days.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Holy Cross Abbey, Co. Tipperary.]
The Friars of Saint Augustine, who were in possession of the abbey at Newtown on the Boyne, had another foundation not far from West port in Mayo, in the Abbey of Ballintober, founded in 1216 by a son of the great Ruaidri Ua Concobar. Here also we have the cruciform church, with four splendid arches rising from the intersection of nave and choir, and once supporting the tower. The Norman windows over the altar, with their dog-tooth mouldings, are very perfect. In a chapel on the south of the choir are figures of the old abbots carved in stone.
One of the Ui-Briain founded a Franciscan Abbey at Ennis in Clare about 1240, which is more perfectly preserved than any of those we have described. The tower still stands, rising over the junction of nave and choir; the refectory, chapter house, and some other buildings still remain, while the figure of the patron, Saint Francis of a.s.sisi, still stands beside the altar at the north pier of the nave.
Clare Abbey, a mile from Ennis, was founded for the Augustine Friars in 1195, and here also the tower still stands, dominating the surrounding plain. Three miles further south, on the sh.o.r.e of Killone Lake, was yet another abbey of the same period, while twenty miles to the north, at Corcomroe on the sh.o.r.e of Galway Bay, the Cistercians had yet another home.
We might continue the list indefinitely. Some of the most beautiful of our abbeys still remain to be recorded, but we can do no more than give their names: Bonamargy was built for the Franciscans in Antrim in the fifteenth century; the Dominican priory at Roscommon dates from 1257; the Cistercian Abbey of Jerpoint in Kilkenny was begun in 1180; Molana Abbey, in Waterford, was built for the Augustinians on the site of a very old church; and finally Knockmoy Abbey in Galway, famous for its fourteenth century frescoes, was begun in 1189. We must remember that every one of these represents, and by its variations of style indicates, an unbroken life through several centuries. The death-knell of the old life of the abbeys and priories, in Ireland as in England, was struck in the year 1537 by the law which declared their lands forfeited to the crown; as the result of the religious controversies of the beginning of the sixteenth century.
XIII.
THE TRIUMPH OF FEUDALISM.
A.D. 1603-1660.
The confiscation of the abbey lands, as the result of religious controversy, closed an epoch of ecclesiastical life in Ireland, which we cannot look back on without great regret for the n.o.ble and beautiful qualities it brought forth in such abundance. There is a perennial charm and fascination in the quiet life of the old religious houses--in the world, yet not of the world--which appeals to aesthetic and moral elements in our minds in equal degree. From their lovely churches and chapter-houses the spirits of the old monks invite us to join them in an unworldly peace on earth, a renewal of the golden age, a life full of aspiration and self-forgetfulness, with all the burdens of egotism laid aside.