A priceless twelfth-century religious artefact is to return to its native Mayo for the first time in more than a hundred years.The National Museum is to place the Cross of Cong on display at its Turlough House Country museum site outside Castlebar.
National Museum director Dr Pat Wallace announced that the Cross will be moved from its headquarters in Dublin to Turlough House next year.
This is in keeping with the National Museum’s policy to have a different Connacht artefact on temporary display each year in the Castlebar museum.
The Cross of Cong, which was also known as An Bacall Bui (‘yellow crozier’) was made around 1123 on the orders of the then High King of Ireland, Turlough O’Connor.
O’Connor donated it to the local cathedral in Tuam, County Galway, but it was subsequently moved to Cong Abbey in Mayo, where it got its name.
It was designed to be placed on top of a staff and is also a reliquary, designed to hold a piece of the purported True Cross.
This gave the cross extra significance as an object of reverence and at one time it was believed to contain a piece of the True Cross.
The Cross of Cong is made of wood covered with copper plates. It is a quarter inch thick; its shaft is thirty inches high and its arms measure nineteen inches. On the plate at the junction of the cross is a large crystal, through which what was supposed to be the True Cross could be seen.
Eighteen jewels were placed on it at regular intervals, of which thirteen remain.
The Cross of Cong had to be secreted away to avoid plunder during the Cromwellian occupation of Ireland.
The last abbot of the abbey, Fr Patrick Prendergast, went on to become PP of Cong and is said to have found in the early 1800s, hidden in an old oak chest in a house in Cong village. He then kept it in his house and after his death, his successor, Fr. Michael Waldron, found it among his belongings.
Fr Waldron sold the artefact after being approached by a Trinity College professor, James MacCullagh, who wanted to for its historical significance.
In 1839, MacCullagh presented it to the Royal Irish Academy, where it remained there until the late 1860s, when a fiery new parish priest, Fr Pat Lavelle, became PP in Cong. He is said to have travelled to Dublin, called to the Academy, asked to see the Cross and snatched it to bring back to Mayo.
It was later transferred to the National Museum in Dublin.
Currently the Moylough Belt Shrine, from Sligo is on temporary display in Turlough.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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