Last Friday, amidst great excitement, a very rare late
medieval illuminated manuscript, which disappeared without apparent
trace more than forty years ago was returned to its rightful owners, St.
Kieran’s College.
The Consultant College Archivist, Mr
John Kirwan, acting on instructions from Monsignor Kieron Kennedy, the
College president, proceeded to Dublin to collect the ‘lost’ manuscript
from the National Library of Ireland, where it had been found after a
year long search amongst its holdings.
This late medieval
manuscript which is approaching its 600th birthday is one of a bare
handful of devotional books which survives from an Irish context, in the
country. It gives us a rare insight into late medieval piety, which
period in Ireland lasted about 1100 to 1500 AD.
The manuscript also has
post Reformation additions which event occurred in Ireland in the 1530s.
Thus we get an even rarer insight into the devotional practices of the
clergy and laiety of Ossory during a very troubled period of our history
– a period which saw much civil and religious change.
The search
began in the Summer of 2010, when a letter from 1966 was found amongst a
set of files in the College.
This had been written by a senior staff
member of the National Library of Ireland, to the late John, Canon
Holohan, then President of St. Kieran’s College. Piecemeal over the year
the story unfolded with phonecalls and correspondence from the College.
In the 1970s, the manuscript had been found in the safe of the National
Library without any of its pertinent documentation. Subsequently, the
manuscript was “miscatalogued” into the Library’s holdings.
The
illuminated manuscript, which consists of a lectionary or commentary on
the Four Gospels, and a calendar of Feastdays, was originally compiled
in the fifteenth century for use in a church inter Anglos, that is a
church in an English milieu.
This was possibly in England, or as is more
likely in areas of English influence, such as the Irish Pale or
Kilkenny, or indeed from the Pale lands adjacent to Calais, in northern
France, which the English Crown finally lost during the reign of Queen
Mary (1553-58).
By the early 1570s the manuscript had definitely arrived
in Ossory.
The
scriptorium, or workshop of highly trained calligraphers, who were
generally monks from one of the many monastic institutions, which
produced this magnificent manuscript was subject to extensive English
influence.
In style it is not unlike many French liturgical books of the
14th and 15th centuries. A lectionary of this kind was intended for the
use of a lector, or reader, during the communal recital of office which
suggests that there was a functioning chapter in Ossory in the late
sixteenth century.
The monks as well as being expert calligraphers would
have had extensive knowledge of the preparation of calf skins for the
production of vellum upon which to write and dyes for inks by which to
write. The writing instruments, generally quills from fowl, had to be
sourced locally.
The calendar, which lists a large number of
English saints is in a fifteenth-century hand. Most remarkably, the
calendar has a number of Irish saints including Malachy, Fintan, Colman
and Senan interpolated individually at the dates of their feastdays, in
addition to the saints of the universal church.
These interpolations, or
additions, are in a sixteenth-century hand.
The 1570 addition or
comment which definitely links the manuscript to Kilkenny and Ossory,
is the obit or death notice on page two-hundred-and-thirteen, of the
Rev. Nicholas Power, a sub-deacon of Ossory.
In 1545, the Rev. Nicholas,
became vicar or parish priest of Kilmocar, to which living he had been
presented by the English crown, in the person of Henry VIII. In the wake
of the latter’s divorce from his first queen, the pious and very
Catholic, Katherine of Aragon, Henry assumed the headship of the English
church in his dominions, which was still in all its essentials
Catholic.
The Protestant ‘reforms’ which changed the nature of the
English and Irish state churches, only came in the reign of his
successor, the boy-king, Edward VI (1547-53), his only son by his third
wife, Jane Seymour who had died within days of his birth in October
1537.
Incidentially, James Butler, 9th. Earl of Ormond of Kilkenny
Castle, who was to die of food poisoning in 1546, had a prominent role
in the baptism of this Prince of Wales. James most likely had a say in
the appointment of the Rev. Nicholas Power as vicar of Kilmocar, which
event occurred in 1545.
The manuscript is a very large one,
originally almost five hundred pages and involved many hours of
dedicated handwork, thus its production was a costly undertaking which
could only be afforded by a wealthy institution or individual.
The
first eleven pages which are loose, are incredibly fragile. Some pages
are missing at the end. The cover, which is of decorated leather, is
believed to be the original and has been dated to c. 1450-70, by the
former head of conservation in Trinity College, Mr. Tony Cairns.
The
manuscript was presented to St. Kieran’s College by the Rev. J.F.
Shearman of Howth, Co. Dublin, in the 1880s. Fr. Shearman, who had very
old ancestral links with Kilkenny, had great affection for the College,
city and county.
Many of the older people of Kilkenny will recall
Shearmans who had various businesses in Kilkenny city. The family also
married into the farming community, notably at Redbog near Gowran.
Now
this very rare treasure is back in St. Kieran’s College, where it joins
another fifteenth century manuscript, which contains devotions and
prayers, some in Latin and some translated into English, produced in
response to a commission from a specific wealthy and no doubt high-born
customer.
Books of this kind constitute the essential source for
studying late medieval piety in its widest context, as well as giving us
examples of the skills of 15th. century book producers.
The newly
found Lectionary suggests that a scriptorium may also have existed in
Ossory as late as the 1570s.