St. Patrick's Cathedral

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SECTION V** *

S. Patrick’s Cathedral *

“An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat countries with spire steeples, which, as they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and stars.*” - Coleridge. *

st.gif (24785 bytes)It must have been very galling to the monks of Christ Church to see a new cathedral on a larger and more splendid scale than their own rising not 200 yards from their cloisters. The two churches are so close together that the easiest way to S. Patrick’s, which lies in a network of obscure streets, leads past its old rival. From the western end of Christ Church a southward turning called Nicholas Street, almost opposite the Synod Hall, leads directly to the soaring spire of S. Patrick’s. This approach is interesting in another way. It shows the open air market so characteristic of ancient Dublin. Street traders of the very humblest type sit on the ground selling an extraordinary assortment of articles, mostly decidedly secondhand. The progress of modern improvement, however, threatens to drive these people from their old haunts and immure them in a large and well-fitted, but entirely commonplace, market building.

The new park has cleared away a number of the houses, which obscured the cathedral, and the long, irregular, but highly picturesque north face is now completely visible. The architecture is Early English, with some modifications suitable to Ireland. The battlements round the roof and the turrets at the corners show that the builders, knowing their church was to be outside the city wall, determined to render it secure against predatory tribes from the mountains.

The steeple is in two sections, one built 400 years later than the other. The lower consists of a square tower, massive and defensible, almost coal-black with the deposits of 600 years. The upper is a grey granite needle-shaped spire, superposed in the eighteenth century by the directions of a bishop, whose will left special funds for the purpose. The effect, though architecturally incongruous, is pleasing to the eye. The great height of the steeple, over 200 feet in all, adds to the stateliness of the exterior.

The site is peculiar and ill-adapted to the use to which it has been put. S. Patrick’s is only seven feet above the waters of a subterranean brook called the Poddle, the same which flows beneath the Lower Castle Yard. Dublin rivers, being fed from the mountains, are liable to sudden floods. The cathedral has been often inundated. Under the circumstances, it was impossible to include a crypt in the design.

The sanctity attaching to the spot, however, compensated, in the minds of the founders, for its physical drawbacks. S. Patrick was believed to have called forth a holy well on this very place, an island between the branches of the Poddle. The early Norman archbishops, seeking to raise up a rival to Christ Church, availed themselves of the hallowed associations of “S. Patrick’s on the Island.” An existing wooden church was replaced by a lofty cruciform edifice in hewn stone, which was consecrated in I 19 I and was raised to the status of a cathedral in 1219.

The present building is probably an amplification of the designs of Archbishop Comyn in 1191. It is assigned to the year 1225. The whole of the 13th century is taken up with quarrels with Christ Church. S. Patrick’s has taken a deeper hold of the affections of the people than its neighbour. The archbishops have often been so fond of the younger church as to be willing to transfer the metropolitan see thither.

In 1300 a compromise was affected, by which Christ Church was formally recognised as senior and superior, while most of the customary ecclesiastical privileges were fairly divided between both. Nowadays the distinction is much the same as that between S. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey. Christ Church is assigned to the see of Dublin, S. Patrick’s is the National Cathedral.

While Edward Bruce was hovering around the city in 1316, the burghers set fire to the church, lest it might be used as a stronghold by the Scots. Not much damage was done, however. Stone walls do not easily burn down. In 1362 an accidental fire destroyed the north-western corner. Archbishop Minot, in the succeeding year, repaired the damage. He seems to have had a love for the grand style.

The four arches of his rebuilding are at the western end of the nave on the left hand side. They are so much higher and wider than their fellows that they cause a break in the continuity of some of the architectural lines. Minot’s great work is the tower. Like the cathedral itself this addition was designed for defensive purposes. It is not unlike the tall, narrow castles, half fortress half look-out place, which occur every few miles in Ireland. Its walls are 10 feet thick, like those of the Record Tower. Battlement and turret add to the resemblance, while its great height, 147 feet from the ground to the parapet, must have rendered it very useful as a watch upon the movements of the mountain septs.

All “idle and straggling fellows,” in other words “the unemployed,” were requisitioned by the archbishop to aid in the erection of his tall belfry, of which he was so proud that he took as his crest the figure of a bishop with a steeple in his hand.

In the tower still hangs a whole peal of bells, cast in the seventeenth century, and bearing characteristic mottoes, such as-

“Henry Paris made me with good sound

To be fift in eight, when bells ring round.”

or

“Feare God and honnor the King

For obedienc is a vertuous thing.”

The wars of York and Lancaster, or rather their Irish counterpart, those of Butler and Geraldine, found their way into the sanctuary in 1492. The citizens, who ever loved the Fitzgerald family, went near to massacring their rivals in the sacred precincts. It was on this occasion that the leaders of the two hostile parties shook hands through a hole specially made in one of the church doors.

With the Reformation came days of darkness and danger. The Chapter of S. Patrick’s resisted the new doctrines more stubbornly than their fellows at Christ Church. The greater number of them were expelled. The Tudor monarchs did not approve of the superstitious reverence in which the cathedral was held. Henry VIII. confiscated its revenues. Edward VI. reduced it to the status of a parish church. Sir John Perrott, Lord Deputy under Elizabeth, was strongly in favour of converting it into a university. “S. Patrick’s,” he said, “is superfluous except to maintain a few bad singers and to satisfy the covetous humour of some that eat up most of the revenue of that church.” The project came to nothing. However the building has some academic associations. It was the home of a university, which was established by the Pope in 1320, and had a hard struggle for existence during two centuries of disturbance, until it was finally dispatched by Henry VIII.

The Reformers cast out the images of the saints, whitewashed the walls and replaced the paintings by inscriptions containing the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. During the religious wars of the 17th century Cromwellians and Jacobites are said to have stabled their horses in the aisles. The last great epoch in the cathedral history is the 30 years during which Dean Swift controlled its fortunes.

In the 19th century it was going to decay, when it was splendidly restored by Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness. To the same family is due the pleasant little park, which occupies the site of an evil slum called Bull Alley. The donor, Lord Iveagh, deserves great credit, chiefly, of course, for the benefit his action has conferred on the inhabitants of a poor district, but, incidentally, for the beautiful view it has disclosed of the fine old church.

The interior is, like Minot’s tower, built in the grand style. Not, perhaps, so picturesque nor so delicate as Christ Church, its great length and height render it very impressive. Monuments crowd every available inch of space. The banners, helmets and swords of the Knights of S. Patrick at the time of disestablishment hang over the choir stalls. The bright heraldic colours contrast well with the grey stone arches around. These, however, are only warlike emblems. They have never left their present abode.

A more thrilling sight is afforded in the nave by the colours of historic Irish regiments affixed to the walls, the very tattered silken fragments, that pressed, it may be, into the breach at Badajoz or waved indomitably hour after hour over the bullet-torn squares of Waterloo. They are hung too high, unfortunately, for the date of their deposit to be ascertained. Some of them are threadbare with age, a mere webbing from which all vestige of a pattern has vanished. How many brave Irishmen have perished beneath those folds!

To the left of the entrance porch is a low and dark baptistery, believed to be the oldest surviving part of the church. Just beyond it is the Boyle monument, “the famous, sumptuous and glorious tomb of my Lord of Corke,” in its day accounted almost a wonder of the world. It is erected to the memory of no less than 16 persons, all relations of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, and all depicted either standing, kneeling, or lying in some part of the monument. The founder of the family, with his wife, is shown in the second tier. He was a successful soldier and adventurer during the reign of Elizabeth. In a niche just below is his brother Robert, the chemist, who discovered “Boyle’s Law.” With its columns of black marble and its rows of quaint red-tinted figures, this lofty and ancient piece of work, while not deserving Brereton ‘s encomiums, has a sort of barbaric splendour.

At the west end of the northern aisle is the stone inscribed with a Celtic cross, found during some excavations and believed to mark the site of S. Patrick’s holy well. To the left is the plain wooden pulpit used by Swift. The north aisle contains a number of pleasing monuments. Philpot Curran, Carolan, last of the Irish bards, contemporary and protegé of Strafford, Samuel Lover, song writer and novelist, whose “Handy Andy” and “Widow Macbree” breathe the very essence of Irish humour, are among those commemorated. The Elizabethan taste in sculpture is again exhibited in the monument to Archbishop Jones, who was dean of the cathedral in 1581. The style is very much like that chosen by the Boyles, though the proportions are much smaller.

st.patrick's2.gif (43863 bytes)In the north transept are many memorials to the Royal Irish, a regiment with a history that goes back to Charles II. During the wars of William III. it was strongly Protestant, and was the only Irish regiment to enter the British service after the siege of Limerick. At Namur it showed such headlong gallantry under the very eyes of the King that it was given as its crest a lion, with the motto “Virtutis Namurcensis Praemium,” “A reward for valour at Namur.” Its former comrades, who adhered to the cause of James II., became the Irish Brigade in the service of France. At Malplaquet, all unwitting, the Royal Irish encountered a battalion of their compatriots in a wood, and, by steady platoon firing, drove them back. It was not till they began to pick up the wounded that they found out, from a Lieutenant O’Sullivan, the identity of their late foes.

The Franco-Irish, however, had their revenge at Fontenoy some 40 years later. A British force, advancing with cool determination through a withering fire, had almost penetrated the French lines, when the Irish Brigade, who had been held in reserve all day, was launched as a forlorn hope against the head of the all but victorious column. Their desperate charge turned the scale and gave the victory to France. Subsequently the Royal Irish defended Gibraltar against the Spaniards, and Toulon against a French force, which included a young artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1801, it helped to drive the French out of Egypt, thereby ruining Napoleon’s schemes for the conquest of India. It has associations, too, though melancholy ones, with the American War of Independence. The first shots of that contest were fired on the Royal Irish at Lexington, and the regiment formed part of the British attacking party, which stormed Bunker’s Hill outside Boston, after a desperate resistance, which proved, once for all, the military worth of the, till then, despised Colonial.

In the right hand corner of the north transept is a bluish-grey tablet to the memory of Dame St Leger, a much-married lady of the times of Elizabeth. Her first husband was Thomas Sidney, by whom she had three daughters; her second was Nicholas Gorge, who left no offspring. The third was Sir Conyers Clifford, Governor of Connaught, and killed there in battle by Owen Roe O’Donnell. To him she bore two sons and a daughter. Lastly she wedded Sir Anthony St Leger, by whom she had two children, but died in childbed of the second. She was 37 at her demise, and had had four husbands and eight children. The whole of this “strange eventful history” of marriages and christenings is related in quaint Elizabethan English on the monument. This transept was long partitioned off from the rest of the cathedral, and used as the parish church of S. Nicholas Without.

In the north choir aisle to the left is a marble effigy of an archbishop, believed to represent Fulk de Sandford, who held the see in 1271. Opposite is Swift’s epitaph over Schomberg, a characteristic piece of work, intended rather to libel the living than to praise the departed. It is in Latin, and records how the cathedral authorities often entreated, to no purpose, the heirs of the great marshal to set up some memorial, and, in despair, at length erected this stone, that posterity might know where the famous Schomberg lies. “The fame of his valour,” Swift sums up, “was more effective with strangers than his nearness of blood was with his kinsmen.”

The Lady Chapel behind the altar is very beautiful, presenting quite a contrast to the numerous pointed arches and long aisles of the cathedral proper. It is supported by slender pillars, which spread out fanwise to form a roof. A light and graceful arcade runs round the lower part of the walls. During two centuries a French Huguenot congregation worshipped here, using the ritual of the Church of Ireland translated into their own language. Here is the statue of Archbishop Tregury, who died in 1471, and was, apparently, “of Cornish crew,” as is shown both by the “Tre” prefix to his name and the “three Cornish choughs” here shown in his coat-of-arms.

In the south choir aisle are two fine old pre-Reformation brasses of Deans Sutton and Fyche. Both begin with “Pray for the soul,” etc., in Latin. In the corner of Dean Sutton’s is an obliterated design, probably representing the Trinity, over which the initials R. S. have been written. The workmanship of the other is better, and in this case the scene to the right, representing the entombment of Our Lord, has been left untouched. The figures of the dean in prayer and of the mourning Virgin are particularly good. There is here a tablet to Charles Wolfe, a poet known to literature by a single work, “The Burial of Sir John Moore.”

The south transept and the huge arches of the crossing are ancient work practically unaffected by restoration. The aisles here retain their original roofs of dark grey stone. This part of the church was at one time boarded off from the rest and used as a Chapter House. Resting against a pillar is the identical door through which Ormond, from his last refuge, shook hands with his great enemy Kildare. The door is stout and solid, and the hole is squarely and evenly cut, showing little sign of the excitement which must have surged in and around the cathedral at the moment when it was made. A bracket on the opposite wall bears a curious archaic figure found some 70 years ago, and believed to represent S. Patrick. Some fine sculpture of the century before last, erected mostly to the memory of archbishops, occupies the greater part of the south wall of this transept.

deanswift.gif (18294 bytes)The south aisle of the nave is for ever associated with Jonathan Swift, the greatest of all the many deans of S. Patrick’s, and his unhappy, but devoted, lover, Esther Johnson, the “Stella” of many verses and fond epistles. With an ordinary man such an attachment would have found its natural end in marriage and domestic happiness, But to Swift, haughty and ambitious, even matrimony seemed a yoke. He was in daily intimacy with Stella to the very day of her death, but was ever so scrupulous of conventional propriety that no charge could be brought against the honour of the woman he loved. There were stories of secret marriage, probably unfounded.

As time wore on and Stella’s charms faded, the friendship, though strong as ever, became rather intellectual than sentimental. A strange and sad complication now arose. A romantic girl, Esther Vanhomrigh, fell violently in love with Swift, who, while not apparently returning her passion, allowed the affair to drift on unchecked from day to day. The character of their intercourse is shown by the playful poetry that passed between them, one writing as “Cadenus,” an evident anagram on the Latin word for “Dean,” the other as “Vanessa,” a combination of the lady’s Christian and surname. The climax came when Vanessa grew jealous and wrote to Stella, inquiring as to the real nature of her connection with Swift. The latter is said to have intercepted the letter, rode out to Celbridge, and flung it down in terrible, silent wrath before the writer. He never saw nor spoke to Vanessa after that day. She died a few weeks afterwards of a broken heart. Stella only survived her five years. Swift dragged out his lonely and darkened life 17 years more, growing ever sourer and more misanthropic.

The last four years of his existence were inexpressibly gloomy. The fertile brain was sometimes harassed by attacks of acute dementia, sometimes it relapsed into the dead passivity of the imbecile. Death came in 1745. Stella and the great, but unhappy, dean lie side by side to the right of the entrance porch. In death, at least, they are not divided. Over the door that leads to the robing-room is the epitaph Swift composed for himself, which seems to hint indirectly at the furious madness which racked him ever and anon, even as the unclean spirits tore and mangled the sufferers in the New Testament. “Here,” it runs, “lies buried the body of Jonathan Swift, dean of this cathedral, where fierce indignation can no longer rend his heart. Go, traveller, and imitate, if thou canst, one who used his utmost endeavours in the defence of liberty.” Close by, his features are depicted in a fine marble bust, which was presented to the cathedral by the nephew of Swift’s publisher.

Emerging from the great church, the air of which seems heavy with human tragedy, and turning to the left, the way leads through a quiet close with a pleasant backward glimpse of the tall steeple peering over the lesser turrets and pinnacles of the cathedral.

Here is Marsh’s Library, founded by an archbishop of the early 18th century, whose monument is in the south transept. The interior is unchanged since its first arrangement 200 years ago. The carved oak stalls and shelves for the books are quaintly picturesque. The traces of the old system by which the literary treasures of an institution of this kind were secured against theft, by chains fastened to a rod, may still be discerned here and there. In glass cases there are some interesting bindings of very ancient date, ranging from the 15th to the 18th century. The volumes here are mostly theological. One, Clarendon ‘s “History of the Great Rebellion,” contains marginal notes by the hand of Dean Swift himself, expressed in his usual trenchant and anything but clerical style; another records the impression left on the mind of no less a reader than Archbishop Laud. The great prelate wrote a very fine and delicate hand, and his remarks, being in abbreviated Latin, are not easy to decipher.

To Chapter 6. To Chart Index