Patrick Comerford

Seas and coast spread out below Killiney Hill

2012-02-17T21:06:00.009Z

The view south from Victoria Hill in Killiney, across Killiney Beach, Bray and towards Bray Head (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

After Morning Prayer in the chapel, a few hours at my desk, and a family visit to Mount Jerome Cemetery in Harold’s Cross, two of us headed across to Cabinteely late in the morning to have a look at Cabinteely House, one of the hidden gems of the south-east suburbs of Dublin.

Cabinteely House is set in expansive, open suburban parks, and inside it is said to have an impressive 18th century staircase, decorative plasterwork and a vaulted gallery. I was told there are tours of the house in the summer, but extensive work was being carried out today, and there was a large skip outside.

Behind the house, I visited the new Japanese gardens laid out by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Parks Department. Nearby, the newly refurbished stables house new tearooms, while the courtyards and grain-store have been converted into a museum and arts centre.

Cabinteely House ... owned in the past by the Nugent, O’Byrne and McGrath families (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Cabinteely House was built around 1769 by Robert Nugent (1702-1788), Lord Clare and later Earl Nugent. In the 1740s, it is said, Nugent, an Irish socialite from Co Westmeath, lent large sums of money to the Prince of Wales, but he was never repaid. The political appointments and peerage titles he received later in life seem to have been a public acknowledgement by King George III, son of the Prince of Wales, of this indebtedness. In 1767, Nugent became Baron Nugent and Viscount Clare, and in 1776 he was made Earl Nugent.

The house later passed to the O’Byrne family, including William Richard O’Byrne (1823–1896), MP for Co Wicklow (1874-1880) and author of the Naval Biographical Dictionary. In 1933, Joe McGrath of the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes bought the house. Cabinteely House finally passed to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in 1984.

From Cabinteely, we drove on to Killiney. Initially, we were planning a walk on the beach, but instead we parked in the car park at Victoria Hill Park, behind Holy Trinity Parish Church and the Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel and climbed Victoria Hill to obelisk at the top of Killiney Hill.

From the top of the hill, some people say, it is possible on clear days to see as far as the Mourne Mountains in Co Down and the north coast of Wales. It was not as clear as that today, but we had a magnificent view that stretched across Dublin Bay, Killiney Bay, Bray Head and the Great Sugar Loaf mountain – views that stretched from the Wicklow Mountains to Howth Head.

The coastal area of Killiney is often compared to the Bay of Naples – a comparison reflected in the names of surrounding roads, such as Vico, Sorrento, Monte Alverno, San Elmo, and Capri. Since early 2010, a pod of bottlenose dolphins has been seen regularly in Killiney Bay, but we did not see them today.

Killiney Hill Park or Victoria Hill Park was once part of the estate of Killiney Castle, now an hotel, and the park was opened in 1887 to mark the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria’s coronation.

The obelisk at the top of Killiney Hill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

A short walk brought us to the top of Killiney Hill. The obelisk at the top and many of the walls on the hill date from a famine in 1742 and relief works on behalf of poverty-stricken local people. The obelisk is a prominent landmark and carries the inscription: “Last year being hard with the poor walks about these hills and this were erected by John Mapas, June 1742.”

Nearby, the “Wishing Stone,” dated 1852, is of uncertain origin. Another smaller obelisk a little further on is known as Boucher’s obelisk and is inscribed: “Mount Mapas.”

Killiney Castle was built as Mount Mapas at the bottom of the hill in 1741 by Colonel John Mapas. By 1755, Mount Mapas had been acquired by a Captain Maunsell. Killiney Beach was becoming a popular seaside destination by then, and in 1757 John Rocque’s map shows bathhouses near White Rock, on Killiney Beach.

By 1755, Mount Mapas was known as Roxborough, and it was the home of Captain Edward Maunsell, who was High Sheriff of Co Dublin that year. Before he died in 1765, he sold his interests in Killiney to the then Colonel the Hon Henry Loftus, MP for Bannow, Co Wexford. He called the place Loftus Hill and converted the barren stony soil to meadow and pasture and cut a road around Killliney Hill. But, when Henry Loftus become Viscount Loftus of Ely, he inherited other estates, including Loftus Hall in Co Wexford and Rathfarnnham Castle, and in 1772 he sold his Killiney estate and 150 acres on the slopes of Killiney Hill.

In 1778, this was the residence of a Mr Medlicott, before it passed to a Mr Minchin. In 1790, the hill was leased by John Scott (1739-1798), 1st Earl of Clonmell, who was known as ‘Copper-faced Jack.’ He set out a deer park in Killiney and spent £3,000 on improving the estate.

Trees with a story to tell on the slopes of Killiney Hill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

The Military Road and the Martello Tower in Killiney were completed in 1805. In 1815, the Duke of Dorset died in a hunting accident on Killiney Hill.

By the mid-19th century, the hill and much of Killiney were owned by Robert Warren. In 1840, he enlarged the house, adding the fanciful Victorian façade, embellished with turrets, towers and battlement, and renaming it Killiney Castle. He developed many of the Victorian residential areas and sold land for building a new railway line along the coast to Bray, running beneath Killiney Hill.

With the extension of the railway line, the coastline became even more popular, and Killiney began to expand as a suburban village. The Church of Ireland parish church, Holy Trinity Church, was built in 1859 beside Killiney Castle.

The opening of Victoria Park by the Prince of Wales in 1887 to mark Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee and the opening of Vico Road two years later in 1889 enhanced the popularity of Killiney.

Warren also built a second castle in Killiney in 1840, naming it Victoria Castle in honour of Queen Victoria’s coronation three years earlier. After a fire destroyed its interior in 1928, Victoria Castle was magnificently restored by Sir Thomas Power of the distillery family, and he renamed it Ayesha Castle, after the character in Ryder Haggard’s novel She. The Donegal musician and signer Enya bought the place in 1997, and renamed it Manderley Castle, after the house in Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca.

All these castle, the railway line, the islands of Dalkey, Killiney Strand, the beaches of Bray, the Wicklow Mountains, Howth Head, Dublin Bay and the Irish Sea spread beneath us as we looked down from Killiney Hill in the early afternoon. After our descent, we drove into Dalkey and had a late lunch in Idle Wilde Café in Saint Patrick’s Road in the heart of Dalkey Village before returning to the institute.

Sorrento and the islands of Dalkey seen from Killiney Hill this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Remembering an Anglican martyr

2012-02-17T09:00:00.005Z

‘See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God’ (I John 3: 1) … a statue of Archbishop Luwum (right) on the façade of Westminster Abbey

Patrick Comerford

At morning prayer in the chapel this morning we sued Morning Prayer from Common Worship in the Church of England, and, drawing on the calendar of the Church of England, we remembered Archbishop Janani Jakaliya Luwum, who is commemorated on 17 February in the calendar of many Anglican Churches.

We began with a prayer written almost 400 years ago by Bishop Lancelot Andrewes in 1626:

Blessed are you, creator of all,
to you be praise and glory for ever.
As your dawn renews the face of the earth
bringing light and life to all creation,
may we rejoice in this day you have made;
as we wake refreshed from the depths of sleep,
open our eyes to behold your presence
and strengthen our hands to do your will,
that the world may rejoice and give you praise.

A note on the service sheet this morning tells the story of the martyred Ugandan archbishop:

Archbishop Janani Jakaliya Luwum

Archbishop Janani Jakaliya Luwum (1922-1977), who is recalled on this day in a lesser Festival in the Calendar of the Church of England and other Anglican churches, was the Archbishop of the (Anglican) Church of Uganda from 1974, and was one of the most influential modern Church leaders in Africa. He was murdered in 1977 by either Idi Amin personally or by Amin’s henchmen.

The archbishop was born in a village in 1922, and trained as a primary teacher before he converted to Christianity in 1948. A year later, he went to Buwalasi Theological College, and he was ordained deacon in 1953 and priest in 1954. He was consecrated a bishop in 1961 and five years later became Archbishop of the Province of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire – the second African to hold this position.

Archbishop Luwum was openly critical of the excesses of Idi Amin and his regime after he seized power in 1971. In 1977, the archbishop delivered a note of protest to Idi Amin against the policies of arbitrary killings and disappearances. Shortly after, he and other Church leaders were accused of treason.

On 16 February 1977, he was arrested and was publicly humiliated at a rally called in Kampala by Amin. He was killed the next day – supposedly in a car crash, although he had been shot through the mouth and in the chest several times. Time magazine suggested Amin himself had pulled the trigger.

Archbishop Janani Luwum is recognised as a martyr in the Church of England and other Anglican churches, and his death is marked on this day, 17 February, as a Lesser Festival. His statue is among those of the Martyrs of the Twentieth Century on the west façade of Westminster – Abbey.

– Patrick Comerford, 17 February 2012

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute

Failure to listen to ‘Occupy’ protests ‘missed opportunity’ for Church

2012-02-17T06:00:00.000Z

Today’s edition of the Church of Ireland Gazette (17 February 2012) publishes the following photograph and half-page news report on page 4:

Failure to listen to ‘Occupy’
protests ‘missed opportunity’ for
the Church – C. of I. theologian

Canon Patrick Comerford (left) is pictured with the Revd Dr Peter Waddell in the Chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

The Church has missed “a blessèd opportunity” in mission through the failure of the community at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, to listen constructively to the “Occupy” protesters encamped outside the building, according to a Church of Ireland theologian.

Preaching recently at Choral Evensong in the Chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Canon Patrick Comerford, who is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin, said that when the Church “misses the opportunity to hear the ordinary concerns of people when they articulate them, [it] fails to grasp the intersection between temporal reality and eternal truth.”

Canon Comerford went on to say: “In missing the opportunity to listen to the ‘Occupy’ protesters in London, the community of St Paul’s Cathedral missed an opportunity, a moment in time that can never be presented in the same way again.”

He added: “In this failure, a blessèd opportunity to express the mission of a Cathedral – to allow the nation to speak to the Church and the Church to speak to the Nation – has been lost, never to be recovered in quite the same way again.”

The Pastoral Dean of Sidney Sussex College, the Revd Dr Peter Waddell, who is originally from Newcastle, Co Down, has been Chaplain of Sidney Sussex since 2005, Pastoral Dean since 2010, and is also the Director of Studies in Theology.

Listening to Choral Evensong

2012-02-16T18:00:00.004Z

A copy of the Icon of Christ in Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai (Ιερά Μονή Θεοβαδίστου Όρους Σινά, Αγίας Αικατερίνης), hangs in the chapel of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute

Patrick Comerford

At Choral Evensong in the Chapel this evening [16 February 2012], the readings were: Psalm: 50: 1-6; I Kings 11: 26-40; and II Corinthians 2: 12-17.

For the canticles, we read a Song of the Light and listened to both Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis to settings by Herbert Howells in The Gloucester Service, from a recording of Choral Evensong sung by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge.

The composer Herbert Howells (1892-1983) gave the service this name because he was born in Gloucester, and studied the organ as an articled pupil to Sir Herbert Brewer at Gloucester Cathedral.

From 1941 until the end of World War II, Howells deputised for the organist at Saint John’s College, Cambridge, but his Collegium Regale Service was written for King’s College and its choir in 1945.

His works for cathedral and college choirs evoke glorious echoes of Anglican musical treasures from Tudor times while employing beguiling chromatic harmonies and Romantic outbursts of expression.

Choral Evensong is held six afternoons a week during term time in chapel of King’s College. The recording we listened to this evening was made in the chapel during Choral Evensong in July 1991, with the Choir conducted by Stephen Cleobury and Christopher Hughes, organ scholar, playing the organ.

King’s College, Cambridge, the chapel, and the Backs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect of the Day (the Second Sunday before Lent):

Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
Teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit
reigns supreme over all things, now and for ever. Amen.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicansim and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute

Anglican Studies (5.2): Understanding sectarianism and transforming societies

2012-02-16T11:30:00.001Z

Archbishop John Gregg of Dublin, who was assured by the new government of the place of Protestants in a new state, with Eamon de Valera, whom he advised on the wording of the Constitution regarding Church of Ireland

Patrick Comerford

Church of Ireland Theological Institute

MTh Year II

EM8825: Anglican Studies in an Irish context:

Thursdays: 10 a.m. to 12 noon, The Hartin Room.

Thursday, 16 February 2012, 11 a.m.:

5.2: Understanding sectarianism and transforming societies.

Introduction:

After the formation of the Irish Free State, the General Synod of the Church of Ireland sent an official delegation to Michael Collins to ask if they were “permitted to live in Ireland or if [it is] desired that they should leave the country” – this despite the role of many members of the Church of Ireland in the War of Independence, including Countess Markiewicz (Constance Gore-Booth), Erskine Childers, Sean O’Casey and Robert Barton and that the first President of Ireland would be a son of the rectory, Douglas Hyde.

By and large, things settled down, and Archbishop John Gregg of Dublin, who was assured by the new government of the place of Protestants in a new state, later advised de Valera on the wording of the constitution regarding Church of Ireland.

After partition, the Church of Ireland population continued to decline in the area that is now the Republic of Ireland. Some of the reasons offered for this decline include:

● The impact of the Ne Temere decree from 1908 onwards on “inter-Church” marriages.
● The “Great War” or World War I.
● Partition.
● the migration of civil servants, military personnel and administrators after independence.
● The Civil War.
●Different fertility rates – in 1936, for example, the fertility rate for Church of Ireland couples was 54.7 per cent, barely half that for Roman Catholic couples.

To what degree were numbers retained through maintaining separate social structures, such as schools, hospitals, sports clubs, dances, homes, orphanages, and so on?

Was there a presumed, unspoken definition of community?

Did we create a myth of a shared common ancestry?

Did we imagine a new, separate “ethnic group”?

Did we try to convince ourselves that we are a separate cultural community, united by common cultural traits?

Three post-independence stories

The feeling of exclusion among many southern Protestants was exacerbated by three well-known cases that I referred to in our first session on this module:

● The Mayo Library case (1930)
● The Tilson child custody case (1950-1951)
● The Fethard-on-Sea boycott (1957)

1, The Mayo Library case (1930):

Letitia Dunbar Harrison … appointed Mayo County Librarian in 1930

The appointment of a county librarian in Co Mayo in 1930 developed into a controversy that lasted for months and caused a conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and the new Irish Free State under the government of WT Cosgrave.

There were heated debates in the Dáil, involving the Minister for Local Government, General Richard Mulcahy, and Eamon de Valera, who was then the leader of the opposition. What began as a small local issue in Co Mayo became a national issue that threatened to bring down the Government.

This story of sectarianism and politics 80 years ago has resonances today.

The Cumann na nGaedheal Government had adopted a strong policy against corruption, patronage and jobbery when it came to government-funded positions. The government set up the Local Appointments Commission (LAC) to oversee recruitment to senior posts in local authorities, removing any opportunity for nepotism and taking away the power of patronage from county councils.

By 1930, over 100 appointments had been made by the commission, and under law these appointments had to be accepted by county councils.

In July 1930, Letitia Elizabeth Aileen Dunbar Harrison, a young graduate from Dublin, was selected by an interview panel of the LAC for the post of Mayo County Librarian. However, Mayo County Council, in defiance of the law, refused to sanction her appointment. Her lack of Irish was initially put forward as the reason but in reality it emerged the main crux was that she was an honours graduate from Trinity College Dublin – and a Protestant.

The library committee was dominated by local Roman Catholic clergy, and in their eyes, and in the eyes of the majority of county councillors, she was not suitable for “Catholic Mayo.” Some even invoked the history of Protestant proselytising “souperism” n 19th century Mayo was still firmly within living memory at the time.

Monsignor D’Alton, a member of the library committee, stated: “The only outstanding qualification she has is that she is a Protestant and was educated in Trinity College. Are these not peculiar qualifications for a Catholic county like Mayo? 99 per cent of the people of Mayo are Catholic.”

JT Morahan was quoted in the Connaught Telegraph as stating: “Trinity culture is not the culture of the Gael; rather it is poison gas to the kindly Celtic people.”

The government stood firm, sacked the county council, appointed a county manager, and secured the appointment of Miss Harrison.

Mayo is the county that gave the English language the word “boycott.” All but five of the 130 Mayo library centres boycotted the new librarian and there was a stand-off between central and local government over 25-year-old Ms Harrison.

Facing into an election year in 1932, with a depressed economy and other issues to deal with, the government sought a solution. Secret talks with Roman Catholic Church authorities, caused internal divisions, and one cabinet minister, Desmond FitzGerald (father of Garret FitzGerald) threatened to resign. The Cosgrave Government got itself out of the dilemma by offering Miss Harrison a promotion – working in the Military Library in Dublin.

The government claimed it had stood up to the Church, Miss Harrison had stayed a year in Co Mayo, and it claimed she had voluntarily moved to a new job. But it was a defeat for the government and it set back library services in Ireland for at least 20 years.

After just a few months in her new position, Miss Harrison married the Revd Robert Crawford, a Methodist minister she met when she was living in Castlebar. Then, due to the marriage bar in the public service, she resigned her post and began a new life as a Methodist minister’s wife. From then on, she was known as Aileen Crawford and the couple served on Methodist circuits in many parts of Ireland, including Waterford, Tipperary, Louth and Antrim. They had no children and in the 1950s, after Robert Crawford’s death, Aileen Crawford remained in Northern Ireland, never to return to live in the Republic.

She was a committed Christian, and soon after her husband’s death she felt called to ministry in the church and sought to become the first ordained female Methodist minister in Ireland. She was never ordained, but her move led the Methodist Church in Ireland to change its rules and to allow women to be ordained.

Letitia Harrison or Aileen Crawford continued to contribute immensely to the Methodist Church for many years and died in 1994 aged 88. She had never spoken again of her time in Co Mayo.

2, The Tilson children custody case (1950-1951):

The Four Courts, Dublin ... “the Tilson case confirmed for Protestants just how pervasive was the influence of the Catholic ethos” (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Ernest Tilson, a Protestant, married Mary Barnes in a Roman Catholic Church in 1941. The husband signed a prenuptial agreement that any children born in the marriage would be brought up as Roman Catholics. The couple went on to have four boys who, in 1950, were aged 8, 7, 6 and 5, and all were baptised in Roman Catholic churches.

Ernest Tilson left the family home, taking three of the boys with him, but eventually placed them in a Protestant-run orphanage and school, stressing that we wanted his sons brought up in the Church of Ireland.

Mary Tilson brought Habeas Corpus proceedings against the governors of the orphanage. Until that case, English law had been followed in Ireland, and this meant, in practice, that in custody cases the father’s wishes were followed.

The president of the High Court, Mr Justice Gavan Duffy refused to follow the English case precedents and held that Ernest Tilson was bound by the undertaking he had signed according to the demands of the Ne Temere decree. In his ruling, he said:

“In my opinion, an order of the court designed to secure the fulfilment of an agreement peremptorily required before a mixed marriage by the Church, whose special position in Ireland is officially recognised as the guardian of the faith of the Catholic spouse, cannot be withheld on any ground of public policy by the very State which pays homage to that Church.”

He said: “[h]owever wide the unfettered authority of the father may be, a judicial theory which, under cover of public policy would allow a father to spoil his children’s birthright by uprooting their creed at his pleasure in plain defiance of his gravest obligations taken as husband and father, can find no place in a jurisprudence moulded to fit the Constitution of Ireland.”

On appeal, this ruling was upheld in the Supreme Court in 1951. Mr Justice George Murnaghan, giving the Supreme Court judgment, referred to Article 42.5 of the Constitution, which gives the definitive statement of the state’s position regarding their right to interfere in a family’s autonomy: “If a difference between father and mother leads to a situation in which a child is neglected the State, through the Courts, is to endeavour to supply the place of the parents.”

In the only dissenting opinion, Mr Justice Black, a Protestant, wondered whether the same ruling would have been reached had the inter-church promises favoured the Protestant party.

As Heather Crawford concludes, “the Tilson case confirmed for Protestants just how pervasive was the influence of the Catholic ethos.”

3, The Fethard-on-Sea Boycott in Co Wexford (1957):

The Cloney Family of Fethard-on-Sea as they were portrayed in ‘A Love Divided’

As a small child, I grew up in the south-east of Ireland under the shadow of the Fethard-on-Sea boycott. In 1957, in a small village in Co Wexford, Protestant shops, businesses, farms, schools and neighbours were boycotted by local Roman Catholics after a local Protestant woman in an inter-Church marriage refused to accept the demands made on her husband under the Ne Temere.

Sean Cloney and Sheila Kelly were married in the Augustinian church in Hammersmith in 1949, and had three daughters: Mary, Eileen and Hazel – Hazel was born after the controversy.

When the Parish Priest of Fethard, Father Stafford, insistently told Sheila Cloney she had to raise the girls as Roman Catholics, she refused and left Co Wexford with her two daughters to the local Roman Catholic school, and eventually fled with them, first to Northern Ireland and then to Scotland.

The parish priest organised a boycott of the local Protestant community, and this boycott was endorsed by Bishop Michael Brown. It was a sad and searing division in that community. Even the Roman Catholic bell-ringer withdrew his services from the Church of Ireland parish church. Eamon de Valera condemned the boycott on 4 July 1957, and Time magazine coined the term “fethardism” to mean a boycott along religious lines.

Eventually, Sean traced Sheila and their daughters to Orkney. They were reconciled, and came home to Dungulph Castle in Fethard-on-Sea. The boycott came to an end when the parish priest bought his cigarettes in a Protestant-owned shop and when Sean Cloney helped to carry a neighbour’s coffin into the Church of Ireland parish church, once again in defiance of the strictures still in place in the 1950s.

What happened to their daughters, you may ask. Well, they were educated at home.

The movie A Love Divided was based on the boycott, although dramatic licence was taken with some events.

Many years later, Sean Cloney was one of the people from the area who complained about the behaviour of Father Sean Fortune, including abuse and theft, compiling a dossier with a list of 70 young people who had been in contact with the priest.

Over 40 years after the boycott, Bishop Brendan Comiskey apologised publicly in 1998 for the role of his church in the boycott – an apology that was accepted graciously by Bishop John Neill (later Archbishop of Dublin). That year, I was collaborating with Sean Cloney in the events in Co Wexford commemorating the bicentenary of the 1798 Rising. A few miles from where the Cloneys lived, in the neighbouring parish of Old Ross, there is a mass grave, where the victims of one of the worst massacres carried out during the Rising had been buried in a mass pit.

For 200 years, the victims of the massacre in Scullabogue Barn lay together in a pit, without ever being committed to the earth in a proper funeral service, and without any gravestone to mark their place of burial. Sean and I ensured that the wording on a new gravestone would use none of the language of victims or perpetrators.

In our language and in our violence towards one another in Ireland over the generations, we have all been victims and we have all been perpetrators. And to dismiss those who had been burned to death in Scullabogue Barn on 5 June 1798 by categorising them would amount to trampling on their graves.

The mythical depiction over the generations, by people who remained poles apart, was either that those who died were loyalist collaborators or planters and that those who killed them were their executioners; or that those who died were innocent civilians, who had been the victims of an early form of “ethnic cleansing,” and that those who killed them were sectarian murderers.

The truth is that among the 113 victims, the family names were names that are shared across the two local communities, protestant and Catholic – and, not surprisingly, so too with those who set the barn alight. Catholics and Protestants were murdered together; Protestants and Catholics engaged in the killing together. And all of us there that sun-soaked summer’s evening, as I unveiled the first gravestone on that cold pit in Saint Mary’s Churchyard in Old Ross, shared in that heritage. We were all heirs to those in the barn who cried out for mercy, and all heirs to those outside who bayed for blood.

It stands out as one of the single most appalling massacres in Irish history – worse than Abercorn, Omagh, Enniskillen or Darkley. But the fact that no gravestone had been erected for 200 years was silent testimony to the silence of generations in the locality on this monstrous atrocity, which had never been talked about openly in the local community.

If a wound is left bandaged for too long, and not allowed to bask in the healing rays of sunshine, it becomes infected or even gangrenous. Is it any wonder then, that within a few miles of Scullabogue and Old Ross, the Fethard-on-Sea boycott broke out just a century and a half later, five generations later?

On that summer’s evening, as we adjourned for the traditional bun-fight, I was assaulted verbally by someone who challenged my assertions that John Kelly, one of the leaders in the 1798 Rising, was a member of the Church of Ireland. I was told “Kelly” was not a “Protestant family name.” I knew from my own background of generations of Kellys in the south-east who were just that. Eventually, the argument that had gone down a very different path ended when I pointed out that Sheila Cloney’s name before she married Sean was Sheila Kelly.

Their daughter Mary died in 1998, Sean Cloney died in October 1999, and Sheila died in June 2009.

A closing conundrum

Some images and perceptions that I raised in our first session still have to be dealt with.

How do we relate all this to:

● The decline of the Anglo-Irish gentry?
● The loss of the substantial Church of Ireland working class population in Dublin (and perhaps soon in Belfast too)?
● The changing ethos of formerly Church of Ireland hospitals?

Is there still a sense of “Protestant identity” – north and south?

According an opinion piece by Mary Kenny in the Irish Independent a few years ago, 10 per cent ordinands in the Church of Ireland were former Roman Catholics.

Is that true today?

Does it matter?

What are the social consequences – for Roman Catholics and for the Church of Ireland?

How does this compare with England, where some Anglicans – including some bishops – have become Roman Catholics?

If religion is inextricably linked with culture, then how does the Church of Ireland engage with the context of the culture in which it flourishes in the Republic of Ireland?

And how might these figures eventually impact on how the Church of Ireland in the Republic relates to its closest neighbour?

Additional reading:

Patrick Comerford, ‘The Fethard Boycott,’ in The Encyclopaedia of Ireland, ed. B. Lalor, (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan / New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2003).
Patrick Comerford, ‘Cead Mile Failte to Repentance and Reconciliation’, in Untold Stories: Protestants in the Republic of Ireland 1922-2002, eds. C. Murphy, L. Adair (Dublin: Liffey Press, 2003), pp 59-62.
Heather Crawford, Outside the Glow: Protestants and Irishness in Independent Ireland (Dublin: UCD Press, 2010).
Tim Fanning, The Fethard-on-Sea Boycott (Cork: Collins Press, 2010).
Finola Kennedy, Family, economy and government in Ireland (Dublin: ESRI, 1989).
Malcolm Macourt, Counting the People of God? The Census of Population and the Church of Ireland (Dublin: Church of Ireland Publishing, 2008).
Gerard P. Moran, “Church and State in Modern Ireland: The Mayo Co. Librarian Case, 1930-1932,” Cathair Na Mart (The Journal of the Westport Historical Society), vol 7, no 1 (1987).
Pat Walsh, The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian (Cork: Mercier Press, 2009).

RTÉ television documentary, “Scannal – The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian” (2009).

Next:

6.1: Christianity and nationalisms

6.2: The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and its consequences: a reflection on the Hard Gospel Project.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin. This lecture on 16 February 2012 was part of the MTh Year II course, EM8825: Anglican Studies in an Irish context.

Anglican Studies (5.1): the Church of Ireland from the Penal Laws to Disestablishment

2012-02-16T10:30:00.018Z

The West Doors of Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny … legislation changing the diocesan structures and abolishing tithes were the first two legislative steps that eventually led to the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Church of Ireland Theological Institute

MTh Year II

EM8825: Anglican Studies in an Irish context:

Thursdays: 10 a.m. to 12 noon, The Hartin Room.

Thursday, 16 February 2012, 10 a.m.:

Anglican Studies (5.1): The Church of Ireland from the Penal Laws to Disestablishment.

James II … his accession raised many dilemmas for the Church of Ireland

Introduction:

Last week, we had left Ireland with Charles II on the throne and the Church of Ireland restored as the Established Church. We had looked at the Church of the Caroline Divines and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the Church of Jeremy Taylor and Narcissus Marsh.

But as a Church, with close political relations with the state, this bond produced great problems during the reign of James II, for the Church found itself – in that wonderful description by Professor Raymond Gillespie of Maynooth – “caught between a Catholic anvil and a Protestant hammer.”

James II was a professed Roman Catholic, and with his succession Anglicanism faced real dilemmas. For 25 years, the Anglican Church – both the Church of Ireland and the Church of England – had long been, effectively, the handmaiden of the state. For long, the concept of non-resistance had been regularly preached from the Anglican pulpit. What role would the Church now have with an antagonistic monarch on the throne? And how could it consider legitimately oppose any measures against its interests that were introduced by the king?

According to the Church historian Murray, with the accession of James II, “the Church of Ireland once more fell upon evil days.” The Duke of Ormond was replaced as Viceroy by the king’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Clarendon, while Richard Talbot, Earl (and later Duke) of Tyrconnell, and brother of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, became commander-in-chief of Ireland.

Matters become worse for the Church of Ireland in 1687 when Tyrconnell succeeded Clarendon, and the outlawries resulting from 1641 were reversed. Church of Ireland clergy lost their tithes, churches were seized and the Mass said in them, vacant sees – including Cashel, Clonfert, Clogher and Elphin – were not filled, and their revenues were handed over to the Roman Catholic bishops of those dioceses.

John Vesey, Archbishop of Tuam and Richard Tennison, Bishop of Killala, fled to England, followed by the Archbishop of Dublin and the bishops of Kilmore, Dromore, Kildare, Ferns and Leighlin, Cloyne, Raphoe and Derry. Those who are unkind would say they abandoned the Church of Ireland at the time, but many of them would return. And, indeed, many of the bishops remained, including the Archbishop of Armagh and the bishops of Meath, Ossory, Limerick, Cork and Ross, Killaloe and Waterford and Lismore.

Dean King, who had been left behind by Archbishop Marsh as his commissary in Dublin, said he knew of 16 or 17 clergymen who were assaulted, imprisoned and threatened with death.

In an effort to recover his throne after the Williamite revolt, James II left his exile in France in 1689, and landed in Ireland. The Irish Parliament was summoned, but few Protestants attended: apart from four bishops, four lay peers and six MPs, the rest of Parliament was made up of Roman Catholics. Those who were attainted and had their estates confiscated included Archbishop Marsh and Archbishop Vesey, and Bishops Hopkins, Sheridan, Moreton, Smith, Marsh of Ferns, Jones and Wiseman, and 83 of the clergy of the Church of Ireland.

The vacant sees were to be filled by Roman Catholics, churches were seized, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, was seized and mass was celebrated in it, part of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, was used as military stables, and an order was issued, under penalty of death, forbidding more than five Protestants to meet together.

The Battle of the Boyne … fought on 1 July 1690

We can never separate the developments in the Continental Church from what was happening in the Church on this island: if the Popes saw their power and influence declining after the Peace of Westphalia, and declining in the face of the assertions of the French King and the Gallicans, then was it any wonder that – having heard that James II was ending his exile in France, and that with French support he had come to Ireland in the hope of regaining his throne – the Pope should say Mass in Rome giving thanks for the victory of William at the Boyne?

William III landed in Ireland on 1 July 1690, he defeated the forces of James at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July, and entered Dublin on 6 July, the same day a solemn service of thanksgiving was held in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and the sermon was preached by Dean King. A new era was ushered in, for both the island of Ireland, and the Church of Ireland. But there were problems for the Church of Ireland too.

The Church of Ireland after the Boyne

18th century Dublin … by 1715, the population of Dublin had risen to 89,000, and two-thirds of the people were Protestants

Between 1690 and 1714, both Ireland and the Church of Ireland went through a period of change. Dublin was the second city of the Empire and grew at an unprecedented rate after the Williamite Revolution. In 1695, Dublin had a population of 47,000, and 12 parishes, with 78% of the population living south of the River Liffey. By 1715, the population of Dublin had risen to 89,000, of whom two-thirds were Protestants.

Non-resistance and the divine right of kings had become central assumptions in the relations between Church and State for both the Church of Ireland and the Church of England. There were those who had taken an oath of loyalty to the reigning monarch and who – despite the turmoils during the reign of James II – felt bound by their oath.

Those leaders who felt unable to renounce that oath, who refused to take a new oath to William and Mary, and who lost their offices, became known as the Nonjurors. They included: William Sheridan, Bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh, the Archdeacons of Connor (Baynard) and Dublin (John Fitzgerald), the Dean of Lismore (Barzilai Jones), the Chancellor and Treasurer of Connor (Charles Leslie and W. Jones), and Henry Dodwell and George Kelly of Trinity College Dublin.

Although this dissent was hardly as significant as the Nonjuring schism in England, it nevertheless shows that:

1, There was dissent within the Church of Ireland on the question of Church/State relations;
2, The Williamite revolution did not have complete support within the Protestant community;
3, the opposition to William within the Church of Ireland came from the core of the clergy rather than from the margins.

Archdeacon John Fitzgerald of Dublin was a brother of Bishop William Fitzgerald of Clonfert, a son of Dean John Fitzgerald of Cork, and a grandson of Archbishop Richard Boyle of Tuam. Sheridan had been Dean of Down and chaplain to the Duke of Ormond when he was Lord-Lieutenant, and his brother Patrick Sheridan was Bishop of Cloyne (1679-1682).

Sheridan and Fitzgerald moved to London, where they lived among the English Nonjurors. Leslie and Dodwell would be recognised as a theologian and an historian of importance within Anglican thought. They set an example of honesty in politics, emphasised the view that there is moral foundation for the State as well as for the Church, and that there is a sacredness of moral obligation in public life.

Apart from losing the Nonjurors, the Church of Ireland lost many leaders who had fled during the reign of James II, while others such as Hugh Gore of Waterford had died as a consequence of their suffering. As at the Restoration in 1660, the Church of Ireland once again faced the problem of reorganisation and filling vacant dioceses. In 1691 and 1692, a new archbishop and eight new bishops were appointed: Narcissus Marsh (Cashel), Fitzgerald (Clonfert – a brother of the Nonjuring Archdeacon of Dublin), Digby (Elphin), Tennison (Clogher), Vigors (Ferns and Leighlin), Lloyd (Killala), King (Derry), Foy (Waterford) and Wilson (Limerick).

Archbishop Narcissus Marsh: brought fresh vigour to the office of Archbishop in Cashel, Dublin and Armagh

Archbishop Narcissus Marsh brought a fresh vigour to his roles as Provost of TCD, Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, and then as Archbishop of Cashel (1691-1694), Dublin (1694-1703) and Armagh (1703-1714). He was regular in visitations, combating the abuses he encountered. He forbade preaching in private houses, ordered every incumbent to preach each Sunday, and to “preach upon the royal supremacy four times a year.” As archbishop, he insisted on visiting his suffragan dioceses, and he also played a part in establishing Marsh’s Library and the Dublin Philosophical Society (now the Royal Irish Academy).

The other key reforming figure in the Church at this time was William King (see below).

The bishops were regarded as tending towards “High Church” preferences or leanings, and their political loyalties were tested with the introduction of the oath of abjuration in 1697, which was opposed by all four archbishops and three of the bishops.

But the relations between Church and State were strengthened in the years that followed with an increasing political role for the bishops. The Lords Lieutenant were largely non-resident, and during their lengthy absences the island was governed by two or three Lords Justices, one of whom was inevitably either the Primate or one of the three other archbishops.

Narcissus Marsh complained that the offices of state occupied too much of his working time, and during the parliamentary recess in 1707, the Council sat no less than eight or ten hours a day, leaving him little time for study or to administer his diocese. King too complained that he was over-burdened by the affairs of state. Many bishops complained that they had to spend much of their time in the House of Lords.

The Irish-born clergy also complained about being overlooked when it came to promotions in the Church: every primate who held office between 1702 and 1800 was of English birth, and a very normal path to promotion to the bench of bishops was to come to Ireland as chaplain to the Lord Lieutenant. Many of these, as Chart describes them, were “political hacks or obsequious intriguing courtiers.”

Among the clergy of the Church of Ireland, there was unease at the failure to call Convocation, which had not met since 1661, and which was not summoned again until 1703. When it was called, the bishops claimed for convocation the right to deal with all Church matters, to make ordinances and decrees that had the force of ecclesiastical canons and constitutions, while the clergy claimed the right to impose their own taxation.

The full convocation met for the first time in the chapter room of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, on 11 January 1704, and met for several months. They pressed for stricter observance of the Lord’s Day, a ruling by the bishops on churchwardens’ rights to punish those who failed to attend church, and debated profane swearing, public drunkenness, travelling on Sundays, the morals and manners of stage plays, and proposals for theatre censorship.

They drew attention to the dangers of teaching philosophy in school, their worries about the ordination of unqualified men, the abuses of parochial patronage, the scandalous lifestyles of dismissed clergy, and the plight of sick curates.

They wanted at least monthly celebrations of the Holy Communion, a greater role for deans and chapters in examining candidates for ordination, and a more thorough inquiry into the ordinations of men who were received as priests and who were former Roman Catholics.

They also debated the use of First Fruits and Twentieth Part, the division and union of parishes, and raising money for church repairs.

And a major part of the debate was devoted to the conversion of Roman Catholics, and the use of the Irish language in this mission, including the use of Irish Bibles, sermons, hymnbooks and prayer books.

But Convocation also gave the incentive and initiative for a new wave of church building.

At this time, King reported, for example, that in the Diocese of Ferns, containing 131 parishes, only 32 parishes – the poorest parishes, needless to say – were in the hands of the officiating clergy. Neither the bishop, nor the dean nor the archdeacon was resident in the diocese, which was served by only 13 beneficed clergy and nine curates, with incomes at £30 to £100. Pluralism and non-residence were major problems for the Church of Ireland, and reform was proving a very slow process.

However, Alan Acheson judges the calling of Convocation a pyrrhic victory for the Church of Ireland, with its meetings exposing the disunity of the Church. Convocation gradually declined in importance in the closing years of Queen Anne’s reign, leaving the Church of Ireland dependent on the secular power, and therefore on the landed interest.

Primate Marsh died in 1713. Convocation was convened for the last time at the end of that year in December 1713, and it was dissolved with the death of Queen Anne on 1 August 1714.

Church and State were as divided over whether the throne should pass to another member of the House of Stuart or to the German princes of the House of Hanover. With the accession of the Hanoverian monarchy in 1714, Church and State would enter a new phase. The Church of Ireland moved from being in the hands of the heirs of the Caroline tradition to being part of the new latitudinarian age. It would not escape the challenges posed for the wider Church in the decades to come by Rationalism and Deism.

The legacy of the Penal Laws

The Treaty Stone, Limerick … the Penal Laws left a legacy of bitterness

For the Roman Catholics, the new Penal Laws have left a legacy of bitterness. Were they inspired by theological antipathies or by fear of the political influence of the Pope? The historian Lecky points out that the Penal Laws were a product of the time, when church and state were inseparable, and claims they were modelled on French laws against the Huguenots.

But inherited memory among many recalls the Penal Laws as sectarian in their intent and in their impact. This memory is reinforced by the fact that the bishops of the Church of Ireland were often instrumental in enacting and in enforcing these laws.

A state paper of the time on the state of Roman Catholics on the island lists: 838 secular priests and 389 regular priests, and three bishops (Cork, Galway and Waterford). Several Roman Catholic bishops had been expelled, and those that remained lived a precarious life, depending on the shelter provided by courageous members of their flock.

Archbishop Edward Comerford of Cashel, who was living in Thurles, Co Tipperary, wrote to the Pope, Innocent XII, in 1698: “Several of our brethren have stayed, hiding in cisterns, in mountains, caves and holes. I am sustained by the bread of tribulation and the water of scarcity, but I have not given up my office and will not do so.” He remained in office until his death in 1710.

But the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Portland, knowing that without bishops there could be no priests, argued that if needed Roman Catholic bishops would have to come from the continent to continue ordinations.

Meanwhile, the tracts and pamphlets of the times, and the sermons preached on 30 January, 29 May, 23 October and 5 November (the new commemorations in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer), teem with references to the enormous evils of the powers claimed by the Pope.

Bishop King of Derry, a later Archbishop of Dublin, argued that the Roman Catholics must be held in subjection because of their religious views. They could not hold any office because they might betray their trust to the Pope. He conceded their rights to personal liberty – but not their political liberty and or any rights to the full benefits of citizenship.

King objected, for example, to a Roman Catholic priest in his diocese who was reported to have taken on himself to marry and divorce people and to dissolve marriages. On the other hand, King severely censured a landlord who took advantage of the Penal Laws to acquire the land of a Roman Catholic tenant for his own benefit.

Some of the bishops of the Church of Ireland advocated extreme measures: Bishop Anthony Dopping, in a sermon in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, urged that there was no moral obligation on the Government to observe the terms conceded to Roman Catholics in the Treaty of Limerick. On the other hand, on the following Sunday, Bishop Moreton of Kildare, anxious to find some accommodation, urged Roman Catholic priests to accept the authority of William III, and suggested that their bishops could be paid by the state. Even one leading figure in the Church of Ireland, Peter Manby (1638-1697), Dean of Derry, became a Roman Catholic as a consequence of reading Archbishop William King’s Answer to the Considerations.

The Convocation summoned in 1703 devoted much time to debating the Penal Laws, including prohibitions on the entry of Roman Catholic priests from abroad, the opening of a register of Roman Catholic priests in Ireland, extending the vote to Roman Catholics only if they took the oaths of abjuration and allegiance, and demanding that holders of Crown offices must first receive Holy Communion in the Church of Ireland.

In wrestling with these memories, historians of the Church of Ireland have failed to deal adequately with the real and shameful memories. A disingenuous example is provided by Murray (in Alison Philips) as late as 1933, when he writes: “At such times, however, the priest walked abroad at night and vanished in the early dawn, and when ardent Protestant neighbours came in search of arms they were apt to find pistol and corselet hidden away with pyx and chasuble” (Philips, vol 3, pp 160-161).

And yet, throughout all this time, pilgrimages were thriving – despite the Act banning them in 1702 – and especially at Lough Derg, which was owned by the Leslie family of Glaslough, who had provided generations of bishops and priests to the Church of Ireland.

Did the Penal Laws have any effect on the population? More than 40 years after the Treaty of Limerick, Roman Catholics still outnumbered Protestants in every part of Ireland, except the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Derry and Dublin.

An analysis of population figures calculated by using the register of hearth taxes in the 1730s shows:

Ulster: 62,624 Protestants; 38,459 Catholics; Ratio: 3:2.
Leinster: 25,241 Protestant; 92,434 Catholics; Ratio: 2:7.
Munster: 13,337 Protestants; 106,407 Catholics; Ratio: 1:8.
Connacht: 4,299 Protestants; 44,101 Catholics; Ratio: 1:10.

The Presbyterians too suffered under the Penal Laws, and also strongly resented the Sacramental Test Act. Any legislative efforts to provide relief for the Presbyterians were effectively vetoed in the House of Lords, where the bishops had a working majority. Those who were more favourable towards the Presbyterians and their plight included a Dr Wright, FTCD, who, as a consequence, found his nomination as Bishop of Cork and Ross was blocked. Instead, the vacant see was filled by Peter Brown, who was suspected of Jacobite sympathies, and who wrote a discourse attacking the practice of drinking to the “pious and immortal memory” of William III.

On the other hand, the Convocation of 1704 discussed providing the Huguenots with space in church buildings and a French version of The Book of Common Prayer, which was published in various editions in Dublin from 1715 to 1817.

Saint Patrick’s Cathedral Dublin: hosted a French-speaking congregation of Huguenots (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At the death of Queen Anne, the Church of Ireland – like the Church of England – was divided between those who wanted a Jacobite restoration and those who wanted the throne to pass to the House of Hanover. In 1715, in the face of the rebellion of the Old Pretender, Thomas Lindsay, Archbishop of Armagh, was reluctant to sign a covenant drawn up by the House of Lords; and eventually, when he signed it, it was said he had placed it at the end so it could be torn off in the event of a Jacobite victory.

And so the two principal archbishops – Thomas Lindsay of Armagh as a suspected Jacobite and William King of Dublin as a Lord Justice – were opposed to each other politically. King was worried that Convocation would give a voice to and an excuse for assembly to the clergy who were sympathetic to the Jacobite Pretender, and so Convocation was not called again once the Hanovers had ascended the throne.

The Bolton Library, Cashel … built to house the book collection of Archbishop Theophilus Bolton (1678-1744) and to provide a chapter house for Cashel Cathedral

The tensions continued between the English-born and Irish-born bishops and senior clergy in the Church of Ireland: King’s recommendation of Theophilus Bolton, who was born in Co Mayo, for a vacant see was turned down, although Bolton later went to Clonfert and Kilmacduagh in 1722, and later became Archbishop of Cashel in 1729. Many of the English-born clergy were more likely to be Whigs, and therefore sympathetic to legislation conceding greater liberties to the Presbyterians.

Eventually, a law was passed freeing Protestant dissenters from the penalties of the Act of Uniformity if they took the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, and made a declaration against transubstantiation.

Eventually King fell out of favour with the Government, and in 1719 he was omitted from the list of Lords Justices.

Josiah Hort … although King refused to consecrate him, he later became Archbishop of Tuam

Meanwhile, there were petty disputes and scandals too. King refused to consecrate Josiah Hort as Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin – supposedly because the letters patent incorrectly described him as being DD. In reality, King refused to consecrate him because of his intense personal dislike for the former nonconformist minister from Bath. Eventually, Hort was consecrated by the bishops of Meath, Kilmore, and Dromore, and went on to become Archbishop of Tuam.

William FitzGerald, who was Bishop of Clonfert until his death in 1722 at the age of 88, had been demented for his last years in office. At 76, he married a young woman who was reputed to govern her husband and his diocese; there were no glebes in the Diocese of Clonfert, half of the tithes went to laymen and a quarter to the bishop, and there were only 10 beneficed clergy, of whom half were non-resident.

The Archbishop of Dublin went to court in a dispute with the Dean and the Chapter of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, over whether the archdeacon had a right to a seat in the chapter, and over the archbishop’s right of jurisdiction and visitation in the cathedral. The archbishop accused the dean and chapter of squandering their possessions, turning the chapter house into a toyshop and the vaults into wine cellars, and allowing part of the cathedral to be used for secular use as part of the law courts.

Christ Church, Oxford … Hugh Boulter was dean – and Bishop of Bristol – before becoming Archbishop of Armagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Archbishop Lindsay of Armagh died in 1724, and Archbishop King of Dublin, who was about to be reconciled with his Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, was not promoted to Armagh. King was the leading churchman of the land, but he was native-born, he was independent-minded, he was quarrelsome at times, he did not promise subservient co-operation with Whitehall, he opposed the Toleration Act, and he was 74. The new Primate, instead, was Hugh Boulter (1672-1742) who, before coming to Ireland, was both the Dean of Christ Church Oxford and Bishop of Bristol at one and the same time, and was a former chaplain to the Hanoverian King George I.

As Archbishop of Armagh, Boulter became unpopular as he filled top judicial, political, and ecclesiastical posts from England, due to his distrust of the Irish-born clergy and to provide more Whig bishops who would be more favourable to the government. In his own words, he set out “to break the present Dublin faction on the bench.”

Yet, despite his staunch political allegiance to England, Boulter attempted to do his best for the people of Ireland. When the harvest failed in Ulster in 1729, he bought food and supplied to help relieve hunger. He opened new schools, and forced through parliament a bill that revalued the price of gold in 1738, to the benefit of the poor. He also tried to reform clergy incomes and to improve the standards of living for the clergy, and he tried to tackle the thorny issue of pluralism.

Archbishop William King ... died in 1729 and was buried in Donnybrook under two feet of water and nine feet below the ground

Archbishop King died in 1729 and was buried in a country churchyard – Donnybrook in Dublin – reportedly under two feet of water and nine feet below the ground. His bequests included £400 to buy glebes for churches in rural parts of Dublin, and £500 to endow a lectureship in theology in Trinity College Dublin, which he had earlier endowed with another sum of £500.

King’s place as Archbishop of Dublin was filled by an Englishman – John Hoadly (1678-1746), who was translated from Ferns and Leighlin, where he was bishop (1727-1730) to Dublin and later became Archbishop of Armagh (1742-1746).

In this period, we also find the foundation of the first Protestant Charter Schools, principally through the initiatives of Bishop Henry Maule (1679-1758), with a royal charter was issued in 1730. In other fields of education at this time, John Stearne (1660-1745) endowed a printing press at TCD, which became the foundation of the University Press, and left other bequests for TCD.

New challenges, new thinking

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was, in turn, a Protestant, a Catholic and a Deist

The Church of Ireland, as was the case with the Church of England, was facing problems with the state’s control of ecclesiastical new thinking and of appointments. New challenges to traditional methods of thinking were being posed in this period by Scepticism and Deism: by David Hume (1711-1776), the Scottish philosopher with whom Scepticism in Britain begins; and in Europe, with the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who was in turn a Protestant, a Catholic and a Deist; and Voltaire (1694-1778).

James Latham’s double portrait of Bishop Robert Clayton (1695-1758) and his Wife Katherine (née Donnellan)

The most prominent Deist in the Church of Ireland was Robert Clayton (1695-1758), who was successively Bishop of Killala (1730-1735), Cork (1735-1745) and Clogher (1745-1758). A friend of the prominent English Arian, Samuel Clarke, Clayton became a leader of the movement for the abolition of subscription to the formularies of the Church of Ireland. In the House of Lords, he proposed that both the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed should be expunged from the Book of Common Prayer, and in a book published in 1751, he denied the doctrine of the Trinity.

Clayton’s views blocked his appointment as Archbishop of Tuam, but he repeated these views in another book in 1757. He was prosecuted, summoned to appear before the bishops in Dublin, and faced censure and possible deprivation. However, before the hearing could begin, he was seized with a nervous fever and died.

But even bishops, including the English-born bishops of Irish dioceses, often had the best wishes of the Church of Ireland at heart. When Primate Boulter died in 1742, he bequeathed the bulk of his property, worth over £30,000, for the purchase of glebes for clergy and for supplementing the income of clergy in smaller parishes. Archbishop Bolton of Cashel, who died the following year, left behind a library that still bears his name and is of cultural importance to this day.

The Roman Catholics of Ireland remained under deep suspicion of Jacobite loyalties, suspicions strengthened by the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745, although they had little direct impact on Ireland. But the first stirrings towards toleration were being heard among the Bishops of the Church of Ireland.

Preaching in 1725 before the House of Commons on the anniversary of the massacres of 1641, Bishop Edward Synge condemned the persecution of religious belief as useless and improper because belief is a function of the mind and cannot be affected by external force.

Bishop Synge found two Roman Catholic doctrines subversive of the state – the power of the Pope to depose, and his power to absolve subjects from their oaths of allegiance. But he was not convinced that these doctrines were held and believed by all Roman Catholics, and argued that they should be given the opportunity to disclaim them.

However, at the same time, Boulter promoted legislation introducing tougher restrictions on Roman Catholics. It was claimed that many members of the legal profession were covert Roman Catholics, and that they had only conformed nominally to qualify for their profession and office.

Boulter’s legislation required court officers and lawyers to make a declaration against Popery; to take an oath of abjuration; imposed an initial probation of five years on converts from Roman Catholicism to the Church of Ireland being admitted to the legal profession; and required those converts to rear their children as Protestants. He also promoted an act forbidding Roman Catholics to vote at elections.

This last act marks the climax of the Penal Laws and within two years Josiah Hort, Bishop of Kilmore, was arguing for its repeal. In 1745, an act was passed making null and void any marriage between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant or ex-Protestant if a Roman Catholic priest officiated.

Saint Mary’s Church, Mary Street, Dublin ... John Wesley preached his first sermon in Ireland here in 1747, and Wolfe Tone was baptised here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

The Church of Ireland was very much in need of reform. But we should not forget that this was also a time of great cultural depth and of spiritual growth in the Church of Ireland. Jonathan Swift was a reforming Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, as well as the author of Drapier’s Letters and Gulliver’s Travels. George Berekely, the philosopher Bishop of Cloyne, was also the first missionary in the post-Reformation Church of Ireland. Other pioneering missionaries from the Church of Ireland included Charles Inglis from Donegal, a missionary in Canada who became the first Anglican bishop consecrated for North America.

This was a period that also saw the growth of many charities and charitable institutions. Bartholomew Mosse founded the Rotunda Hospital, and Jonathan Swift founded Saint Patrick’s Hospital. This was the era of the Wesley brothers, their preaching, their hymn-writing, and the Rise of Methodism; John Wesley first visited Ireland in 1747, preaching his first sermon in Saint Mary’s Church in Mary Street.

The French Revolution by Delacroix (1830) ... the 18th century is known as the Age of Reason, or the Age of Revival, but was also the Age of Revolution

The Canadian church historian Gerald Cragg has described the end of the 18th century as “The Age of Reason.” But we could equally also call this “The Age of Revival” or even the “Age of Revolution.”

It is a constant debate within Church history whether the rise of Methodism and the preaching and impact of the Wesley brothers forestalled a revolution in England. So we cannot ignore the social and political impact of Methodism, nor can we ignore its impact on the Church of Ireland.

At the same time, this was the age of revolution, in which there was a clear link connecting Bunker Hill, the Bastille and Boolavogue: the American Revolution had an indelible impact on the Episcopal Church and the future shape of the Anglican Communion; the French Revolution had an impact on the French Church, and more generally on the whole Christian Church; and, of course, the 1798 Rising had an impact on the Church of Ireland and the Church in Ireland.

The rise of Methodism

John Wesley preaching in the early days of Methodism

The sobriquet “Methodist” was originally given in 1729 to a group at Oxford known as the Holy Club and led by John Wesley (1703-1791). Wesley traced the “first rise” of Methodism to those early years, and the second stage to 1736 when the “rudiments of a Methodist society” appeared in Georgia, where the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, were missionaries with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG).

During their voyage to America, and their stay in Georgia, they were deeply influenced by the Moravians, who in turn had taken on much of the teachings and experiences of the German Pietists. Back in London, the Wesleys were in close contact with the Moravians, and within three days of each other in May 1738 John and Charles had vital Christian experiences – what John described as his heart being “strangely warmed” when a passage was being read from Martin Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans.

We could see this as the turning point in the Evangelical Revival on this side of the Atlantic. The Wesleys preached throughout Britain and Ireland: John Wesley’s Journal records his travels over 250,000 miles, and he visited Ireland 21 times in a 42-year period from 1747 to 1789. When John Wesley found the doors of Anglican churches closed to him, he followed the example of George Whitefield, and preached in the open.

Irish Methodist missionaries Barbara Heck and Philip Embury recalled in a window in the United Methodist Church in Orlando, Florida (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

The first Methodist Conference met in 1744, and the first Methodist circuits were organised by 1746. Methodism gained strong positions throughout Ireland, England and Wales, but notably made slower headway in Scotland. In America, Methodism owed its beginnings to three Irish emigrants, Robert Strawbridge, Philip Embury and Barbara Heck.

The break with Anglicanism came when John Wesley ordained local preachers for areas where Methodists could not receive the sacraments. Although he hoped Methodism could stay within the boundaries of Anglicanism, and died an Anglican priest, Methodism became a separate organisation and a separate church.

The American and French Revolutions

The River Slaney at Enniscorthy ... there is a direct link between the American revolution in 1776, the French revolution in 1789, and the Wexford Rising of 1798 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

After the American Revolution, many Anglicans fled New England, moving north and settling in Canada. There, Anglicanism has been strongly influenced by a steady flow of clergy and missionaries from the Church of Ireland. Those Anglicans who remained in the new United States felt isolated from the Church of England, whose bishops were unwilling or unable to provide new bishops to serve the new church.

The first American bishop was not secured for another 18 years, until 1784 – the same year American Methodists broke with Anglicanism as a consequence of John Wesley’s ordination of a superintendent or bishop for America. That same year saw the consecration of Samuel Seabury (1729-1796) by bishops from the nonjuring Episcopal Church of Scotland.

Although Seabury was elected Bishop of Connecticut in 1783, the bishops of the Church of England found they could not consecrate him because he could not take the Oath of Allegiance. As a consequence, the “high” liturgy of the Episcopalians of Scotland strongly influenced the Episcopal Church in America for generations.

The French Revolution was a revolution against the excesses of both church and state. The Bastille was attacked on 14 July 1789, and within a month a “Declaration on the Rights of Man” was promulgated, at the suggestion of Bishop Talleyrand (1754-1838), and Church lands were taken into public ownership in an attempt to finance the revolutionary changes taking place. Talleyrand was excommunicated in 1793, but continued to be active in politics, becoming Foreign Minister (1796), taking charge of the Provisional Government (1814), and serving as French ambassador in London (1830-1834).

The French Church was reorganised in 1790, and over the next year the number of bishops was reduced from 140 to 83, bishops and priests were to be elected by the people, and the clergy were compelled to swear allegiance to the French constitution rather than the state. Gallicanism had its victory in 1791.

But those nobles and clergy who opposed the revolution were executed summarily, and Louis XVI went to the guillotine in 1793, and when the Jacobins took the affairs of religion into their own hands, a group of deputies marched to Notre Dame Cathedral, and there enthroned a dancer of doubtful morals as “the Goddess of Reason.” From that year, France was almost continuously at war with its European neighbours, including England, which had consequences for Ireland, and for the churches in Ireland, too.

The Irish Revolution of 1798

The Battle of Ballynahinch on 13 June 1798: there is a direct chain linking the events of 1776, 1789 and 1798

I said earlier there was clear connection, linking Bunker Hill, the Bastille and Boolavogue. We should not see the events in Ireland in 1798 in isolation from the events in France nine years earlier, or from events in North America 22 years earlier. Nor should we fail to put the events of 1798 into a context at home, either.

The Rising of 1798 comes as a natural sequence to a number of reforms, and unmet demands for reform throughout Ireland at this time, demands and reforms that had major impacts on the Church of Ireland and its members.

In the mid-18th century, the towns and cities of Ireland were governed and controlled by self-appointing and self-perpetuating ruling oligarchies with exclusively Church of Ireland memberships, and the greatest proportion of Irish land was in the hands of Protestants, and more particularly in the hands of members of the Church of Ireland.

By 1745, a vigorous campaign was under way in Dublin to overturn the oligarchic powers of the self-selecting aldermen who ruled the city, now with a population of 110,000. This campaign was led by two members of the Church of Ireland – Charles Lucas and James Digges La Touche. Lucas was also more open to the rights of Presbyterians, which further alienated him from many of the bishops and clergy of the Church of Ireland. But the successes of Lucas and La Touche inspired similar reforms in other cities and towns.

The Church of Ireland was also arousing increasing hostility because of the contentious tithes. Tithes were an important factor in agitation in the 1760s associated with the Hearts of Oak (drawing support from Presbyterians, Anglicans and Catholics) in Ulster, and the Whiteboys (mainly Catholics) in Munster. Draconian legislation was introduced in 1776, and in that year 20 Whiteboys were executed, some on the orders of magistrates who were also clergy of the Church of Ireland.

The Volunteer movement was aimed on the one-hand at controlling the Whiteboys and on the other at replacing soldiers withdrawn from Ireland to fight in America.

The next wave of agrarian unrest came with the Rightboys in the 1780s. By now, some of the gentry realised that release from the burden of tithes would quieten their tenants, and also leave them able to pay their rents more easily. This challenge provoked a famous response from Richard Woodward, Bishop of Cloyne, who warned in 1786 that if the existing Established Church were overturned, the State would soon share its fate.

But the Roman Catholic Church was gaining in confidence, and Catholics were gaining in the extension of liberties by a government anxious to secure their loyalty, particularly in the face of threats from revolutionary France. Catholics were admitted to the legal profession in 1792, allowed to take degrees at Trinity College Dublin, in certain circumstances even allowed to bear arms or to become army officers – between 1793 and 1815 about 200,000 Irish recruits, the vast majority of them Roman Catholics, entered the British army and navy. And the franchise was extended to a limited number of Roman Catholics.

The government was worried that continuing clerical training in France would provide a new generation of revolutionary priests – those trained in France at the time of the French Revolution included Father John Murphy of Boolavogue. And so, in 1795, the same year as the formation of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, government funding was used to establish the Royal College of Saint Patrick at Maynooth.

Despite the popular image of a rising led by Presbyterians in the north-east in 1798 and by Catholic priests like John Murphy in the south-east, many of the leading members of the United Irishmen and their sympathisers were prominent members of the Church of Ireland, often finding inspiration for their revolutionary ideals in their religious beliefs and maintaining close links with church life.

Saint Michan’s Church, Church Street, Dublin … the Sheares brothers were the most noteworthy of United Irishmen among the parishioners (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

The founding members of the United Irishmen in 1791 included Thomas Russell, Theobald Wolfe Tone and Simon Butler, all members of the Church of Ireland. Prominent among the United Irishmen in 1798 was Lord Edward FitzGerald (1763-1798), whose uncles and cousins included a Bishop of Cork, an Archdeacon of Ross, and a Rector of the famous Shandon church in Cork. The brothers Henry Sheares (1755-1798) and John Sheares (1766-1798) were the most noteworthy of United Irishmen among the parishioners of Saint Michan’s, Dublin – both were hanged publicly on 14 July 1798.

Other leading United Irishmen with intimate church links included Wolfe Tone, who married the granddaughter of a clergyman; Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, commander of the Wexford rebel forces, who was the grandson of two and the nephew of a third clergyman in the Diocese of Ferns; and Cornelius Grogan, a conscientious patron of the Parish of Ardamine and churchwarden of Rathaspeck, both in Co Wexford.

Looking across Wexford Harbour towards Wexford Town ... as Cornelius Grogan went to his death on Wexford Bridge “the sailors of the Royal Navy who hanged him were amazed when … they heard [Archdeacon John Elgee] recite Protestant prayers”(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

As Grogan went to his death on Wexford Bridge, accompanied by the Rector of Wexford, Archdeacon John Elgee, it is said (by the local historian, Nicky Furlong) that “the sailors of the Royal Navy who hanged him were amazed when … they heard him recite Protestant prayers.”

In the north-east, it is often forgotten that the hero and heroine of the Battle of Ballynahinch, Henry Monroe and Betsy Gray (if she ever existed as a real historical character), were both members of the Church of Ireland.

Many of these laymen and women had been fired in their revolutionary zeal by their religious convictions, shaped and moulded in the Church of Ireland. Among those religious United Irishmen was Thomas Russell (1757-1803). Known in song and folklore as “the Man from God-knows-where,” Russell combined his revolutionary politics with a strong visionary brand of millenarianism and pious sacramentalism, and his knowledge of the Bible was so exact that he could argue with professional theologians on interpretations from both Hebrew and Greek.

By 1791, he had formed his lasting attachment to radical Christianity. He contended that tyranny had endeavoured to support itself “by perverting Christianity from its purposes and debasing its purity.” He was arrested before the 1798 Rising began, and his writings in Newgate Prison, Dublin, exhibit a deep self-examination coupled with a strong personal faith:

O Lord God … it is not from thy justice
Before which I stand condemned
That I expect salvation,
But from thy mercy that I expect pardon and forgiveness,
My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

When the 20 key surviving leaders of the Rising were deported to Scotland in 1799, ten (half) of them were members of the Church of Ireland, Russell among them. When he was eventually executed in 1803, it was after he had spent his last hours translating from his Greek New Testament verses from the Book of Revelation that summarised his politically beatific and visionary millenarianism: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away” (Revelation 21: 1).

Russell was buried in the grounds of Downpatrick Cathedral. Henry Monroe, who shared so many of his ideals and who was executed three years earlier, is buried in a quiet corner of the churchyard at Lisburn Cathedral.

The Act of Union and Disestablishment

The former Houses of Parliament in College Green, Dublin … the Act of Union not only joined the parliaments of Ireland and Britain, but also joined the Church of Ireland and the Church of England in one united church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Act of Union, which came into effect in 1801, not only joined the parliaments of Ireland and Britain, but also joined the Church of Ireland and the Church of England in one united church. Those who welcomed this included Thomas Lewis O’Beirne, Bishop of Meath, who saw the Act of Union as breaking the influence of the landed aristocratic families who controlled the Church of Ireland at the higher level, the Beresfords and the Ponsonbys, and as a way of reforming a church that was over-burdened with mediaeval structures and with non-resident pluralists.

For examples, the Diocese of Kilmacduagh had a full cathedral chapter with no resident incumbents in any of the parishes, while Lord Kilmorey was the hereditary lay abbot of the Exempt District of Newry and Mourne. Among the landed aristocracy, the Earl of Mayo was also Archbishop of Tuam and managed to secure for his son the post of Dean of Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny. But it was an era too that saw the foundation of new schools, and the growth and spread of Sunday schools.

Saint Mary’s Church, Kilkenny … the church is now closed, but on Christmas Day 1801 there were 430 communicants (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

And the church was not dead spiritually either: there were 430 Communicants in Saint Mary’s Church, Kilkenny, on Christmas Day 1801. Socially, the divisions were not always clear either: Thomas O’Beirne, Bishop of Meath, had been the Rector of Longford at the same time as his brother was the Parish Priest of the town.

In the aftermath of the Act of Union, the early 19th century saw a continuation of that lively social and missionary witness within the Church of Ireland. For example, the Ossory Clerical Society, which was founded in 1800, had a number of prominent leading lights such as Peter Roe of Saint Mary’s, Kilkenny, Robert Shaw of Fiddown (Piltown, Co Kilkenny), and Henry Irwin of Castlecomer, who became involved in and inspired many social, missionary and outreach movements in the first few decades of the century.

The Hibernian Bible Society, founded in 1806, is now the National Bible Society of Ireland, which also runs the Bestseller book shop in Dawson Street, Dublin. The Sunday School Society was set up in 1809, and the Hibernian Church Missionary Society, now the Church Mission Society Ireland (CMS Ireland) in 1814.

For the Church of Ireland, it was a new awakening to the wider, outside world. As the 19th century unfolded, it was the Church of Ireland that sent the first Anglican missionary to China, provided the first Anglican Archbishop of Ontario, and sent bishops and missionaries to India, Australia, the Middle East and throughout Africa.

But the rapid expansion of the cities left the crumbling parochial structures unable to cope. Privately-funded, proprietary chapels were built all over the Dublin. The most famous was the Bethesda, which some of you may remember was the Wax Museum off Parnell Square until recently and is now the Maldron Hotel in Granby Row – there is still a street called Bethesda Place behind the hotel. Trinity Church in Lower Gardiner Street became a labour exchange in the last century, but is an evangelical church once again.

Saint John’s, Sandymount … built on land provided by the Pembroke estate (Photograph © Patrick Comerford 2008)

Not all the proprietary chapels were evangelical: Harold’s Cross Church (now a Russian Orthodox Church) and Zion Church in Rathgar began with an evangelical flavour but were essentially parish churches for the rapidly expanding middle class and lower middle class suburbs. Saint Bartholomew’s in Clyde Road, and Saint John’s in Sandymount, built on land provided by the Pembroke estate, were both in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.

But the evangelical movement received an unexpected boost from Power Le Poer Trench, who became Bishop of Waterford in 1802 as a reward for his father and brother voting for the Act of Union. While he was Bishop of Elphin he went through a conversion experience, and went on to become a powerful evangelical leader as Archbishop of Tuam (1819-1839).

Another powerful evangelical leader was Robert Daly who became Bishop of Cashel. He was a champion of segregated schooling, in opposition to Archbishop Richard Whately, and supported the National School system. Remember that the National Schools were originally set up as non-denominational schools, and the original schools lasted long after independence as the Model Schools.

Lord Plunket’s statue in Kildare Place, beside the National Museum … he was the first evangelical to become Archbishop of Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

The first evangelical to become Archbishop of Dublin was Lord Plunket, whose statue stands in Kildare Place, off Kildare Street, close to the National Museum, on the original site of the Church of Ireland Teacher Training College.

One of the myths arising out of this “second reformation” is the myth of Souperism, which was tackled in his books by late Desmond Bowen. What is not in dispute is that at the beginning of the 19th century a large number of Roman Catholics joined the Church of Ireland – and not all of them were in the west of Ireland. Figures from the period between 1819 and 1861 show that the seven churches and 11 clergy in the Diocese of Tuam increased in number to 27 churches and 35 clergy.

Saint Thomas’s Church, Dugort … the centre of Nangle’s mission work on Achill Island (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Much of the success of this evangelical mission work was due to the use of the Irish language in preaching and mission work.

On Achill Island, agricultural reform, health care, education and pier building for fisheries were introduced along with Bible classes. In fact, part of Edward Nangle’s success was possible because there had been no resident clergy of any church in Achill until he arrived. It was only in 1850s and 1860s that the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hale responded, and then he sent Italian priests who could speak neither English nor Irish – and were happy, at first anyway, merely to provide Mass in Latin.

But while the Church of England continued to claim to be the church of the majority of the people in England, the Church of Ireland could not make the same claim on this island, and the achievements of leading church figures such as Swift and Berkeley, and the zealous missionary activities of members of the Church on other continents, did little to change the attitude of the majority of Irish people to the Church of Ireland – an attitude that Dr Kenneth Milne characterises as one that “varied between indifference and resentment.”

By then, most of the penal laws had been rescinded or repealed, and the bishops no longer formed a major bloc in the House of Lord. But Roman Catholics could still not sit in parliament, and all had to pay tithes – a tax on the produce of the land – towards the maintenance of the Established Church.

James Comerford’s stucco figure of Daniel O’Connell from The Irish House in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The first of these grievances was resolved in 1829 when, due largely to the efforts of Daniel O’Connell, the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed – although they still could not hold some offices of state.

The second grievance, the collection of tithes, remained a major running sore, although tithes were often collected not by the incumbents of parishes but by middlemen known as tithe proctors, who made a neat living out of their collecting. The injustice was widely spread, for some clergy were not able to exist on the tiny portion of the tithes they received.

Two pieces of legislation moved to change the ecclesiastical climate in Ireland: the 1833 Church Temporalities Act and the 1838 Tithe Commutation Act.

Under the Church Temporalities Act, the Archbishoprics of Tuam and Cashel were reduced to bishoprics, and ten other bishoprics were suspended, being put under the care of bishops in neighbouring dioceses, so that, for example, Derry joined Raphoe, Ossory joined Ferns and Leighlin, and Kildare joined Dublin and Glendalough.

A Board of Church Commissioners was set up to administer the money saved so that churches could be repaired and built, and the incomes of clergy in small parishes could be improved.

Under the Tithe Act, the tithes were reduced, and in future they were to be paid by the tenant to the landlord, who in due course was to pass it on to the Church.

The University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Oxford: John Keble’s Assize Sermon here in 1833 criticised legislation on changes in the Church of Ireland and marked the beginning of the Oxford Movement (Photograph © Patrick Comerford, 2007)

This state legislation for the internal matters of the Church led to Oxford Movement, which begins with John Keble’s Assize Sermon in in Oxford in 1833, in which he condemned the proposals as “national apostasy.”

John Henry Newman ... he spent much time in Dublin after leaving behind his Tractarian friends

The Oxford Movement led to a revived scholarly interest in Christian origins, the Fathers of the Early Church (Patristics), and Liturgy. But it also led to some of the leading Anglicans of the day – including John Henry Newman – becoming Roman Catholics.

Archbishop Richard Trench (1807-1886) … he was Archbishop of Dublin (1864-1884) at the time of the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland

Whatever Keble, Newman and others may have hoped to achieve initially, the move was unstoppable. Gladstone was convinced, if not that the Church of Ireland was beyond reform, than that the Church of Ireland could no longer be maintained as the state church and that its established position was an obstacle to good relations between England and Ireland. In 1869 the Church of Ireland was separated from the Church of England and was disestablished under the Irish Church Act, which came into effect on 1 January 1871.

The Church of Ireland was left in possession of the cathedrals, churches and church schools then in use. But all other properties fell to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and about half the money realised, over £8 million, was distributed among various charitable and educational bodies, including Maynooth College and the Presbyterian Church.

The Church of Ireland was left with its clergy and bishops, and with enough money – the other £8 million – to pay them, but not to pay their successors.

With Disestablishment, Trench told Archbishop Tait of Canterbury that he feared the “very worst for the future” and a “very dismal catastrophe” for the Church of Ireland. In his first charge to his diocese after disestablishment, Trench expressed fears that the Church of Ireland would cut itself off from other Anglican churches, casting itself off from the rest of Catholic Christendom and splitting “first into two or three, and then probably into a thousand fragments.”

Those fears, and the worst of fears, were never realised.

Appendix: key church figures of the time:

1: Archbishop William King (1650-1729) of Dublin

Archbishop William King … found the people of Belfast “very refractory”

One of the key figures in the Church of Ireland throughout this time was William King (1650-1729). While he was, Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (1688-1691), he was imprisoned on the orders of James II. After the Williamite Revolution, he became Bishop of Derry (1691-1703) and Archbishop of Dublin (1703-1729).

King was the son of James King, a Scottish miller, who had moved to Co Antrim to escape the Solemn League and Covenant in Aberdeen.

King was a “high church” bishop, supported the Penal Code and refused to support the Toleration Bill in the House of Lords. He was particularly strong in his condemnation of Quakers, and had strong words about the people of Belfast who “are very refractory” and who bury their dead without prayers, come to church without removing their hats, break their fasts, and refuse to hand over collections to the churchwardens. [Murray, in Alison Philips, vol 3, pp 165-166.]

He was a reforming bishop in both Derry and Dublin, with conspicuous success. In 1711, with the assistance of Jonathan Swift, Dean of Saint Patrick’s, he obtained the first fruits and the twentieth parts for the Church of Ireland. He was incensed when the best of his clergy were passed over and important bishoprics and other senior Church posts were given to English clergy.

He rebuilt churches, including seven in the Diocese of Derry that had not been used since the Reformation; he publicly admonished sinners; he provided services in the Irish language; and he openly challenged and debated with Dissenters.

In Dublin and Glendalough, King built (or rebuilt) Arklow, Stillorgan, Kilgobbin, Ringsend, Saint Mark’s, Saint James’s, Saint Ann’s, and Saint Luke’s, he provided glebes, and he took special care in his efforts to guard against pluralism and non-residence.

A Whig politically, he failed to receive the expected promotion to the Primacy during the High Tory ascendancy at the end of Queen Anne’s reign, but came into his own after the Hanoverian accession. An important theologian in his time, his De Origione Mali (1702, translated 1731) sought to reconcile the existence of evil with the conception of an omnipotent and beneficent God.

2, Other reforming bishops

Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford … Bishop Nathaniel Foy was a reforming bishop who was jailed twice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Other reforming bishops at this time included Nathaniel Foy (1638-1707), Bishop of Waterford (1691-1707), who was jailed for strong speeches during the reign of James II, and again in 1695. He rebuilt rebuilt Saint Bride’s Church in Dublin, founded Bishop Foy School in Waterford, endowed schools, but despaired over “our sinking church” which faced the prospect of ruin and needed “a persecution [to] preserve us.”

However, bishops found their voices were not heard when they protested against abuses. Smith of Limerick protested in vain when he was instructed to institute a Dr Richards into two parishes in his diocese, taking his total number of livings to 14. “The Poison breath of the Castle” was blighting the work of “the better sort of clergy,” he protested.

On the other hand, Simon Digby, Bishop of Elphin (1691-1720), was said by King to have left his diocese “in a miserable condition: churches greatly wanting, and those that are, ill supplied … only about 13 clergymen in it.”

King also described the diocese of Killaloe as being “in a miserable condition” too.

3, Scandalous bishops and clergy

And there were scandalous bishops too. These included Thomas Hackett, Bishop of Down and Dromore (1671-1694). For the greater part of his 22 years as a bishop, Hackett lived in Hammersmith in London, where he openly sold livings to the highest bidders, including Roman Catholics. He was tried by King and Dopping in 1694, found guilty of simony and other abuses, and deposed.

Other trials followed. Hackett’s archdeacon, Lemuel Mathews of Dromore, was deprived for gross neglect of nine cures and non-residence in any of them; Dean Ward of Connor was deprived for adultery; Prebendary Mylne of Kilroot was punished for adultery and drunkenness; Prebendary Armer of Connor, who was excommunicated for neglect of duty, had long been absent in England – he had committed the parish of Ballymoney to a blind man.

The courts also found that the two cathedrals in Hackett’s dioceses and most of the parish churches were out of repair, and some of the parishes were in the hands of Presbyterians.

4, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745):

Jonathan Swift ... played a key role in church and national politics

Jonathan Swift played a key role in church politics, helping to secure Marsh’s promotion to Armagh in 1703, for which Marsh thanked him. He expected a bishopric in England, but, when he was recommended for Hereford, his appointment was blocked by Archbishop Richard Sharp of York.

It is said that the levity and irreverence of the Tale of a Tub and other writings barred him from episcopal promotion in both the Church of Ireland and the Church of England. As a sort of consolation, Swift was made Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in 1713 in succession to John Stearne.

However, for the rest of his life, Swift remained bitterly disappointed. He found 18th century Ireland too narrow, too depressed, too poor, too limited intellectually, and too much outside the mainstream of life.

And yet he made his mark as Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. During his time as dean, he wrote Drapier’s Letters, there he restored weekly Holy Communion, attended Morning and Evening Prayer each day, and preached regularly.

In his letters signed WB Drapier, Swift was protesting against the introduction of a new coinage by William Wood, “Wood’s ha’pence.” The poor were suffering particularly as result of a debased currency, but the proposed new coinage would result in extravagant profits for a Birmingham ironmaster. As a consequence of Swift’s letters, the coins were refused universally, and were eventually withdrawn in 1725.

Swift complained too to Walpole of the way Boulter was filling the higher offices in the Church of Ireland with English-born clergy, and complained that those men were using their new offices to provide positions further down the ecclesiastical ladder to family members and friends. It was said that one bishop since his translation had allotted £2,000 in benefices to Englishmen.

Swift is best remembered today as a satirist and as the author of Gulliver’s Travels (1726). He died in 1745.

5, George Berkeley (1685-1753):

Bishop George Berkeley … an early missionary from the Church of Ireland

George Berkeley served the Church of Ireland both as Dean of Derry, and later as Bishop of Cloyne, but he is best remembered today as a philosopher.

Berkeley held that when we affirm material things to be real, we mean no more than that they are perceived. Material objects continue to exist when they are not perceived by us, solely because they are objects of the thought of God. The only things that exist in a primary sense are spirits, and material objects exist simply in the sense that they are perceived by spirits.

Berkeley’s views have been caricatured in Ronald Knox’s pair of limericks:

There was a young man who said, ‘God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no-one about in the Quad.’

And the reply, according to Knox was:

Dear Sir:
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Sincerely observed by, Yours faithfully, GOD.

In 1721, Berkeley became involved in an enterprise to establish a university in the Bermudas to train missionaries to work among the American Indians. He obtained a royal charter and sailed for America in 1728. But the scheme collapsed, and Berkeley returned home.

Berkeley became Bishop of Cloyne in 1734. In 1747, it was rumoured that he was hoping to be appointed Archbishop of Armagh. But he denied he had any desire to become Primate, declaring, “I am not in love with feats and crowds and visits, and late hours, and strange faces, and a hurry after affairs often insignificant.”

Shortly before his death, he asked to be relieved of his episcopal responsibilities and to be given a university appointment. But the king insisted that Berkeley should die a bishop, and he was still Bishop of Cloyne when he died in 1753.

His best known works include The Minute Philosopher and The Querist. He advocated the admission of Roman Catholics to TCD without the obligation to attend chapel duties, catechisings, or divinity lectures. He also advocated church services in the Irish language, he wanted to build new roads and sought to make the rivers navigable.

6, John Wesley (1703-1791)

John Wesley preaching at his father’s grave

John Wesley was an Anglican priest and theologian who was an early leader in the Methodist movement. Methodism had three rises:

• At Oxford University with the founding of the so-called “Holy Club.”
• While Wesley was parish priest in Savannah, Georgia.
• After Wesley’s return to England.

The movement took form from its third rise in the early 1740s with Wesley, along with others, itinerant field preaching and the subsequent founding of religious societies for the formation of believers. This was the first widely successful evangelical movement in Britain. Wesley’s Methodist Connection included societies throughout these islands before spreading to other parts of the English-speaking world and beyond.

Methodists, under Wesley’s direction, became leaders in many social justice issues of the day including prison reform and abolitionism movements.

Wesley’s strength as a theologian lay in his ability to combine seemingly opposing theological stances. His greatest theological achievement was his promotion of what he termed “Christian perfection,” or holiness of heart and life. Wesley insisted that in this life, the Christian could come to a state where the love of God, or perfect love, reigned supreme in one’s heart.

His theology, especially his understanding of perfection, was firmly grounded in his sacramental theology. He continually insisted on the general use of the means of grace (prayer, Scripture, meditation, Holy Communion, &c), as the means by which God transformed the believer. Throughout his life, Wesley remained within the Church of England and insisted that his movement was well within the bounds of Anglicanism.

Wesley was born in Epworth Rectory, 37 km north-west of Lincoln, the fifteenth child of the Revd Samuel Wesley, a Church of England priest, and his wife Susanna Annesley. At the age of five, John was rescued from the burning rectory. This escape made a deep impression on his mind; and he regarded himself as providentially set apart, as a “brand plucked from the burning.”

He was ordained a deacon in 1725, was elected a fellow of Lincoln College Oxford the following year, and received his MA in 1727. He was his father’s curate for two years, and then returned to Oxford to fulfil his functions as a fellow.

Leading Wesley scholars point to 1725 as the date of Wesley’s conversion. In the year of his ordination he read and began to seek the religious truths which underlay the great revival of the 18th century. He said the reading of Christian Perfection and Serious Call by the mystic and Nonjuror William Law (1686-1761) gave him a more sublime view of the law of God; and he resolved to keep it, inwardly and outwardly, as sacredly as possible.

The year of his return to Oxford, 1729, marks the beginning of the rise of Methodism. The famous “Holy Club” was formed by John Wesley’s younger brother, Charles Wesley, and some fellow students, derisively called “Methodists” because of their methodical habits.

John Wesley left in 1735 for Savannah, Georgia. In the midst of a devastating storm on the way to Georgia, he was deeply impressed by a group of Moravians who remained calm by singing hymns. In Georgia, he built up a positive relationship with the Moravians. Some of the charges brought against him in Georgia were on account of his unusual liturgical “experiments.” A Journal entry in 1735 reports that he spent three hours “revising” The Book of Common Prayer. This indicates that Wesley’s intense reading of the Church Fathers and writers from the Eastern Orthodox Church influenced his approaches and baffled those who knew him.

But in Georgia, he had an unhappy love affair, which culminated in John’s refusal to serve communion to his prospective wife and her husband. Her husband charged John with slander for disgracing his wife’s honour. He returned to England in 1738, depressed and beaten.

It was at this point that he turned once again to the Moravians. After his Aldersgate experience of 24 May 1738, at a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, when he heard a reading of Martin Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, he penned the now famous lines: “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” This revolutionised the character and method of his ministry.

Soon Wesley found most of the parish churches were closed to him, and he preached his first open-air sermon near Bristol in April 1739. Later that year, he formed his first Methodist Society. Similar societies were soon formed in Bristol and Kingswood, and wherever Wesley and his friends made converts.

Wesley and the Methodists were attacked in sermons and in print and at times attacked by mobs.

As early as 1739, he approved of lay preaching and pastoral work, and his first chapel was built that year in Bristol.

As his societies multiplied, and the elements of an ecclesiastical system were gradually adopted, the breach between Wesley and the Church of England widened. But the Wesley brothers refused to leave the Church of England, believing the Anglican Church to be “with all her blemishes … nearer the Scriptural plan than any other in Europe.”

In 1746, he read Lord King on the Primitive Church, and was convinced by this that apostolic succession was a fiction, that in fact that he was “a scriptural episcopos as much as any man in England.” Some years later, Stillingfleet’s Irenicon led him to renounce the opinion that neither Christ nor his apostles prescribed any form of Church government, and to declare ordination valid when performed by a presbyter/priest. It was not until about 40 years later that he ordained by the laying on of hands, and even then only for those who would work outside England.

The Bishop of London continued to refuse to ordain a minister for the American Methodists who were without the sacraments, and so in 1784 Wesley ordained preachers for Scotland and America, with power to administer the sacraments. Although Thomas Coke was already a priest in the Church of England, Wesley consecrated him, by the laying on of hands, to be superintendent in America. He also ordained Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as priests.

Wesley intended that Coke and Asbury (who was subsequently consecrated in America by Coke) should ordain others in the newly founded Methodist Episcopal Church. This alarmed his brother Charles Wesley, who begged him to stop before he had “quite broken down the bridge,” and not “leave an indelible blot on our memory.” Wesley replied that he had not separated from the Church, nor did he intend to, but he must and would save as many souls as he could while alive, “without being careful about what may possibly be when I die.”

Although he rejoiced that the Methodists in America were free, he advised his English followers to remain in the Church of England, and he himself died within it.

He died peacefully on 2 March 1791, and is buried in a small graveyard behind Wesley’s Chapel in City Road, London. Wesley is listed as Number 50 on the BBC’s list of the 100 Greatest Britons.

7, Samuel Seabury (1729-1796):

A window in Old Saint Paul’s Church, Edinburgh, commemorating the consecration of Samuel Seabury as a bishop

Samuel Seabury was the first American Episcopal bishop, the second Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US, and the first Bishop of Connecticut.

Seabury was born in Ledyard, Groton, Connecticut, in 1729. His father, also Samuel Seabury (1706-1764), was originally a Congregationalist minister in Groton, but was ordained deacon and priest in the Church of England in 1731, in 1731, and was the Rector of New London, Connecticut, from 1732 to 1743, and in Hempstead, Long Island, from 1743 until his death.

Samuel Seabury (the son) graduated from Yale in 1748. He studied theology with his father, and studied medicine in Edinburgh (1752-1753). He was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Lincoln and priest by the Bishop of Carlisle (1753). He was the Rector of Christ Church in New Brunswick, New Jersey (1754-1757), Rector of Jamaica, New York (1757-1766), and of Rector of Saint Peter’s, Westchester (now part of the Bronx) (1766-1775).

He was one of the signers of the White Plains protest in April 1775 against all unlawful congresses and committees, and during the American Revolution was a devoted loyalist. He wrote the Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress (1774) by A.W. Farmer (i.e. A Westchester Farmer). This was followed by a second Farmer’s Letter, The Congress Canvassed (1774), answered by Alexander Hamilton in A Full Vindication of the Measures of the Congress, from the Calumnies of their Enemies. A third Farmer’s Letter replied to Hamilton’s View of the Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies, in a broader and abler treatment than in the previous pamphlets. To this third pamphlet Hamilton replied with The Farmer Refuted (1775).

These three Farmer’s Letters – a fourth was advertised but apparently was never published – were forceful presentations of the pro-British claim, written in a plain, hard-headed style. Seabury claimed them in England in 1783 when he was seeking episcopal consecration. At the same time he claimed the authorship of a letter, not signed by a Westchester farmer, which under the title An Alarm to the Legislature of the Province of New York (1775) discussed the power of this, the only legal political body in the colony. Seabury’s clarity of style and general ease of reading would set him apart from his ecclesiastical colleagues throughout his life.

Seabury was arrested in November 1775 by a mob of Whigs, and was kept in prison in Connecticut for six weeks. He was prevented from carrying out his parochial ministry, and after some time in Long Island he took refuge in New York City, where in 1778 he was appointed chaplain to the King’s American Regiment.

On 25 March 1783, a meeting of ten Episcopal clergy in Woodbury, Connecticut, elected Seabury bishop as their second choice (their first choice declined for health reasons). There were no Anglican bishops in the Americas to consecrate him, so he sailed to London on 7 July.

In England, however, his consecration was rationalised as impossible because, as an American citizen, he could no longer take the oath of allegiance to monarchy.

Seabury then turned to the nonjuring Scottish Episcopal Church, whose bishops at that time refused to recognise the authority of George III. Seabury was consecrated in Aberdeen on 14 November 1784, with the condition that he would study the Scottish Rite for the Holy Communion and work for its adoption rather than the English rite of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

To the present day, the TEC liturgy follows to the main features of the Scottish Episcopalian rite in one of its Eucharistic liturgies.

The anniversary of Seabury’s consecration is now a lesser feast day in the calendars of both TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Seabury’s consecration by the Scots caused alarm in the (Whig) British government, raising fears of an entirely Jacobite church in the US. Parliament was persuaded to make provision for the consecration of foreign bishops. Seabury’s tenacity made possible a continued relationship between the American and English churches.

Seabury returned to Connecticut in 1785 and made his home in New London, Connecticut, where he was the Rector of Saint James’ Church. At first, the validity of his consecration was questioned by some, but it was recognised by the General Convention of his church in 1789.

In 1790, Seabury took charge of the Diocese of Rhode Island also. In 1792, he joined Bishop William White and Bishop Samuel Provoost, who had received English consecration in 1787, and James Madison (1749-1812), who had received English consecration in 1790, in the consecration of Thomas John Claggett as Bishop of Maryland in 1792, thus uniting the Scottish and the English successions.

Seabury played a decisive role in the evolution of Anglican liturgy in North America after the Revolution. His Communion Office (New London, 1786), was based on the Scottish Book of Common Prayer rather than the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Seabury was the probably the only liturgically literate member of the House of Bishops in his day.

Seabury kept strictly his obligation to the Scots to study and quietly advocate their point of view in Eucharistic matters. His defence of the Scottish service – especially its restoration of the epiklesis or invocation of the Holy Spirit, influenced the first Book of Common Prayer adopted by the Episcopal Church in 1789. The Prayer of Consecration in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England ended with the Words of Institution. But the Scottish Rite continued with a Prayer of Oblation based on the ancient classical models of Consecration Prayers found in Roman and Orthodox Christianity.

In addition to the epiklesis, Seabury argued for the restoration of another ancient custom – the weekly celebration of Holy Communion on Sundays. In An Earnest Persuasive to Frequent Communion (New Haven, 1789), he wrote that “when I consider its importance, both on account of the positive command of Christ, and of the many and great benefits we receive from it, I cannot but regret that it does not make a part of every Sunday’s solemnity.”

Seabury was ahead of his time. Two centuries later the custom of a weekly Eucharist was rapidly spreading through many Anglican parishes under the impact of the Liturgical Movement.

Seabury died in New London on 25 February 1796, and he was buried in a small chapel at Saint James’.

8, Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798):

Edward Delaney’s statue in Saint Stephen’s Green, Dublin, of Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798), a leading United Irishman and a member of the Church of Ireland.

Theobald Wolfe Tone was a leading figure in the United Irishmen and is regarded as the father of Irish republicans. He died from a self-inflicted wound after being sentenced to death for his part in the 1798 Rising.

He was born in Dublin in 1763, the son of a coach-maker who was a member of the Church of Ireland. He studied law at Trinity College Dublin and qualified as a barrister from the King’s Inns at the age of 26, and attended the Inns of Court in London. As a student, he eloped with Elizabeth Witherington, daughter of William Witherington, of Dublin, and his wife, Catherine Fanning, and they were married in Saint Ann’s Church, Dawson Street, Dublin. Tone and his wife, whom he renamed Matilda, he had two sons and a daughter. She was only 16 when they married, and she lived on for 50 years after his death.

Tone submitted a scheme for founding a military colony in Hawaii, but the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, took no notice of it. Tone then turned to politics. An able pamphlet attacking the administration of the Marquess of Buckingham in 1790 brought him to the notice of the Whig Club, and in September 1791 he wrote an essay using the pseudonym of “A Northern Whig,” of which 10,000 copies were said to have been sold.

About this time, the principles of the French Revolution were being eagerly embraced in Ireland. At a meeting in Belfast two months before Tone’s essay was published, a resolution was passed calling for the abolition of religious disqualifications, “giving the first sign of political sympathy between the Roman Catholics and the Protestant Whigs.” Tone’s essay and that meeting emphasised the growing breach between Whig patriots like Henry Flood and Henry Grattan, who aimed at Catholic Emancipation and parliamentary reform without breaking the connection with England, and those who sought a separate Irish Republic.

In October 1791, Tone, Thomas Russell (1767-1803) and James Napper Tandy – all three members of the Church of Ireland – and others joined in founding the Society of United Irishmen. In the years that followed, Tone worked closely in his plans for revolution with a Church of England priest, the Revd William Jackson, who came to Ireland to negotiate between the French Committee of Public Safety and the United Irishmen, but Jackson was arrested in April 1794. In May 1795, on the summit of Cave Hill in Belfast, Tone made the famous compact with Russell and Henry Joy McCracken, promising “Never to desist in our efforts until we subvert the authority of England over our country and asserted our independence.”

Tone was arrested on board the Hoche by an English squadron at Rathmullan on Lough Swilly on 12 October 1798. He was sentenced to be hanged on 12 November 1798. Before this sentence was carried out, he suffered a fatal neck wound, self-inflicted according to contemporaries, from which he died a week later at the age of 35 in prison in Dublin. He is buried in the former Church of Ireland churchyard in Bodenstown, Co Kildare.

Appendix:

The Wesley Hymns in the Church Hymnal (5th edition, the Church of Ireland):

Charles Wesley (1707-1788):

52, Christ, whose glory fills the skies
99, Jesus, the name high over all
104, O for a thousand tongues
119, Come thou long-expected Jesus
132, Lo, he comes with clouds descending
160, Hark! The herald angels sing
218, And can it be that I should gain
234, O Love divine, what has thou done?
266, Hail the day that sees him rise, alleluia!
277, Love’s redeeming work is done
281, Rejoice! The Lord is King!
487, Soldiers of Christ, arise
492, Ye servants of God, your master proclaim
505, Peace be to this congregation
523, Help us to help each other, Lord
553, Jesu, lover of my soul
567, Forth, in thy name, O Lord, I go
621, O Love divine, how sweet thou art!
634, Love divine, all loves excelling
638, O for a heart to praise my God
639, O thou who camest from above

Charles Wesley the younger (1757-1834) (melody):

11, Can we but searching find our God?

This tune is known as Epworth, after the rectory that played a vital role in the Wesley family story. Charles Wesley the younger was the son of Charles Wesley and the nephew of John Wesley.

John Benjamin Wesley (1703-1791) (translator):

563, Commit your ways to God
671, Jesus, thy blood and righteousness

Samuel Wesley (1766-1837) (second tune):

302, Lord God the Holy Ghost

He was the youngest son of Charles Wesley, and was regarded as the greatest English organist and improviser of his day. He wrote many liturgical settings for both Roman Catholic and Anglican liturgies, and did much to make JS Bach popular in England.

Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876) (anthem, melody or tune):

17, Lead me, Lord, lead me in righteousness
327, Christ is our cornerstone
398, Alleluia! Sing to Jesus
528, The Church’s one foundation
589, Lord, speak to me that I may speak
621, O Love divine, how sweet thou art!
639, O thou who camest from above.

An organist and composer, he was the son of Samuel Wesley and grandson of Charles Wesley. His middle name reflects his father’s passion for the music of Bach.

Next:

5.2: Understanding sectarianism and transforming societies.

Next week:

6.1: Christianity and nationalisms

6.2: The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and its consequences: a reflection on the Hard Gospel Project.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin. This lecture on 16 February 2012 was part of the MTh Year II course, EM8825: Anglican Studies in an Irish context.

‘Enlighten with faith’s light my heart, inflame it with love’s fire’

2012-02-15T12:30:00.000Z

“And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory” (John 1: 14) … an icon of Christ as Minister of Word and Sacrament, seen in a shop window in Thessaloniki, on the cover of this evening’s order of service (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

This evening, I am presiding at the Community Eucharist this evening, and we are using Collect, Readings and Post-Communion Prayer of the Second Sunday before Lent.

The “Option A” readings, continuing the Creation theme, are: Proverbs 8: 1, 22-31; Psalm 104: 26-37; Colossians 1: 15-20; and John 1: 1-14. Those readings are reflected in the choice of hymns and in the illustrations on the cover of the service sheet.

For our processional hymn, we are singing the first three verses of Hymn 346:

Angel voices, ever singing,
round thy throne of light,
angel harps, for ever ringing,
rest not day nor night;
thousands only live to bless thee,
and confess thee,
Lord of might.

Yea, we know that thou rejoicest
o’er each work of thine;
thou didst ears and hands and voices
for thy praise design;
craftsman’s art and music’s measure
for thy pleasure
all combine.

In thy house, great God, we offer
of thine own to thee;
and for thine acceptance proffer,
all unworthily,
hearts and minds, and hands and voices,
in our choicest
psalmody.

This hymn was written in 1861 by Archdeacon Francis Pott for his friend, the Revd WJ Macrorie of Wingates, near Bolton, Lancashire – later Bishop of Maritzburg in South Africa. The setting is by the organist Dr Edwin G Monk, who was the first Precentor and Master of Music in Saint Columba’s College.

We return to the fourth verse of this popular hymn for our Gloria in Excelsis:

Honour, glory, might and merit,
thine shall ever be,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
blessed Trinity!
Of the best that thou hast given,
earth and heaven
render thee.

The Gradual is Hymn 427, ‘Let all mortal flesh keep silence,’ which has its roots in Orthodox spirituality and is based on prayers in the fourth century Liturgy of Saint James, one of the earliest liturgies in the Church.

The composer Ralph Vaughan Williams chose the tune ‘Picardy’ for this hymn when he was editing first edition of the English Hymnal in 1906. The words we sing this evening are:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly minded,
for with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human vesture –
in the body and the blood –
he will give to all the faithful
his own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
spreads its vanguard on the way,
as the Light of light descendeth
from the realms of endless day,
that the powers of hell may vanish
as the darkness clears away.

At his feet the six-winged seraph;
cherubim with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the Presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry,
alleluia, alleluia,
alleluia, Lord most high.

The Offertory Hymn is Hymn 431, ‘Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour’:

Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour,
first-begotten from the dead.
thou alone, our strong defender,
liftest up thy people’s head.
Alleluia, alleluia,
Jesus, true and living bread.

Here for faith’s discernment praying,
lest we fail to know thee now,
here our deepest homage paying,
we in loving reverence bow;
alleluia, alleluia,
thou art here, we ask not how.

Now though lowliest form doth veil thee
as of old in Bethlehem,
angels in thy mystery hail thee;
we in worship join with them.
Alleluia, alleluia,
branch and flower of Jesse’s stem.

Paschal Lamb, thine offering finished
once for all when thou wast slain,
in its fullness undiminished
shall for evermore remain,
alleluia, alleluia,
cleansing souls from every stain.

Life-imparting heavenly manna,
stricken rock with streaming side,
heaven and earth with one hosanna,
worship thee, the Lamb that died.
alleluia, alleluia,
risen, ascended, glorified!

How shall I sing that majesty ... Coe Fen in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Post-Communion Hymn is Hymn 468, ‘How shall I sing that majesty.’

The hymn was written by John Mason, one of the earliest hymn writers in the Church of England. However, it is best known for its tune, Coe Fen, by Kenneth Naylor, when he was Music Master at The Leys School in Cambridge. It takes its name from Coe Fen, an open space on the west bank of the River Cam in Cambridge, and it has been described as “one of the outstanding hymn tunes of the 20th century.”

It is a pity that the third verse was omitted from the fifth edition of the Irish Church Hymnal, and I hope – when it is sung (eventually) at my funeral, that the full version is used.

The version we sing this evening [with the deleted verse in brackets] is:

How shall I sing that majesty
which angels do admire?
Let dust in dust and silence lie;
sing, sing, ye heavenly choir.
thousands of thousands stand around
thy throne, O God most high;
ten thousand times ten thousand sound
thy praise; but who am I?

Thy brightness unto them appears,
whilst I thy footsteps trace;
a sound of God comes to my ears,
but they behold thy face.
They sing because thou art their Sun;
Lord, send a beam on me;
for where heav’n is but once begun
there alleluias be.

[Enlighten with faith’s light my heart,
inflame it with love’s fire;
then shall I sing and bear a part
with that celestial choir.
I shall, I fear, be dark and cold,
with all my fire and light;
yet when thou dost accept their gold,
Lord, treasure up my mite.]

How great a being, Lord, is thine,
which doth all beings keep!
Thy knowledge is the only line
to sound so vast a deep.
Thou art a sea without a shore,
a sun without a sphere;
thy time is now and evermore,
thy place is everywhere.

The words of Collect of the Day are:

Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
Teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit
reigns supreme over all things, now and for ever. Amen.

The words of the Post-Communion Prayer are:

God our creator,
by your gift the tree of life was set at the heart
of the earthly paradise,
and the Bread of life at the heart of your Church.
May we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s Cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it’ (John 1: 5) … John Piper’s East Window in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield

Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Forty days in the flood, in the wilderness, in Lent

2012-02-15T09:30:00.001Z

Edward Hicks, ‘Noah’s Ark’ (1846), Philadelphia Museum of Art

Patrick Comerford

The Sunday after next, Sunday 26 February 2012, is the First Sunday in Lent, and the readings in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) for that Sunday are: Genesis 9: 8-17; Psalm 25; I Peter 3: 18-22; Mark 1: 9-15.

To summarise these readings:

1, The Old Testament reading (Genesis 9: 8-17) tells of the covenant that God makes after the deluge not just with Noah, but with all of humanity, and with every living creature.

2, The Psalm too calls on God to save us in the midst of the floods of life. Although there are no direct references to water or a covenant, the psalmist is visibly in a covenant relationship with God (see Psalm 25).

3, In the New Testament reading (I Peter 3: 18-22), we return again to the story of Noah, and the waters in which Noah and his family are saved are compared with the waters of baptism.

4, The Gospel reading (Mark 1: 9-15) then tells the story of the baptism of Christ by John in the waters of the River Jordan.

In our Bible study this morning, we are looking in particular at the Old Testament reading in the lectionary for that Sunday morning.

Genesis 9: 8-17

8 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεὸς τῷ Νωε καὶ τοῖς υἱοῖς αὐτοῦ μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ λέγων, 9 ἐγὼ ἰδοὺ ἀνίστημι τὴν διαθήκην μου ὑμῖν καὶ τῷ σπέρματι ὑμῶν μεθ᾽ ὑμᾶς, 10 καὶ πάσῃ ψυχῇ τῇ ζώσῃ μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν ἀπὸ ὀρνέων καὶ ἀπὸ κτηνῶν καὶ πᾶσι τοῖς θηρίοις τῆς γῆς ὅσα μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν ἐξελθόντων ἐκ τῆς κιβωτοῦ. 11 καὶ στήσω τὴν διαθήκην μου πρὸς ὑμᾶς καὶ οὐκ ἀποθανεῖται πᾶσα σὰρξ ἔτι ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος τοῦ κατακλυσμοῦ καὶ οὐκ ἔσται ἔτι κατακλυσμὸς ὕδατος τοῦ καταφθεῖραι. 12 καὶ εἶπεν κύριος ὁ θεὸς πρὸς Νωε τοῦτο τὸ σημεῖον τῆς διαθήκης ὃ ἐγὼ δίδωμι ἀνὰ μέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ ὑμῶν καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον πάσης ψυχῆς ζώσης ἥ ἐστιν μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν εἰς γενεὰς αἰωνίους. 13 τὸ τόξον μου τίθημι ἐν τῇ νεφέλῃ καὶ ἔσται εἰς σημεῖον διαθήκης ἀνὰ μέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ τῆς γῆς. 14 καὶ ἔσται ἐν τῷ συννεφεῖν με νεφέλας ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν ὀφθήσεται τὸ τόξον μου ἐν τῇ νεφέλῃ, 15 καὶ μνησθήσομαι τῆς διαθήκης μου ἥ ἐστιν ἀνὰ μέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ ὑμῶν καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον πάσης ψυχῆς ζώσης ἐν πάσῃ σαρκί καὶ οὐκ ἔσται ἔτι τὸ ὕδωρ εἰς κατακλυσμὸν ὥστε ἐξαλεῖψαι πᾶσαν σάρκα. 16 καὶ ἔσται τὸ τόξον μου ἐν τῇ νεφέλῃ καὶ ὄψομαι τοῦ μνησθῆναι διαθήκην αἰώνιον ἀνὰ μέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον πάσης ψυχῆς ζώσης ἐν πάσῃ σαρκί ἥ ἐστιν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. 17 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεὸς τῷ Νωε τοῦτο τὸ σημεῖον τῆς διαθήκης ἧς διεθέμην ἀνὰ μέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον πάσης σαρκός ἥ ἐστιν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς.

8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 ‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. 11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ 12 God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ 17 God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.’

The story

The Book Genesis begins with two versions of the creation story, telling us why we are on earth. In the story of Adam and Eve, it tells us that we are responsible, under God, for the care of all creation. It then continues with the stories of the patriarchs: Abraham, who enters into a covenant or treaty with God) Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.

In the first creation story (Genesis 1: 1 to Genesis 2: 4a), we are told that at the beginning the Spirit of God swept over the face of the waters (1: 2), even before God separated the waters from the waters (1: 6), and that all living creatures emerged from the waters (1: 20-21).

Then we are told poetically:

God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and God said to them,

“Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth and subdue it;
and have dominion over the fish of the sea
and over the birds of the air
and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Genesis 1: 27-28),

This first creation story is often known as the priestly creation story. The second creation story, which is attributed to the Yahwist source, is much older in Judaism and is found in Genesis 2: 4b-25.

This morning’s Old Testament story is then a story about the re-creation of the creation. Over time, “the earth was filled with violence ... all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth” (Genesis 6: 11-12). Now, once again, the waters have covered the whole earth, as a consequence of human violence and corruption.

God repents of or regrets his creation. But his search for justice is balanced by his mercy. In his mercy, God wants to save all living creatures, and not just humanity from this violence, corruption and destruction that has gone against the creation order. Now, the waters have receded, and – as in the creation stories – plant life, animal life, and human life emerge from the waters on dry land.

In Genesis 9: 1-3, God has already renewed the promise of Genesis 1: he again commands: “Be fruitful and multiply.” We humans now have complete dominion over all creatures, but we must have a greater respect for human life, because humanity is made in the image of God, and wilful bloodshed must be accounted for to God.

God makes a “covenant” (verse 9) with Noah, his sons and “every living creature” (verse 10). Because it is from his sons that “the whole earth” (verse 19) shall be “peopled,” the agreement is between God and all humanity. He will never again destroy humankind (verses 11, 15, 16).

This is a covenant with all creatures and with “the earth” (verse 13) itself. This is a covenant that speaks of ecology, and it is an “everlasting covenant” (verse 16).

Ancient people imagined a rainbow as a divine warrior’s weapon, his “bow” (verse 13), and that his arrows were lightning. God gives the “bow” as a visible “sign of the covenant”. That God’s “bow” is “in the clouds,” and not on the earth, shows how God is no longer angry with humans. When the rains come, they will end – with a rainbow. The rainbow is not just a nice, multi-coloured diversion for Sunday school classes. It is promise of hope, and God’s call to us to forsake violence, corruption and oppression.

Telling the story

Do our Sunday School images deal with the ugly reality of the causes of the flood?

Many of us are so familiar with the story of the flood and the ark that we may it difficult to come this Old Testament reading with fresh eyes if we are going to preach on it on Sunday week.

In Sunday schools, we often teach this as a story that children can use to learn about animals and rainbows and big boats – with accompanying fun-songs about “Father Noah” and the animals going in two by two, or making arc-shaped rainbows coloured in the full spectrum of rainbow colours.

At the beginning of the Disney version, Noah, his wife and their sons and daughters break out into song. As the short goes on, more attention is paid to building the ark and the inventive ways the animals try to help. Two monkeys help to make boards by unleashing a rhino on a tree that shaves off a board. They capture the rhino, turn him around and do it all over again. Or one of Noah’s sons picks up the timber planks and drives them to the ark in a car with wheels made of snakes biting their own tails.

These are entertaining images, but they downplay the serious nature of this story and allow us to forget that these characters are preparing for a flood that threatens to end all life on Earth. How can they do things with such a song in their hearts?

As the rains start and all the animals board the ark, Noah and his family pull up the plank, leaving a pair of skunks stranded. It seems out of place to have a gag that could be seen by children as callous and mean.

Ultimately, of course, things turn out alright. But not before we see Noah and his family in the ark, during the rainstorm, praying and pleading to survive. This is such a tonal shift from the light-hearted scenes earlier that it seems out of place.

The Whimsical Ark … all you ever needed “for a smooth sailing party” with that “fresh new look”?

Even Hallmark has a range of products in a design called “Whimsical Ark.” You are invited to “make an ark-size statement with an adorable, whimsical Noah’s Ark birthday party and matching party ware ensemble. For a smooth sailing party, bursting with vibrant colour, this Noah’s Ark pattern offers a fresh new look for birthday parties, children’s parties, Vacation Bible School events or other church celebrations. The Noah’s Ark birthday party paper plates, Noah’s Ark birthday party paper cups and other Noah’s Ark birthday party supplies feature playful animals on board the floating ark, with a symbolic rainbow and special dove.”

We are told: “A Noah’s Ark birthday party promises loads of fun for all your crew.”

But, fun apart, when do we ever make connections with the topics that are also built into this story? Topics such as:

● Concern for justice and injustices – topics that are the very heart of explaining the deluge
● Our responsibility for creation – animal life, bird life, plant life and the whole cosmos.
● Or even with global warming and the climatic changes and floods we are experiencing throughout the world.

Drawing out the story

This passage is often referred to as the “Noahic Covenant.” But if we read the passage closely we see that God is clearly including not just humanity but with “every living creature” in God’s creation in a covenantal relationship. This is repeated four times: verses 10, 12, 15 and 16. And – to be sure, to be sure – it is not just God’s covenant with “every living creature” but with all flesh. This promise is repeated for “all flesh” five times (verses 11, 15 and 15 again, 16 and 17). Indeed, we are told twice that it is a covenant with the whole earth (verses 11 and 13).

Yet, so often we read this passage as if it were only about Noah and his immediate family. Why do we do this when there are so many similar passages throughout the Bible that constantly remind us of God’s care for all his creation, including passages in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Job, the Psalms and the Book of Revelation?

These connections were made creatively by the American Quaker artist Edward Hicks (1780-1849), in his paintings of Noah and the Ark and The Peaceable Kingdom. The first painting, which he painted and painted over and over again, is based on our Old Testament reading. The Peaceable Kingdom, which he painted between 60 and 100 times, is based on one of those other Old Testament passages (Isaiah 11). And these paintings are best considered together.

Were Noah and his family spared because they were good-living and middle class?

Were they spared because of their own innate decency?

Or were they saved because they represent everything that is good and worth saving in creation, on the earth, in whole cosmos?

God’s concern for creation is not restricted to humans exclusively. God makes a binding, irreversible commitment to stay with us no matter what, and to refrain from destroying us no matter what we do.

How is this reflected in the Gospel reading for this morning?

Connecting with the Gospel reading

The Epistle reminds us that the waters of baptism are a new way of owning the promises made to all flesh and all the earth in the story of Noah and the flood. Both the flood story and Baptism remind us that we stand in need of God’s cleansing and of God’s saving plan for the whole cosmos.

If the waters of our Old Testament story are telling us that God constantly wants to start all over again with the creation, then surely that is even truer when it comes to Baptism?

In Baptism, God says: “Let’s start all over again with creation.” And the story of the Baptism of Christ is a new creation story.

In the Gospel reading, Christ enters the wilderness as a man who is discovering his baptismal identity, taking it in fully and acting on what he hears from God at his Baptism. He has no family where he is, but at his Baptism, God the Father calls Christ his beloved son, and the Son hears the Father say: “With you I am well pleased” (verse 11).

A little later in this Gospel, he is going to find his natural family coming after him to drag him home as a crazy man who is shaming the family name (see Mark 2: 21). But at his Baptism, Christ has mother and sisters and brothers in whoever does God’s will (Mark 3: 32-35). Christ is leaving house and home, but he will find shelter with others seeking God and God’s reign. Christ is not alone on his journey, and neither are we.

There are wonderful children’s cartoons about the dangers of woodworm, woodlice and woodpeckers on the ark. But did Noah need any protection from the wild animals on the ark?

In the forty days he spent in the wilderness after his Baptism, we are told in this Gospel reading that Christ was tempted by Satan, but we are also told that “he was with the wild beasts” and that “the angels waited him” (verses 12-13).

It is almost as though Satan is a threat but the wild beasts sit comfortably with him in the fulfilment of the post-deluge covenant and the vision of Isaiah.

In Lent, we are called to follow Christ into the wilderness to listen carefully to what God has to say to us through our Baptism. And if that is God’s call, the wild beasts in that wilderness are not going to destroy anything worth keeping. Indeed, God’s promise is for all of God’s creation, including those wild beasts.

Who brought the woodpecker on board … and who protects us from the wild beasts in our own lives?

Reading Scripture in Lent

These readings come after we have already entered Lent on Ash Wednesday and entered the spiritual pilgrimage of Lent that calls us to join Christ on his entry into Jerusalem, at the Last Supper in the Upper Room, at his passion in Gethsemane, at his trial, on the Via Dolorosa, on Calvary, in the tomb, and then to share in the triumph of his Resurrection.

I knew a priest who, when asked what he was doing for Lent, used to reply he was giving up the slice of lemon in his gin and tonic – “But I intend remaining bitter and twisted for those forty days.”

So often we turn Lent into a domesticated exercise in pious self-improvement that is in danger of leaving us feeling spiritually smug and superior or of becoming bitter and twisted.

So often we ask: What are you going to do for Lent? What are you going to give up for Lent? So seldom we ask: What am I preparing for during my Lent?

It is reasonably easy to give up chocolate, alcohol or swearing, when I am going to lose weight, improve my health, or gain a little more respectability or acceptability.

We often think of the liturgical colour of Lent, purple, as penitential and mournful, when we should also emphasise that this is a time of preparation that turns to joy. Purple is a royal colour, and in these forty days we are preparing for the royal revelation of Christ as King.

Forty days are significant throughout the Bible – think of:

● The 40 days spent in the ark between the deluge and the floodwaters receding.
● The 40 years spent wandering in the wilderness ... more than a generation.
● In our Gospel reading, the 40 days Christ spends fasting in the wilderness ... more than a lunar month or, in other words, a long, long time (Mark 1: 12-13).
● The 40 days between Easter and the Ascension ... in contrast with the wilderness, we are now called to join Christ in living out the vision for the Kingdom.

A note on Edward Hicks

Edward Hicks (1780-1849) was born into an Episcopalian (Anglican) family in Pennsylvania. His mother died when he was a baby, and he was then cared for by a slave until the age of three. When Elizabeth Twining found him, he was taken in and raised in her Quaker family, although Edward and Elizabeth Twining never formally adopted him.

Hicks did not do well at school, and his parents sent him to work with a coach-maker, where he learned to paint signs and coaches. But he was interested in becoming a minister and became a popular preacher. As he studied the Bible, he concentrated on the Book of Isaiah, especially Isaiah 11, and its image of the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the lion and the fatling, and the young child. This was the inspiration for one of his best-known paintings, The Peaceable Kingdom. In fact, he painted 60 to 100 pictures with this title, many showing children playing safely with the wild animals which have become tame and harmless. In some, in the background across a chasm, William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, is negotiating a treaty with the Indians.

In his own lifetime, Edward Hicks was better known as a minister and preacher than as an artist. He painted primarily for his own pleasure and for his neighbours, and only became an art teacher later in his life. He died at the age of 69.

Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This essay is based on notes prepared for a Bible study in a tutorial group with MTh students on Wednesday 15 February 2012.

‘Whoever loves … lives in the light’

2012-02-14T13:00:00.000Z

‘Whoever loves … lives in the light’ (I John 2: 10) ... the Bridge of Sighs at Saint John’s College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

The New Testament reading in the daily lectionary of the Church of Ireland for Morning Prayer today [14 February 2012] is I John 2: 1-11:

1 Τεκνία μου, ταῦτα γράφω ὑμῖν ἵνα μὴ ἁμάρτητε. καὶ ἐάν τις ἁμάρτῃ, παράκλητον ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν δίκαιον: 2 καὶ αὐτὸς ἱλασμός ἐστιν περὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν, οὐ περὶ τῶν ἡμετέρων δὲ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου.

3 Καὶ ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκομεν ὅτι ἐγνώκαμεν αὐτόν, ἐὰν τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ τηρῶμεν. 4 ὁ λέγων ὅτι Ἔγνωκα αὐτόν, καὶ τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ μὴ τηρῶν, ψεύστης ἐστίν, καὶ ἐν τούτῳ ἡ ἀλήθεια οὐκ ἔστιν: 5 ὃς δ' ἂν τηρῇ αὐτοῦ τὸν λόγον, ἀληθῶς ἐν τούτῳ ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ τετελείωται. ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκομεν ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐσμεν: 6 ὁ λέγων ἐν αὐτῷ μένειν ὀφείλει καθὼς ἐκεῖνος περιεπάτησεν καὶ αὐτὸς [οὕτως] περιπατεῖν.

7 Ἀγαπητοί, οὐκ ἐντολὴν καινὴν γράφω ὑμῖν, ἀλλ' ἐντολὴν παλαιὰν ἣν εἴχετε ἀπ' ἀρχῆς: ἡ ἐντολὴ ἡ παλαιά ἐστιν ὁ λόγος ὃν ἠκούσατε. 8 πάλιν ἐντολὴν καινὴν γράφω ὑμῖν, ὅ ἐστιν ἀληθὲς ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ ἐν ὑμῖν, ὅτι ἡ σκοτία παράγεται καὶ τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινὸν ἤδη φαίνει. 9 ὁ λέγων ἐν τῷ φωτὶ εἶναι καὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ μισῶν ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ ἐστὶν ἕως ἄρτι. 10 ὁ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ φωτὶ μένει, καὶ σκάνδαλον ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἔστιν: 11 ὁ δὲ μισῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ ἐστὶν καὶ ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ περιπατεῖ, καὶ οὐκ οἶδεν ποῦ ὑπάγει, ὅτι ἡ σκοτία ἐτύφλωσεν τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτοῦ.

1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2 and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

3 Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. 4 Whoever says, ‘I have come to know him’, but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; 5 but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: 6 whoever says, ‘I abide in him’, ought to walk just as he walked.

7 Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. 9 Whoever says, ‘I am in the light’, while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. 10 Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. 11 But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.

ὁ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ φωτὶ μένει, ‘Whoever loves … lives in the light’ – a perfect thought for today, Saint Valentine’s Day.

Searching for hope in the midst of hopelessness

2012-02-14T07:16:00.004Z

CP Cavafy ... a portrait by David Hockney

Patrick Comerford

The present protests in Greece are becoming reminiscent of the protests in November 1974 that brought about the downfall of the colonels’ junta. But the majority of Greeks are not taking part in the protests, and many Greeks are laconic as they face a future that appears to be devoid of hope.

As hope – hope for the present and hope for the future – appear to have abandoned Greece and Greeks, how are they going to learn to live with a loss that is even greater than financial loss?

This hopeless but laconic attitude to a future over which one has no control may be dissipated in the weeks to come. But over the past few days it has brought to mind a poem by CP Cavafy, one of the great Greek poets of the 20th century, on the loss of hope for the present and for the future – ‘The god abandons Antony.’

Searching for Cavafy

Although he is a modern Greek poet, Cavafy was born in the Egyptian Mediterranean city of Alexandria, once one of the largest Greek cities.

Some years ago, I travelled through Egypt on a few working trips, visiting churches, monasteries and church projects in Cairo, Menouf, Alexandria, the Nile Delta, the Western Desert and Mount Sinai. In Alexandria, I once broke away from my small group to spend a few hours on my own searching for Cavafy’s Alexandria. Of course, by then almost all the Greeks of Alexandria had been forced to leave the city.

It was easy to find the apartment where the poet lived, and from there I found the neighbouring church and hospital he often wrote about. But it took a little more imagination to find the coffee shops he talked about in his letters and poems.

The apartment where Cavafy lived for most of his adult life is now a museum. When he lived there, the address was Rue Lepsius 10. But Nasserite excesses almost half a century ago saw the address changed in 1967 to Sharia Sharm el Sheikh 4 – although the name change commemorated not the Red Sea resort or a military victory, but a defeat in the Six Days’ War.

By the time I visited Alexandria in the past decade, the cafés Cavafy frequented on the Rue Misalla had been replaced mainly by shops, and once again the street name had been changed, this time to Safiya Zaghlul.

Last year, however, at the height of the Arab Spring, the city reclaimed the poet’s memory and legacy, and in February 2011 the street where he lived was renamed CP Cavafy Street.

A modern Greek poet

Constantine P Cavafy (Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, or Kabaphs) is a leading figure in 20th century Greek literature. He was born in Alexandria almost 150 years ago, on 29 April 1863, into a wealthy merchant family from Constantinople. After the early death of his father, Peter John Cavafy, in 1872, Cavafy was brought to England and lived in Liverpool for five years. But, apart from three years in Constantinople, from 1882 to 1885, he spent the rest of his life in Alexandria.

When his family’s prosperity declined, Cavafy worked for 34 years, on-and-off, as a journalist, broker, and in the Irrigation Service, interspersed with short trips to Athens, France, England and Italy, until he retired in 1922. He died in Alexandria on his 70th birthday, 29 April 1933.

Cavafy was a ruthless self-critic, often troubled by his own unorthodox values – so self-critical, in fact, that he published little during his own lifetime. He rejected traditional Christian values, and the prevailing views on sexual ethics, nationalism and patriotism. He developed his own individualistic style, mixing a stilted and artificial use of Classical and Byzantine Greek with contemporary, demotic or vernacular Greek.

Past and present, East and West, Greek and ‘barbarian,’ were fused into sophisticated commentaries on paganism, Christianity, and a decadent modern world. He sketched a rich gallery of historical, semi-obscure, or fictitious characters, using them as dramatis personae to act or be discussed in his poems. Sometimes his style is dramatic, as in ‘Waiting for the Barbarians,’ written in 1898 and printed in 1904.

In his poems, he often superimposes events and images from the Hellenistic and Byzantine worlds with events in his own time – two of the best-known examples of this are his poems ‘The god abandons Antony’ and ‘Ithaka’, both written over 100 years ago, in 1911.

His first publication came when he was 41 and 14 of his poems were published in a pamphlet in 1904. This was reissued in 1910 in an enlarged edition, with seven additional poems. Several dozen more poems appeared later in printed booklets and broadsheets. He was perfectionist, printing his poems himself and delivering them only to close friends, sometimes with handwritten corrections. But these often contained the same poems mostly, first arranged thematically, and then chronologically. About one-third of his poems were never printed in any form while he was alive.

He died in 1933. The Poems of Constantine P. Cavafy appeared posthumously in Alexandria in 1935, and was reprinted in 1949.

Cavafy’s poems were first brought to the attention of English-speaking readers by EM Forster, who refers to him in his study of Alexandria, Pharos and Pharillon (1923), which included a selection of Cavafy’s poems. Forster included ‘The god abandons Antony’ in the middle of both Pharos and Pharillon and Alexandria: A History and a Guide, marking a division that occurs in each book. But ‘The god abandons Antony’ does more than mark the division in these two books, for it also provided a fitting farewell to the Alexandria Forster was leaving.

In 1924, Forster persuaded TS Eliot to include several of Cavafy’s lyrics in The Criterion.

Lawrence Durrell refers to Cavafy in his Alexandria Quartet (1957-1960). The Complete Poems of Cavafy (1961), translated by Rae Dalven and with an introduction by WH Auden, established Cavafy’s reputation half a century ago, and ensured him an enduring place in Western literature.

The Alexandria of Cavafy

Cavafy once wrote, with a touch of irony, of Alexandria, a once-cosmopolitan city:

Whatever war-damage it’s suffered,
however much smaller it’s become,
it’s still a wonderful city.

However, by Cavafy’s time, nothing of the ancient Greek city had survived the Arab conquest. But his poetry takes no account of Alexandria’s Arab heritage. Instead, he cherishes the Greek world of Alexander the Great and his followers, the old, lost civilised world beyond which only “Barbarians” lived, and the world of Byzantine Alexandria.

In his poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians,’ Cavafy comments on the role supposed to have been assumed by the newly-arrived new rulers:

And now what shall become of us without any barbarians?
Those people were some kind of solution.

This deliberately flat ending has parallels with TS Eliot’s closing words in ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925):

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Renaming Cavafy Street in Alexandria in February 2011

‘The god abandons Antony’

‘The god abandons Antony’ (also known as ‘The god forsakes Antony’) was first published by Cavafy in 1911. The poem draws on Plutarch’s story of how Mark Antony, as he is besieged in Alexandria by Octavian, hears the sounds of instruments and voices of a procession making their way through the city and then passing out. Mark Antony realises that night that his protector, the god Bacchus (Dionysos), is deserting him.

Απολείπειν ο θεός Aντώνιον Αναγνωρισμένα

Σαν έξαφνα, ώρα μεσάνυχτ’, ακουσθεί
αόρατος θίασος να περνά
με μουσικές εξαίσιες, με φωνές—
την τύχη σου που ενδίδει πια, τα έργα σου
που απέτυχαν, τα σχέδια της ζωής σου
που βγήκαν όλα πλάνες, μη ανωφέλετα θρηνήσεις.
Σαν έτοιμος από καιρό, σα θαρραλέος,
αποχαιρέτα την, την Aλεξάνδρεια που φεύγει.
Προ πάντων να μη γελασθείς, μην πεις πως ήταν
ένα όνειρο, πως απατήθηκεν η ακοή σου•
μάταιες ελπίδες τέτοιες μην καταδεχθείς.
Σαν έτοιμος από καιρό, σα θαρραλέος,
σαν που ταιριάζει σε που αξιώθηκες μια τέτοια πόλι,
πλησίασε σταθερά προς το παράθυρο,
κι άκουσε με συγκίνησιν, αλλ’ όχι
με των δειλών τα παρακάλια και παράπονα,
ως τελευταία απόλαυσι τους ήχους,
τα εξαίσια όργανα του μυστικού θιάσου,
κι αποχαιρέτα την, την Aλεξάνδρεια που χάνεις.

(Από τα Ποιήματα 1897-1933, Ίκαρος 1984)

The poem was translated by John Mavrogordatos and included in The poems of CP Cavafy (London: Hogarth Press, 1951, p. 26). But the best-known translation into English is by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard:

At midnight, when suddenly you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive – don’t mourn them uselessly:
as one long prepared, and full of courage,
say goodbye to her, to Alexandria who is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and full of courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion,
but not with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen – your final pleasure – to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

The story behind the poem

In ‘The god abandons Antony,’ Cavafy draws on Plutarch’s Life of Anthony and, to a lesser degree, on Shakespeare’s play, Anthony and Cleopatra, to describe a deep sense of loss through the fictional voice of the unknown person who addresses Mark Antony.

The Antony is Marcus Antonius (Mark Antony), Cleopatra’s lover. Plutarch’s story tells of how Mark Antony is besieged in Alexandria by Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus. On the night before the city falls into the hands of his enemies, Antony hears an invisible troupe leaving the city, and he hears the sounds of instruments and voices making their way through the city.

Seeing his fortunes turn around, seeing his glory vanish, seeing love turn to hatred, seeing a god’s favour turn to irony and sarcasm, Mark Antony faints, having realised the tragedy that is befalling him and that his protector, the god Bacchus (Dionysos) is deserting him and leaving the city of Alexandria, in effect telling Antony that he no longer had any divine support in his struggle against Octavian.

The speaker in Cavafy’s poem is simply a voice telling Antony not to mourn but to accept his fate without fear and without regret:

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as it right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen – your final delectation – to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

Inside Cavafy’s apartment in Alexandria

The meaning of a poem

Cavafy’s poem has many layers of meaning. But we can also read it as a poem about the way we can face great loss.

Cavafy’s beloved Alexandria serves as a symbol not only for lost battles, but also for lost hopes, lost glory and lost love – even for the loss of life itself.

It is a lesson not just on how to get to heaven but a lesson about how to live. It may even be a lesson in how to face death itself.

The influence of a poem

Some years ago, while I was teaching a course in Byzantine studies at the NUI Maynooth campus in Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny, I played a recording of the Greek actors Vasilis Panayi and John Ioannou reading Cavafy’s poem in Greek and English, and then played a recording of Leonard Cohen singing his song Alexandra Leaving

Leonard Cohen reportedly wrote this poem about love and loss in the 1960s while in Greece, but it took him almost four decades to perfect it in its lyrical form. In this song, which he included on his album, Ten New Songs (2001), he freely adapts Cavafy’s poem for his song ‘Alexandra Leaving.’

But, while Cavafy’s theme is based around the city of Alexandria, Cavafy’s beloved Alexandria becomes a beloved woman, and Cohen reinterprets the poem to tell of the end of an affair with this woman, Alexandra, and to tell of how to cope with lost love:

Suddenly the night has grown colder.
The God of love preparing to depart.
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,
They slip between the sentries of the heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,
They gain the light, they formlessly entwine;
And radiant beyond your widest measure
They fall among the voices and the wine.

It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving,
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust.
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;
Even though she wakes you with a kiss.
Do not say the moment was imagined;
Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for this to happen,
Go firmly to the window, drink it in.
Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing.
Your firm commitments tangible again.

And you who had the honour of her evening,
And by the honour had your own restored.
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving;
Alexandra leaving with her lord.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;
Even though she wakes you with a kiss.
Do not say the moment was imagined;
Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for the occasion;
In full command of every plan you wrecked.
Do not choose a coward’s explanation
That hides behind the cause and the effect.

And you who were bewildered by a meaning;
Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed.
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Democratic values in classical Athens

2012-02-12T06:00:00.003Z

The Monument of the Unknown Soldier outside Parliament in Central Athens, with quotation from the Funeral Oration by Pericles

Patrick Comerford

Watching the television news of the debates in the parliament in Athens and the demonstrations on the streets in central Athens, I have been reminded in recent days of one of the greatest Greek speeches about democracy and democratic values.

For many years I had a T-short, bought in Athens, with quotes from the funeral oration by Pericles in the cemetery in Kerameikos in Athens at the height of the Peloponnesian War.

There are excerpts from the speech on the Monument of the Unknown Soldier on Parliament Square (Plateia Voulis) on Vasilissis Amalias avenue, opposite Syntagma Square. The monument was designed by the architect Emmanuel Lazaridis in 1929-1930. It includes a large bas-relief of a dying Greek soldier by Kostas Demetriadis (1881-1943) and, on either side, the Greek text of funeral oration delivered by Pericles in 431 or 430 BC.

Part of the Parthenon frieze in the British Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The funeral oration by Pericles has been handed down in history by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War. He tells us Pericles delivered his oration in the cemetery in Kerameikos – not only to bury the dead, but to praise democracy.

Pericles was a Greek leader and statesman and a supporter of democracy during the Peloponnesian War. He was so important for Athens that his name defines the age – the Periclean Age – during which Athens rebuilt what had been destroyed during the recent war with Persia.

Tourist sites such as the Acropolis have been closed by recent protests (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The people of Athens, including those from the countryside whose land was being pillaged by their enemies, were kept in crowded conditions within the walls of Athens. Near the start of the Peloponnesian War, a plague swept through the city. Pericles succumbed to and died from this plague.

Before he died, though, Pericles delivered his rousing speech about the virtues of democracy. Thucydides puts in Pericles’ mouth key democratic values that are worth remembering today:

● Democracy allows humanity to advance because of merit instead of wealth or inherited class.
● In a democracy, citizens behave lawfully while doing what they like without fear of prying eyes.
● In a democracy, there is equal justice for all in private disputes.

A grave in Kerameikós, Athens, where Pericles delivered his funeral oration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Περικλέους, Ἐπιτάφιος Λόγος

[35] Οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ τῶν ἐνθάδε ἤδη εἰρηκότων ἐπαινοῦσι τὸν προσθέντα τῷ νόμῳ τὸν λόγον τόνδε, ὡς καλὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐκ τῶν πολέμων θαπτομένοις ἀγορεύεσθαι αὐτόν. ἐμοὶ δὲ ἀρκοῦν ἂν ἐδόκει εἶναι ἀνδρῶν ἀγαθῶν ἔργῳ γενομένων ἔργῳ καὶ δηλοῦσθαι τὰς τιμάς, οἷα καὶ νῦν περὶ τὸν τάφον τόνδε δημοσίᾳ παρασκευασθέντα ὁρᾶτε, καὶ μὴ ἐν ἑνὶ ἀνδρὶ πολλῶν ἀρετὰς κινδυνεύεσθαι εὖ τε καὶ χεῖρον εἰπόντι πιστευθῆναι. χαλεπὸν γὰρ τὸ μετρίως εἰπεῖν ἐν ᾧ μόλις καὶ ἡ δόκησις τῆς ἀληθείας βεβαιοῦται. ὅ τε γὰρ ξυνειδὼς καὶ εὔνους ἀκροατὴς τάχ᾿ ἄν τι ἐνδεεστέρως πρὸς ἃ βούλεταί τε καὶ ἐπίσταται νομίσειε δηλοῦσθαι, ὅ τε ἄπειρος ἔστιν ἃ καὶ πλεονάζεσθαι, διὰ φθόνον, εἴ τι ὑπὲρ τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν ἀκούοι. μέχρι γὰρ τοῦδε ἀνεκτοὶ οἱ ἔπαινοί εἰσι περὶ ἑτέρων λεγόμενοι, ἐς ὅσον ἂν καὶ αὐτὸς ἕκαστος οἴηται ἱκανὸς εἶναι δρᾶσαί τι ὧν ἤκουσεν· τῷ δὲ ὑπερβάλλοντι αὐτῶν φθονοῦντες ἤδη καὶ ἀπιστοῦσιν. ἐπειδὴ δὲ τοῖς πάλαι οὕτως ἐδοκιμάσθη ταῦτα καλῶς ἔχειν, χρὴ καὶ ἐμὲ ἑπόμενον τῷ νόμῳ πειρᾶσθαι ὑμῶν τῆς ἑκάστου βουλήσεώς τε καὶ δόξης τυχεῖν ὡς ἐπὶ πλεῖστον.

[36] Ἄρξομαι δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν προγόνων πρῶτον· δίκαιον γὰρ αὐτοῖς καὶ πρέπον δὲ ἅμα ἐν τῷ τοιῷδε τὴν τιμὴν ταύτην τῆς μνήμης δίδοσθαι. τὴν γὰρ χώραν οἱ αὐτοὶ αἰεὶ οἰκοῦντες διαδοχῇ τῶν ἐπιγιγνομένων μέχρι τοῦδε ἐλευθέραν δι᾿ ἀρετὴν παρέδοσαν. καὶ ἐκεῖνοί τε ἄξιοι ἐπαίνου καὶ ἔτι μᾶλλον οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν· κτησάμενοι γὰρ πρὸς οἷς ἐδέξαντο ὅσην ἔχομεν ἀρχὴν οὐκ ἀπόνως ἡμῖν τοῖς νῦν προσκατέλιπον. τὰ δὲ πλείω αὐτῆς αὐτοὶ ἡμεῖς οἵδε οἱ νῦν ἔτι ὄντες μάλιστα ἐν τῇ καθεστηκυίᾳ ἡλικίᾳ ἐπηυξήσαμεν καὶ τὴν πόλιν τοῖς πᾶσι παρεσκευάσαμεν καὶ ἐς πόλεμον καὶ ἐς εἰρήνην αὐταρκεστάτην. ὧν ἐγὼ τὰ μὲν κατὰ πολέμους ἔργα, οἷς ἕκαστα ἐκτήθη, ἢ εἴ τι αὐτοὶ ἢ οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν βάρβαρον ἢ Ἕλληνα πολέμιον ἐπιόντα προθύμως ἠμυνάμεθα, μακρηγορεῖν ἐν εἰδόσιν οὐ βουλόμενος ἐάσω· ἀπὸ δὲ οἵας τε ἐπιτηδεύσεως ἤλθομεν ἐπ᾿ αὐτὰ καὶ μεθ᾿ οἵας πολιτείας καὶ τρόπων ἐξ οἵων μεγάλα ἐγένετο, ταῦτα δηλώσας πρῶτον εἶμι καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν τῶνδε ἔπαινον, νομίζων ἐπί τε τῷ παρόντι οὐκ ἂν ἀπρεπῆ λεχθῆναι αὐτὰ καὶ τὸν πάντα ὅμιλον καὶ ἀστῶν καὶ ξένων ξύμφορον εἶναι ἐπακοῦσαι αὐτῶν.

[37] Ξρώμεθα γὰρ πολιτείᾳ οὐ ζηλούσῃ τοὺς τῶν πέλας νόμους, παράδειγμα δὲ μᾶλλον αὐτοὶ ὄντες τισὶν ἢ μιμούμενοι ἑτέρους. καὶ ὄνομα μὲν διὰ τὸ μὴ ἐς ὀλίγους ἀλλ᾿ ἐς πλείονας οἰκεῖν δημοκρατία κέκληται· μέτεστι δὲ κατὰ μὲν τοὺς νόμους πρὸς τὰ ἴδια διάφορα πᾶσι τὸ ἴσον, κατὰ δὲ τὴν ἀξίωσιν, ὡς ἕκαστος ἔν τῳ εὐδοκιμεῖ, οὐκ ἀπὸ μέρους τὸ πλέον ἐς τὰ κοινὰ ἢ ἀπ᾿ ἀρετῆς προτιμᾶται, οὐδ᾿ αὖ κατὰ πενίαν, ἔχων γέ τι ἀγαθὸν δρᾶσαι τὴν πόλιν, ἀξιώματος ἀφανείᾳ κεκώλυται. ἐλευθέρως δὲ τά τε πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν πολιτεύομεν καὶ ἐς τὴν πρὸς ἀλλήλους τῶν καθ᾿ ἡμέραν ἐπιτηδευμάτων ὑποψίαν, οὐ δι᾿ ὀργῆς τὸν πέλας, εἰ καθ᾿ ἡδονήν τι δρᾷ, ἔχοντες, οὐδὲ ἀζημίους μέν, λυπηρὰς δὲ τῇ ὄψει ἀχθηδόνας προστιθέμενοι. ἀνεπαχθῶς δὲ τὰ ἴδια προσομιλοῦντες τὰ δημόσια διὰ δέος μάλιστα οὐ παρανομοῦμεν, τῶν τε αἰεὶ ἐν ἀρχῇ ὄντων ἀκροάσει καὶ τῶν νόμων, καὶ μάλιστα αὐτῶν ὅσοι τε ἐπ᾿ ὠφελίᾳ τῶν ἀδικουμένων κεῖνται καὶ ὅσοι ἄγραφοι ὄντες αἰσχύνην ὁμολογουμένην φέρουσιν.

[38] Καὶ μὴν καὶ τῶν πόνων πλείστας ἀναπαύλας τῇ γνώμῃ ἐπορισάμεθα, ἀγῶσι μέν γε καὶ θυσίαις διετησίοις νομίζοντες, ἰδίαις δὲ κατασκευαῖς εὐπρεπέσιν, ὧν καθ᾿ ἡμέραν ἡ τέρψις τὸ λυπηρὸν ἐκπλήσσει. ἐπεσέρχεται δὲ διὰ μέγεθος τῆς πόλεως ἐκ πάσης γῆς τὰ πάντα, καὶ ξυμβαίνει ἡμῖν μηδὲν οἰκειοτέρᾳ τῇ ἀπολαύσει τὰ αὐτοῦ ἀγαθὰ γιγνόμενα καρποῦσθαι ἢ καὶ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἀνθρώπων.

[39] Διαφέρομεν δὲ καὶ ταῖς τῶν πολεμικῶν μελέταις τῶν ἐναντίων τοῖσδε. τήν τε γὰρ πόλιν κοινὴν παρέχομεν, καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ὅτε ξενηλασίαις ἀπείργομέν τινα ἢ μαθήματος ἢ θεάματος, ὃ μὴ κρυφθὲν ἄν τις τῶν πολεμίων ἰδὼν ὠφεληθείη, πιστεύοντες οὐ ταῖς παρασκευαῖς τὸ πλέον καὶ ἀπάταις ἢ τῷ ἀφ᾿ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν ἐς τὰ ἔργα εὐψύχῳ· καὶ ἐν ταῖς παιδείαις οἱ μὲν ἐπιπόνῳ ἀσκήσει εὐθὺς νέοι ὄντες τὸ ἀνδρεῖον μετέρχονται, ἡμεῖς δὲ ἀνειμένως διαιτώμενοι οὐδὲν ἧσσον ἐπὶ τοὺς ἰσοπαλεῖς κινδύνους χωροῦμεν. τεκμήριον δέ· οὔτε γὰρ Λακεδαιμόνιοι καθ᾿ ἑαυτούς, μεθ᾿ ἁπάντων δὲ ἐς τὴν γῆν ἡμῶν στρατεύουσι, τήν τε τῶν πέλας αὐτοὶ ἐπελθόντες οὐ χαλεπῶς ἐν τῇ ἀλλοτρίᾳ τοὺς περὶ τῶν οἰκείων ἀμυνομένους μαχόμενοι τὰ πλείω κρατοῦμεν. ἁθρόᾳ τε τῇ δυνάμει ἡμῶν οὐδείς πω πολέμιος ἐνέτυχε διὰ τὴν τοῦ ναυτικοῦ τε ἅμα ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ τὴν ἐν τῇ γῇ ἐπὶ πολλὰ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν ἐπίπεμψιν· ἢν δέ που μορίῳ τινὶ προσμείξωσι, κρατήσαντές τέ τινας ἡμῶν πάντας αὐχοῦσιν ἀπεῶσθαι καὶ νικηθέντες ὑφ᾿ ἁπάντων ἡσσῆσθαι. καίτοι εἰ ῥᾳθυμίᾳ μᾶλλον ἢ πόνων μελέτῃ καὶ μὴ μετὰ νόμων τὸ πλέον ἢ τρόπων ἀνδρείας ἐθέλομεν κινδυνεύειν, περιγίγνεται ἡμῖν τοῖς τε μέλλουσιν ἀλγεινοῖς μὴ προκάμνειν, καὶ ἐς αὐτὰ ἐλθοῦσι μὴ ἀτολμοτέρους τῶν αἰεὶ μοχθούντων φαίνεσθαι, καὶ ἔν τε τούτοις τὴν πόλιν ἀξίαν εἶναι θαυμάζεσθαι καὶ ἔτι ἐν ἄλλοις.

[40] Φιλοκαλοῦμέν τε γὰρ μετ᾿ εὐτελείας καὶ φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἄνευ μαλακίας· πλούτῳ τε ἔργου μᾶλλον καιρῷ ἢ λόγου κόμπῳ χρώμεθα, καὶ τὸ πένεσθαι οὐχ ὁμολογεῖν τινὶ αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ μὴ διαφεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον. ἔνι τε τοῖς αὐτοῖς οἰκείων ἅμα καὶ πολιτικῶν ἐπιμέλεια, καὶ ἑτέροις πρὸς ἔργα τετραμμένοις τὰ πολιτικὰ μὴ ἐνδεῶς γνῶναι· μόνοι γὰρ τόν τε μηδὲν τῶνδε μετέχοντα οὐκ ἀπράγμονα, ἀλλ᾿ ἀχρεῖον νομίζομεν, καὶ οἱ αὐτοὶ ἤτοι κρίνομέν γε ἢ ἐνθυμούμεθα ὀρθῶς τὰ πράγματα, οὐ τοὺς λόγους τοῖς ἔργοις βλάβην ἡγούμενοι, ἀλλὰ μὴ προδιδαχθῆναι μᾶλλον λόγῳ πρότερον ἢ ἐπὶ ἃ δεῖ ἔργῳ ἐλθεῖν. διαφερόντως γὰρ δὴ καὶ τόδε ἔχομεν ὥστε τολμᾶν τε οἱ αὐτοὶ μάλιστα καὶ περὶ ὧν ἐπιχειρήσομεν ἐκλογίζεσθαι· ὃ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀμαθία μὲν θράσος, λογισμὸς δὲ ὄκνον φέρει. κράτιστοι δ᾿ ἂν τὴν ψυχὴν δικαίως κριθεῖεν οἱ τά τε δεινὰ καὶ ἡδέα σαφέστατα γιγνώσκοντες καὶ διὰ ταῦτα μὴ ἀποτρεπόμενοι ἐκ τῶν κινδύνων. καὶ τὰ ἐς ἀρετὴν ἐνηντιώμεθα τοῖς πολλοῖς· οὐ γὰρ πάσχοντες εὖ, ἀλλὰ δρῶντες κτώμεθα τοὺς φίλους. βεβαιότερος δὲ ὁ δράσας τὴν χάριν ὥστε ὀφειλομένην δι᾿ εὐνοίας ᾧ δέδωκε σῴζειν· ὁ δὲ ἀντοφείλων ἀμβλύτερος, εἰδὼς οὐκ ἐς χάριν, ἀλλ᾿ ἐς ὀφείλημα τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀποδώσων. καὶ μόνοι οὐ τοῦ ξυμφέροντος μᾶλλον λογισμῷ ἢ τῆς ἐλευθερίας τῷ πιστῷ ἀδεῶς τινὰ ὠφελοῦμεν.

[41] Ξυνελών τε λέγω τήν τε πᾶσαν πόλιν τῆς Ἑλλάδος παίδευσιν εἶναι καὶ καθ᾿ ἕκαστον δοκεῖν ἄν μοι τὸν αὐτὸν ἄνδρα παρ᾿ ἡμῶν ἐπὶ πλεῖστ᾿ ἂν εἴδη καὶ μετὰ χαρίτων μάλιστ᾿ ἂν εὐτραπέλως τὸ σῶμα αὔταρκες παρέχεσθαι. καὶ ὡς οὐ λόγων ἐν τῷ παρόντι κόμπος τάδε μᾶλλον ἢ ἔργων ἐστὶν ἀλήθεια, αὐτὴ ἡ δύναμις τῆς πόλεως, ἣν ἀπὸ τῶνδε τῶν τρόπων ἐκτησάμεθα, σημαίνει. μόνη γὰρ τῶν νῦν ἀκοῆς κρείσσων ἐς πεῖραν ἔρχεται, καὶ μόνη οὔτε τῷ πολεμίῳ ἐπελθόντι ἀγανάκτησιν ἔχει ὑφ᾿ οἵων κακοπαθεῖ οὔτε τῷ ὑπηκόῳ κατάμεμψιν ὡς οὐχ ὑπ᾿ ἀξίων ἄρχεται. μετὰ μεγάλων δὲ σημείων καὶ οὐ δή τοι ἀμάρτυρόν γε τὴν δύναμιν παρασχόμενοι τοῖς τε νῦν καὶ τοῖς ἔπειτα θαυμασθησόμεθα, καὶ οὐδὲν προσδεόμενοι οὔτε Ὁμήρου ἐπαινέτου οὔτε ὅστις ἔπεσι μὲν τὸ αὐτίκα τέρψει, τῶν δ᾿ ἔργων τὴν ὑπόνοιαν ἡ ἀλήθεια βλάψει, ἀλλὰ πᾶσαν μὲν θάλασσαν καὶ γῆν ἐσβατὸν τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ τόλμῃ καταναγκάσαντες γενέσθαι, πανταχοῦ δὲ μνημεῖα κακῶν τε κἀγαθῶν ἀΐδια ξυγκατοικίσαντες. περὶ τοιαύτης οὖν πόλεως οἵδε τε γενναίως δικαιοῦντες μὴ ἀφαιρεθῆναι αὐτὴν μαχόμενοι ἐτελεύτησαν, καὶ τῶν λειπομένων πάντα τινὰ εἰκὸς ἐθέλειν ὑπὲρ αὐτῆς κάμνειν.

[42] Δι᾿ ὃ δὴ καὶ ἐμήκυνα τὰ περὶ τῆς πόλεως, διδασκαλίαν τε ποιούμενος μὴ περὶ ἴσου ἡμῖν εἶναι τὸν ἀγῶνα καὶ οἷς τῶνδε μηδὲν ὑπάρχει ὁμοίως, καὶ τὴν εὐλογίαν ἅμα ἐφ᾿ οἷς νῦν λέγω φανερὰν σημείοις καθιστάς. καὶ εἴρηται αὐτῆς τὰ μέγιστα· ἃ γὰρ τὴν πόλιν ὕμνησα, αἱ τῶνδε καὶ τῶν τοιῶνδε ἀρεταὶ ἐκόσμησαν, καὶ οὐκ ἂν πολλοῖς τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἰσόρροπος ὥσπερ τῶνδε ὁ λόγος τῶν ἔργων φανείη. δοκεῖ δέ μοι δηλοῦν ἀνδρὸς ἀρετὴν πρώτη τε μηνύουσα καὶ τελευταία βεβαιοῦσα ἡ νῦν τῶνδε καταστροφή. καὶ γὰρ τοῖς τἆλλα χείροσι δίκαιον τὴν ἐς τοὺς πολέμους ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος ἀνδραγαθίαν προτίθεσθαι· ἀγαθῷ γὰρ κακὸν ἀφανίσαντες κοινῶς μᾶλλον ὠφέλησαν ἢ ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων ἔβλαψαν. τῶνδε δὲ οὔτε πλούτου τις τὴν ἔτι ἀπόλαυσιν προτιμήσας ἐμαλακίσθη οὔτε πενίας ἐλπίδι, ὡς κἂν ἔτι διαφυγὼν αὐτὴν πλουτήσειεν, ἀναβολὴν τοῦ δεινοῦ ἐποιήσατο· τὴν δὲ τῶν ἐναντίων τιμωρίαν ποθεινοτέραν αὐτῶν λαβόντες καὶ κινδύνων ἅμα τόνδε κάλλιστον νομίσαντες ἐβουλήθησαν μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ τοὺς μὲν τιμωρεῖσθαι, τῶν δὲ ἐφίεσθαι, ἐλπίδι μὲν τὸ ἀφανὲς τοῦ κατορθώσειν ἐπιτρέψαντες, ἔργῳ δὲ περὶ τοῦ ἤδη ὁρωμένου σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ἀξιοῦντες πεποιθέναι, καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ ἀμύνεσθαι καὶ παθεῖν μᾶλλον ἡγησάμενοι ἢ [τὸ] ἐνδόντες σῴζεσθαι, τὸ μὲν αἰσχρὸν τοῦ λόγου ἔφυγον, τὸ δ᾿ ἔργον τῷ σώματι ὑπέμειναν καὶ δι᾿ ἐλαχίστου καιροῦ τύχης ἅμα ἀκμῇ τῆς δόξης μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ δέους ἀπηλλάγησαν.

[43] Καὶ οἵδε μὲν προσηκόντως τῇ πόλει τοιοίδε ἐγένοντο· τοὺς δὲ λοιποὺς χρὴ ἀσφαλεστέραν μὲν εὔχεσθαι, ἀτολμοτέραν δὲ μηδὲν ἀξιοῦν τὴν ἐς τοὺς πολεμίους διάνοιαν ἔχειν, σκοποῦντας μὴ λόγῳ μόνῳ τὴν ὠφελίαν, ἣν ἄν τις πρὸς οὐδὲν χεῖρον αὐτοὺς ὑμᾶς εἰδότας μηκύνοι, λέγων ὅσα ἐν τῷ τοὺς πολεμίους ἀμύνεσθαι ἀγαθὰ ἔνεστιν, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τὴν τῆς πόλεως δύναμιν καθ᾿ ἡμέραν ἔργῳ θεωμένους καὶ ἐραστὰς γιγνομένους αὐτῆς, καὶ ὅταν ὑμῖν μεγάλη δόξῃ εἶναι, ἐνθυμουμένους ὅτι τολμῶντες καὶ γιγνώσκοντες τὰ δέοντα καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις αἰσχυνόμενοι ἄνδρες αὐτὰ ἐκτήσαντο, καὶ ὁπότε καὶ πείρᾳ του σφαλεῖεν, οὐκ οὖν καὶ τὴν πόλιν γε τῆς σφετέρας ἀρετῆς ἀξιοῦντες στερίσκειν, κάλλιστον δὲ ἔρανον αὐτῇ προϊέμενοι. κοινῇ γὰρ τὰ σώματα διδόντες ἰδίᾳ τὸν ἀγήρων ἔπαινον ἐλάμβανον καὶ τὸν τάφον ἐπισημότατον, οὐκ ἐν ᾧ κεῖνται μᾶλλον, ἀλλ᾿ ἐν ᾧ ἡ δόξα αὐτῶν παρὰ τῷ ἐντυχόντι αἰεὶ καὶ λόγου καὶ ἔργου καιρῷ αἰείμνηστος καταλείπεται. ἀνδρῶν γὰρ ἐπιφανῶν πᾶσα γῆ τάφος, καὶ οὐ στηλῶν μόνον ἐν τῇ οἰκείᾳ σημαίνει ἐπιγραφή, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῇ μὴ προσηκούσῃ ἄγραφος μνήμη παρ᾿ ἑκάστῳ τῆς γνώμης μᾶλλον ἢ τοῦ ἔργου ἐνδιαιτᾶται. οὓς νῦν ὑμεῖς ζηλώσαντες καὶ τὸ εὔδαιμον τὸ ἐλεύθερον, τὸ δ᾿ ἐλεύθερον τὸ εὔψυχον κρίναντες μὴ περιορᾶσθε τοὺς πολεμικοὺς κινδύνους. οὐ γὰρ οἱ κακοπραγοῦντες δικαιότερον ἀφειδοῖεν ἂν τοῦ βίου, οἷς ἐλπὶς οὐκ ἔστιν ἀγαθοῦ, ἀλλ᾿ οἷς ἡ ἐναντία μεταβολὴ ἐν τῷ ζῆν ἔτι κινδυνεύεται καὶ ἐν οἷς μάλιστα μεγάλα τὰ διαφέροντα, ἤν τι πταίσωσιν. ἀλγεινοτέρα γὰρ ἀνδρί γε φρόνημα ἔχοντι ἡ μετὰ τοῦ [ἐν τῷ] μαλακισθῆναι κάκωσις ἢ ὁ μετὰ ῥώμης καὶ κοινῆς ἐλπίδος ἅμα γιγνόμενος ἀναίσθητος θάνατος.

[44] Δι᾿ ὅπερ καὶ τοὺς τῶνδε νῦν τοκέας, ὅσοι πάρεστε, οὐκ ὀλοφύρομαι μᾶλλον ἢ παραμυθήσομαι. ἐν πολυτρόποις γὰρ ξυμφοραῖς ἐπίστανται τραφέντες· τὸ δ᾿ εὐτυχές, ὃ ἂν τῆς εὐπρεπεστάτης λάχωσιν, ὥσπερ οἵδε μὲν νῦν, τελευτῆς, ὑμεῖς δὲ λύπης, καὶ οἷς ἐνευδαιμονῆσαί τε ὁ βίος ὁμοίως καὶ ἐντελευτῆσαι ξυνεμετρήθη. χαλεπὸν μὲν οὖν οἶδα πείθειν ὄν, ὧν καὶ πολλάκις ἕξετε ὑπομνήματα ἐν ἄλλων εὐτυχίαις, αἷς ποτὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ ἠγάλλεσθε· καὶ λύπη οὐχ ὧν ἄν τις μὴ πειρασάμενος ἀγαθῶν στερίσκηται, ἀλλ᾿ οὗ ἂν ἐθὰς γενόμενος ἀφαιρεθῇ. καρτερεῖν δὲ χρὴ καὶ ἄλλων παίδων ἐλπίδι, οἷς ἔτι ἡλικία τέκνωσιν ποιεῖσθαι· ἰδίᾳ τε γὰρ τῶν οὐκ ὄντων λήθη οἱ ἐπιγιγνόμενοί τισιν ἔσονται, καὶ τῇ πόλει διχόθεν, ἔκ τε τοῦ μὴ ἐρημοῦσθαι καὶ ἀσφαλείᾳ, ξυνοίσει· οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε ἴσον τι ἢ δίκαιον βουλεύεσθαι ὃ ἂν μὴ καὶ παῖδας ἐκ τοῦ ὁμοίου παραβαλλόμενοι κινδυνεύωσιν. ὅσοι δ᾿ αὖ παρηβήκατε, τόν τε πλέονα κέρδος ὃν ηὐτυχεῖτε βίον ἡγεῖσθε καὶ τόνδε βραχὺν ἔσεσθαι, καὶ τῇ τῶνδε εὐκλείᾳ κουφίζεσθε. τὸ γὰρ φιλότιμον ἀγήρων μόνον, καὶ οὐκ ἐν τῷ ἀχρείῳ τῆς ἡλικίας τὸ κερδαίνειν, ὥσπερ τινές φασι, μᾶλλον τέρπει, ἀλλὰ τὸ τιμᾶσθαι.

[45] παισὶ δ᾿ αὖ ὅσοι τῶνδε πάρεστε ἢ ἀδελφοῖς ὁρῶ μέγαν τὸν ἀγῶνα (τὸν γὰρ οὐκ ὄντα ἅπας εἴωθεν ἐπαινεῖν), καὶ μόλις ἂν καθ᾿ ὑπερβολὴν ἀρετῆς οὐχ ὁμοῖοι, ἀλλ᾿ ὀλίγῳ χείρους κριθεῖτε. φθόνος γὰρ τοῖς ζῶσι πρὸς τὸ ἀντίπαλον, τὸ δὲ μὴ ἐμποδὼν ἀνανταγωνίστῳ εὐνοίᾳ τετίμηται. εἰ δέ με δεῖ καὶ γυναικείας τι ἀρετῆς, ὅσαι νῦν ἐν χηρείᾳ ἔσονται, μνησθῆναι, βραχείᾳ παραινέσει ἅπαν σημανῶ. τῆς τε γὰρ ὑπαρχούσης φύσεως μὴ χείροσι γενέσθαι ὑμῖν μεγάλη ἡ δόξα καὶ ἧς ἂν ἐπ᾿ ἐλάχιστον ἀρετῆς πέρι ἢ ψόγου ἐν τοῖς ἄρσεσι κλέος ᾖ.

[46] Εἴρηται καὶ ἐμοὶ λόγῳ κατὰ τὸν νόμον ὅσα εἶχον πρόσφορα, καὶ ἔργῳ οἱ θαπτόμενοι τὰ μὲν ἤδη κεκόσμηνται, τὰ δὲ αὐτῶν τοὺς παῖδας τὸ ἀπὸ τοῦδε δημοσίᾳ ἡ πόλις μέχρι ἥβης θρέψει, ὠφέλιμον στέφανον τοῖσδέ τε καὶ τοῖς λειπομένοις τῶν τοιῶνδε ἀγώνων προτιθεῖσα· ἆθλα γὰρ οἷς κεῖται ἀρετῆς μέγιστα, τοῖς δὲ καὶ ἄνδρες ἄριστοι πολιτεύουσιν. νῦν δὲ ἀπολοφυράμενοι ὃν προσήκει ἑκάστῳ ἄπιτε.

A sculpted grave stone in Kerameikós, in Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The funeral oration

Most of my predecessors in this place have commended him who made this speech part of the law, telling us that it is well that it should be delivered at the burial of those who fall in battle. For myself, I should have thought that the worth which had displayed itself in deeds would be sufficiently rewarded by honours also shown by deeds; such as you now see in this funeral prepared at the people’s cost. And I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth. On the one hand, the friend who is familiar with every fact of the story may think that some point has not been set forth with that fullness which he wishes and knows it to deserve; on the other, he who is a stranger to the matter may be led by envy to suspect exaggeration if he hears anything above his own nature. For men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted: when this point is passed, envy comes in and with it incredulity. However, since our ancestors have stamped this custom with their approval, it becomes my duty to obey the law and to try to satisfy your several wishes and opinions as best I may.

I shall begin with our ancestors: it is both just and proper that they should have the honour of the first mention on an occasion like the present. They dwelt in the country without break in the succession from generation to generation, and handed it down free to the present time by their valour. And if our more remote ancestors deserve praise, much more do our own fathers, who added to their inheritance the empire which we now possess, and spared no pains to be able to leave their acquisitions to us of the present generation. Lastly, there are few parts of our dominions that have not been augmented by those of us here, who are still more or less in the vigour of life; while the mother country has been furnished by us with everything that can enable her to depend on her own resources whether for war or for peace. That part of our history which tells of the military achievements which gave us our several possessions, or of the ready valour with which either we or our fathers stemmed the tide of Hellenic or foreign aggression, is a theme too familiar to my hearers for me to dilate on, and I shall therefore pass it by. But what was the road by which we reached our position, what the form of government under which our greatness grew, what the national habits out of which it sprang; these are questions which I may try to solve before I proceed to my panegyric upon these men; since I think this to be a subject upon which on the present occasion a speaker may properly dwell, and to which the whole assemblage, whether citizens or foreigners, may listen with advantage.

Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.

Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.

If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. In proof of this it may be noticed that the Lacedaemonians do not invade our country alone, but bring with them all their confederates; while we Athenians advance unsupported into the territory of a neighbour, and fighting upon a foreign soil usually vanquish with ease men who are defending their homes. Our united force was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our marine and to dispatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services; so that, wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if with habits not of labour but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we are still willing to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.

Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.

In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas, while I doubt if the world can produce a man who, where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but plain matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by these habits proves. For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men, in the assertion of their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died; and well may every one of their survivors be ready to suffer in her cause.

Indeed if I have dwelt at some length upon the character of our country, it has been to show that our stake in the struggle is not the same as theirs who have no such blessings to lose, and also that the panegyric of the men over whom I am now speaking might be by definite proofs established. That panegyric is now in a great measure complete; for the Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her, men whose fame, unlike that of most Hellenes, will be found to be only commensurate with their deserts. And if a test of worth be wanted, it is to be found in their closing scene, and this not only in cases in which it set the final seal upon their merit, but also in those in which it gave the first intimation of their having any. For there is justice in the claim that steadfastness in his country’s battles should be as a cloak to cover a man’s other imperfections; since the good action has blotted out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighed his demerits as an individual. But none of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their vengeance, and to let their wishes wait; and while committing to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonour, but met danger face to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped, not from their fear, but from their glory.

So died these men as became Athenians. You, their survivors, must determine to have as unfaltering a resolution in the field, though you may pray that it may have a happier issue. And not contented with ideas derived only from words of the advantages which are bound up with the defence of your country, though these would furnish a valuable text to a speaker even before an audience so alive to them as the present, you must yourselves realize the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her from day to day, till love of her fills your hearts; and then, when all her greatness shall break upon you, you must reflect that it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honour in action that men were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valour, but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer. For this offering of their lives made in common by them all they each of them individually received that renown which never grows old, and for a sepulchre, not so much that in which their bones have been deposited, but that noblest of shrines wherein their glory is laid up to be eternally remembered upon every occasion on which deed or story shall call for its commemoration. For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart. These take as your model and, judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of valour, never decline the dangers of war. For it is not the miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their lives; these have nothing to hope for: it is rather they to whom continued life may bring reverses as yet unknown, and to whom a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its consequences. And surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism!

Comfort, therefore, not condolence, is what I have to offer to the parents of the dead who may be here. Numberless are the chances to which, as they know, the life of man is subject; but fortunate indeed are they who draw for their lot a death so glorious as that which has caused your mourning, and to whom life has been so exactly measured as to terminate in the happiness in which it has been passed. Still I know that this is a hard saying, especially when those are in question of whom you will constantly be reminded by seeing in the homes of others blessings of which once you also boasted: for grief is felt not so much for the want of what we have never known, as for the loss of that to which we have been long accustomed. Yet you who are still of an age to beget children must bear up in the hope of having others in their stead; not only will they help you to forget those whom you have lost, but will be to the state at once a reinforcement and a security; for never can a fair or just policy be expected of the citizen who does not, like his fellows, bring to the decision the interests and apprehensions of a father. While those of you who have passed your prime must congratulate yourselves with the thought that the best part of your life was fortunate, and that the brief span that remains will be cheered by the fame of the departed. For it is only the love of honour that never grows old; and honour it is, not gain, as some would have it, that rejoices the heart of age and helplessness.

Turning to the sons or brothers of the dead, I see an arduous struggle before you. When a man is gone, all are wont to praise him, and should your merit be ever so transcendent, you will still find it difficult not merely to overtake, but even to approach their renown. The living have envy to contend with, while those who are no longer in our path are honoured with a goodwill into which rivalry does not enter. On the other hand, if I must say anything on the subject of female excellence to those of you who will now be in widowhood, it will be all comprised in this brief exhortation. Great will be your glory in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be hers who is least talked of among the men, whether for good or for bad.

My task is now finished. I have performed it to the best of my ability, and in word, at least, the requirements of the law are now satisfied. If deeds be in question, those who are here interred have received part of their honours already, and for the rest, their children will be brought up till manhood at the public expense: the state thus offers a valuable prize, as the garland of victory in this race of valour, for the reward both of those who have fallen and their survivors. And where the rewards for merit are greatest, there are found the best citizens.

And now that you have brought to a close your lamentations for your relatives, you may depart.”

Source: Thucydides (ca 460/455-ca 399 BC), History of the Peloponnesian War II, 35-46.

Preparing to preach on the Transfiguration: Mark 9: 2-9

2012-02-11T09:30:00.003Z

A modern icon of the Transfiguration by Alexander Ainetdinov ... in Orthodox icons of the Transfiguration, we have drama and a moment full of movement

Patrick Comerford

Sunday week [19 February 2012], is the Sunday before Lent. The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) for that Sunday are: II Kings 2: 1-12; Psalm 50: 1-6; II Corinthians 4: 3-6; and Mark 9: 2-9.

There is an alternative set of readings: I Samuel 3:1-10 [11-20]; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-18; II Corinthians 4: 5-12; and Mark 2: 23 to 3: 6.

Mark 9: 2-9

2 Καὶ μετὰ ἡμέρας ἓξ παραλαμβάνει ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὸν Πέτρον καὶ τὸν Ἰάκωβον καὶ τὸν Ἰωάννην, καὶ ἀναφέρει αὐτοὺς εἰς ὄρος ὑψηλὸν κατ' ἰδίαν μόνους. καὶ μετεμορφώθη ἔμπροσθεν αὐτῶν, 3 καὶ τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο στίλβοντα λευκὰ λίαν οἷα γναφεὺς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς οὐ δύναται οὕτως λευκᾶναι. 4 καὶ ὤφθη αὐτοῖς Ἠλίας σὺν Μωϋσεῖ, καὶ ἦσαν συλλαλοῦντες τῷ Ἰησοῦ. 5 καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ Πέτρος λέγει τῷ Ἰησοῦ, Ῥαββί, καλόν ἐστιν ἡμᾶς ὧδε εἶναι, καὶ ποιήσωμεν τρεῖς σκηνάς, σοὶ μίαν καὶ Μωϋσεῖ μίαν καὶ Ἠλίᾳ μίαν. 6 οὐ γὰρ ᾔδει τί ἀποκριθῇ, ἔκφοβοι γὰρ ἐγένοντο. 7 καὶ ἐγένετο νεφέλη ἐπισκιάζουσα αὐτοῖς, καὶ ἐγένετο φωνὴ ἐκ τῆς νεφέλης, Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἀκούετε αὐτοῦ. 8 καὶ ἐξάπινα περιβλεψάμενοι οὐκέτι οὐδένα εἶδον ἀλλὰ τὸν Ἰησοῦν μόνον μεθ' ἑαυτῶν.

9 Καὶ καταβαινόντων αὐτῶν ἐκ τοῦ ὄρους διεστείλατο αὐτοῖς ἵνα μηδενὶ ἃ εἶδον διηγήσωνται, εἰ μὴ ὅταν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκ νεκρῶν ἀναστῇ.

2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

The Transfiguration by Aidan Hart ... in the Transfiguration, both the humanity and divinity of Christ are manifested to us

Making connections

How does this Gospel reading relate to the other lectionary readings for that Sunday?

The Old Testament reading (II Kings 2: 1-12) is the story of Elijah ascending in the chariot of fire in a whirlwind into heaven.

The Psalm talks about God being revealed in glory (Psalm 50: 2).

In the New Testament reading (II Corinthians 4: 5-12), Saint Paul talks about the minds of unbelievers being blinded, while our eyes should be focussed on the light of the Gospel, which is the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (verse 4), and of light shining out of darkness (verse 6).

So, there are visible threads that link the three readings and the Psalm, and these are going to be obvious to the attentive listener in Church on Sunday week.

The Transfiguration is described in the three Synoptic Gospels (see Matthew 17: 1-9; Mark 9: 2-8; Luke 9: 28-36). In addition, there may be allusions to the Transfiguration in John 1: 14 and in II Peter 1: 1-18, where Peter describes himself as an eyewitness “of his sovereign majesty.”

The Synoptic accounts of the Transfiguration are very similar in wording [Handout supplied].

So, what is different between Saint Mark’s account of the Transfiguration and the accounts in the other two Synoptic Gospels?

Mark, like Matthew, tells us these events take place “six days later,” although Luke says they take place “eight days later.”

All three accounts tell us that Christ’s robes become dazzling white, but Mark alone tells us they are a white “such as no one on earth could bleach them” (verse 3).

Mark also tells us the three disciples were “terrified.”

Telling the story

The Transfiguration also points to Christ’s great and glorious Second Coming and the fulfilment of the Kingdom of God

Should we describe the Transfiguration as a miracle? If we do, then it is the only Gospel miracle that happens to Christ himself. On the other hand, Thomas Aquinas spoke of the Transfiguration as “the greatest miracle,” because it complemented Baptism and showed the perfection of life in Heaven.

None of the Gospel accounts identifies the “high mountain” by name. The earliest identification of the mountain as Mount Tabor was by Jerome in the late fourth century. But does it matter where the location is?

Consider the place of Mountains in the salvation story and in revelation:

● Moses meets God in the cloud and the burning bush on Mount Sinai, and there receives the tablets of the Covenant (Exodus 25 to 31);
● Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (I Kings 18);
● Elijah climbs Mount Sinai and finds God not in the wind, the earthquake or the fire, but in the still small voice in the cleft of the Mountain (I Kings 19: 12);
● The Sermon, which is the “manifesto” of the new covenant, is the Sermon on the Mount;
● The Mount of Olives is a key location in the Passion narrative;
● Christ is crucified on Mount Calvary;
● John receives his Revelation in the cave at the top of the mountain on Patmos.

As for the cloud, all three Synoptic Gospels describe the cloud’s descent in terms of overshadowing (επισκιαζειν, episkiazein), which in the Greek is a pun on the word tent (σκηνάς, skenas). But this is also the same word used to describe the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation: καὶ δύναμις ὑψίστου ἐπισκιάσει σοι (Luke 1: 35).

In the Old Testament, the pillar of cloud leads the people through the wilderness by day, just as the pillar of fire leads them by night. Moses entered the cloud on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24: 18), the Shekinah cloud is the localised manifestation of the presence of God (Exodus 19: 9; 33: 9; 34: 5; 40: 34; II Maccabees 2: 8).

The cloud takes Christ up into heaven at the Ascension (Acts 1: 9-10).

Saint Paul talks about the living and the dead being caught up in the cloud to meet the Lord (I Thessalonians 4: 17).

The principle characters:

The Transfiguration ... a fresco in an Orthodox church in the US

Christ is the focus of the Transfiguration, but who are the other principle characters in this story?

1, The Trinity: In Orthodox theology, the Transfiguration is not only a feast in honour of Christ, but a feast of the Holy Trinity, for all three Persons of the Trinity are present at that moment:

● God the Father speaks from heaven: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him” (Matthew 17: 5).
● God the Son is transfigured.
● God the Holy Spirit is present in the form of a cloud.

In this sense, the Transfiguration is also considered the “Small Epiphany” – the “Great Epiphany” being the Baptism of Christ, when the Holy Trinity appears in a similar pattern).

2, Moses and Elijah: At the Transfiguration, Christ appears with Moses and Elijah, the two pre-eminent figures of Judaism, standing alongside him. Saint John Chrysostom explains their presence in three ways:

● They represent the Law and the Prophets – Moses receives the Law from God, and Elijah is a great prophet.
● They both experience visions of God – Moses on Mount Sinai and Elijah on Mount Carmel.
● They represent the living and the dead – Elijah, the living, because he is taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire (see our Old Testament reading for this day), and Moses, the dead, because he does experience death.

Moses and Elijah show that the Law and the Prophets point to the coming of Christ, and their recognition of and conversation with Christ symbolise how he fulfils “the law and the prophets” (Matthew 5: 17-19). Moses and Elijah also stand for the living and dead, for Moses dies and his burial place is known, while Elijah is taken alive into heaven in order to appear again to announce the time of God’s salvation.

It was commonly believed that Elijah would reappear before the coming of the Messiah (see Malachi 4), and the three interpret Christ’s response as a reference to John the Baptist (Matthew 17: 13).

3, The Disciples: Peter, James and John are with Christ on the mountain top. But, we may ask, why these three disciples?

Do you remember how this might relate to Moses and Elijah? Moses ascends the mountain with three trusted companions, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, to confirm the covenant (Exodus 24: 1), and God’s glory covers the mountain in a cloud for six days (Exodus 25 to 31).

In some ways, Peter, James and John serve as an inner circle or a “kitchen cabinet” in the Gospels. Perhaps this intimacy is reflected in the fact that they are the only disciples who are given nickname by Jesus: Simon becomes the Rock, and James and John are the sons of thunder (Luke 5: 10).

They are at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17: 1, Mark 9: 2; Luke 9: 28), but they are also at the raising of the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5: 35-43; Luke 6: 51), they are at the top of the Mount of Olives when Christ is about to enter Jerusalem (Mark 13: 3), they help to prepare for the Passover (Luke 22: 8), and they are in Gethsemane (Matthew 26: 37).

Jerome speaks of Peter as the rock on which the Church is built, James as the first of the apostles to die a martyr’s death, John as the beloved disciple.

They are a trusted group who also serve to represent us at each moment in the story of salvation.

The Transfiguration ... a Romanian copy of an icon in Stavronikita Monastery in Mount Athos

The meaning of the Transfiguration:

The Transfiguration of Christ in itself is the fulfilment of all of the Theophanies and manifestations of God, a fulfilment made perfect and complete in the person of Christ. We could say the Transfiguration is the culmination of Christ’s public life, just as his Baptism is its starting point, and his Ascension its end. As Archbishop Michael Ramsey writes in his book, The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Christ: “The Transfiguration stands as a gateway to the saving events of the Gospel.”

The Transfiguration reveals Christ’s identity as the Son of God. In the Gospel, after the voice speaks, Elijah and Moses have disappeared, and Christ and the three head down the mountain. The three ask themselves what he means by “risen from the dead” (Mark 9: 9-10). When they ask Christ about Elijah, he responds: “Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come …” (Mark 9: 12-13). He tells them to keep these things a secret until the Son of Man has risen from the dead. Yet, in keeping with the Messianic secret, he tells the three not to tell others what they have seen until he has risen on the third day after his death.

Celebrating the Transfiguration:

Peter’s reference to the booths could imply that the Transfiguration took place during the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, when Biblical Jews were camping out in the fields for the grape harvest. This Feast also recalled the wanderings in the wilderness recorded in the Book Exodus.

In early Church tradition, the Transfiguration is connected with the approaching death and resurrection of Christ, and so was said to have taken place 40 days before the Crucifixion.

At first, the feast of the Transfiguration belonged to the pre-Easter season of the Church and was celebrated on one of the Sundays of Lent. A sermon on the Transfiguration was preached in Lent by Saint John Chrysostom while he was a priest in Antioch in 390.

The Feast of the Transfiguration was celebrated on Mount Sinai from the mid-fifth century, and in Constantinople from the late seventh century. Saint Gregory Palamas, the great teacher of the Transfiguration, is commemorated during Lent.

From 1474 until at least 1969, it was observed in the Roman Catholic Church on the Second Sunday in Lent. In some modern calendars, including Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Anglican calendars, the Transfiguration is now commemorated on the Sunday immediately before Ash Wednesday, although traditionally, the Feast of the Transfiguration is observed in the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox calendars on 6 August. It may have been moved there because 6 August is 40 days before 14 September, the Feast of the Holy Cross, so keeping the tradition that the Transfiguration took place 40 days before the Crucifixion.

Among Anglicans, the Feast of the Transfiguration disappeared from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. When it reappeared in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, it returned to the calendar but without any other provisions.

In The Book of Common Prayer (2004), the Church of Ireland has Collects and Post-Communion prayers for the Feast of the Transfiguration on 6 August, along with this alternative provision to mark the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent.

In the Orthodox Church, the Feast of the Transfiguration is a major feast, and is counted among the Twelve Great Feasts of the Church. This is also the second of the “Three Feasts of the Saviour in August.” These are:

● The Procession of the Cross (1 August).
● The Transfiguration (6 August).
● The “Icon of Christ Not Made by Hands” (16 August).

But the Transfiguration also has associations with ordinations: from the time of Pope Leo the Great (died 460), the Transfiguration was the Gospel reading set for Ember Saturday, the day before ordinations.

Event and process

The Transfiguration is both an event and a process. The original Greek word for Transfiguration in the Gospel accounts is μεταμόρφωσις (metamorphosis), which gives us access to a deeper and more theological meaning, a deeper truth, than the word derived from the Latin transfiguratio, which can be translated by “to be changed into another from.” But the Greek μεταμόρφωσις means “to progress from one state of being to another.” Consider the metamorphosis of the chrysalis into the butterfly.

Saint Paul also uses the word μεταμόρφωσις when he describes how the Christian is to be transfigured, transformed, into the image of Christ (II Corinthians 3: 18).

The metamorphosis invites us into the event of becoming what we have been created to be. This is what Orthodox writers call deification. Transfiguration is a profound change, by God, in Christ, through the Spirit. And so, the Transfiguration reveals to us our ultimate destiny as Christians, the ultimate destiny of all people and all creation to be transformed and glorified by the majestic splendour of God himself.

The Transfiguration points to Christ’s great and glorious Second Coming and the fulfilment of the Kingdom of God, when all of creation will be transfigured and filled with light. The vision of Christ in his glory and the experience of the divine light are at the very heart of both Orthodox mysticism and Orthodox eschatology. The “uncreated light” is a hallmark theme in Orthodox spirituality, especially in the writings of Saint Gregory Palamas and the school of the thought that is hesychasm, which draws constantly on the themes of the Transfiguration.

Saint Gregory Palamas distinguishes between the essence of God, which is beyond human apprehension, and the energies of God, which are the ways in which we can experience and know God. According to him, the light of the Transfiguration “is not something that comes to be and then vanishes.” Rather, Christ’s disciples experienced a transformation of their senses so that “they beheld the Ineffable Light where and to the extent that the Spirit granted it to them.”

This was, therefore, not only a prefiguration of the eternal blessedness to which all Christians look forward, but also of the Kingdom of God already revealed, realised and come.

In Orthodox theology, since Patristic times, the three booths or tents that the three disciples want to erect represent three stages of salvation:

● Virtue, which is the active life of ascetic struggle, and which is represented by Elijah.
● Spiritual knowledge, which requires right discernment in natural contemplation or contemplation of the natural order, which was disclosed by Moses.
● Theology, which means contemplation of God, which requires the consummate perfection of wisdom, and which was revealed by Christ.

Concluding images:

In a lecture in Cambridge last year, Metropolitan Kallistos [Ware], the pre-eminent Orthodox theologian in England, spoke of the Transfiguration as a disclosure not only of what God is but of what we are. The New Adam shows us human nature as it was before the fall. The Transfiguration looks back to the beginning, but also looks forward to the end, to the final glory of Christ’s second coming, because through the incarnation Christ raised human nature to a new level, opening new possibilities.

The incarnation is a new beginning for the human race, and in the Transfiguration we see not only our human nature at the beginning, but as it can be in and through Christ at the end, he told the Summer School of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Sidney Sussex College.

Secular Christianity rests satisfied with our human nature as it is now. But he wants us to look to our potentialities, as seen in the Transfiguration of Christ. The light of the Transfiguration embraces all created things, nothing is irredeemably secular, all created things can be bathed in the light of the Transfiguration.

He also referred to Revelation 21: 5, where Christ tells the Seer of Patmos: “Behold, I make all things new” – not: “Behold, I make all new things.” The Transfiguration is a pre-figuration of the transfiguration of the cosmos, he said.

But with the Transfiguration comes the invitation to bear the cross with Christ. Peter, James and John were with Christ on Mount Tabor and with him in Gethsemane. We must understand the Passion of Christ and the Transfiguration in the light of each other, not as two separate mysteries, but aspects of the one single mystery. Mount Tabor and Mount Calvary go together; and glory and suffering go together.

If we are to undertake the task of Transfiguration, we cannot leave our cross behind. If we are to bring the secular, fallen world into the glory of Christ, that has to be through self-emptying κένωσις (kenosis), cross-bearing and suffering. There is no answer to secularism that does not take account of the Cross, as well taking account of the Transfiguration and the Resurrection.

The Transfiguration provides a guideline for confronting the secular world, he said. And he retold a story from Leo Tolstoy, Three Questions. The central figure is set a task of answering three questions:

What is the most important moment? The most important moment is now, the past is gone, and the future does not exist yet.

Who is the most important person? This person who is before you in this very instant.

What is the most important task? This task which you are engaged in here and now.

The light which shone from Christ on the mountaintop is not a physical and created light, but an eternal and uncreated light, a divine light, the light of the Godhead, the light of the Holy Trinity.

The experience on Mount Tabor confirms Peter’s confession of faith which reveals Christ as the Son of the Living God. Yet Christ remains fully human as ever he was, as fully human as you or I, and his humanity is not abolished. But the Godhead shines through his body and from it.

In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead. But at other points in his life, the glory is hidden beneath the veil of his flesh. What we see in Christ on Mount Tabor is human nature, our human nature, taken up into God and filled with the light of God. “So this should be our attitude to the secular world,” Metropolitan Kallistos said.

Or, as the Revd Dr Kenneth Leech once said: “Transfiguration can and does occur ‘just around the corner,’ occurs in the midst of perplexity, imperfection, and disastrous misunderstanding.”

Some questions for discussion

Is this a more appropriate time for celebrating the Transfiguration?

Can you identify with Peter’s hasty response?

Or do you sometimes feel terrified in the presence of God, and know not what to do?

Matthew alone has Jesus telling the three disciples: ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ (Matthew 17: 7). What are people’s fears today? What role have we in calming those fears and in reassuring people of the presence of Christ?

Where do you think people can be brought to see Jesus today? In the Church? In the poor? In themselves?

Look at verse 9. Is there an appropriate time for mission an inappropriate time?

Collect

Almighty Father,
whose Son was revealed in majesty
before he suffered death upon the cross:
Give us grace to perceive his glory,
that we may be strengthened to suffer with him
and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Holy God
we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
May we who are partakers at his table
reflect his life in word and deed,
that all the world may know
his power to change and save.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This essay is based on notes prepared for a bible study in a tutorial group with part-time MTh students on 11 February 2012.

Cousins from Ireland on three Grand Tours

2012-02-10T06:30:00.000Z

Patrick Comerford

Letters from Abroad: The Grand Tour Correspondence of Richard Pococke & Jeremiah Milles, Vol. 1: Letters from the Continent (1733-1734), edited by Rachel Finnegan. Piltown, Co Kilkenny, Pococke Press, 2011. Pb, 336 pp, ISBN: 978-0-9569058-0-2), €18.

The Grand Tour was the “finishing school” for many young men of means from the late 17th century for almost 200 years until the advent of rail travel in the mid-19th century. For the sons of the aristocracy and the landed gentry, especially in Britain and Ireland, the Grand Tour was a rite of passage that completed their liberal education.

They followed similar routes, with their valets, guides and cooks as they learned about painting, sculpture and the classics and as they spent time in Venice and in Rome. And they returned with crates of art, books, paintings, sculpture, and other items displaying their acquisition of taste, culture and knowledge, so that the Grand Tour symbolised wealth and freedom and marked a ritual entry to genteel society in the British Isles.

Irish aristocrats whose accounts of the Grand Tour have come down to us either through their published works or their architectural legacy include James Caulfeild (1728-99), 1st Earl of Charlemont, and Frederick Hervey (1730-1803), Bishop of Derry and 4th Earl of Bristol. Later, Howe Peter Browne (1788-1845), 2nd Marquess of Sligo, met Byron in Athens, brought a ship full of antiquities from Greece to Westport House in Co Mayo, including the 3,000-year old columns from the so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, and gave the name Delphi to his private fishery.

Now Dr Rachel Finnegan, who lectures in cultural and heritage studies in the Waterford Institute of Technology, is working on the previously unpublished Grand Tour correspondence of Richard Pococke (1705-65), later Bishop of Ossory, and his younger cousin Jeremiah Milles (1714-84), later Precentor of Waterford Cathedral (1736), Dean of Exeter 1762 and President of the Society of Antiquaries.

They set out in 1734 and 1736 on two tours of Continental Europe, which they recorded in their travel journals and 53 surviving letters, including 22 letters from Pococke to his mother and many more from both cousins to their uncle, Thomas Milles, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore.

Some years ago, the Revd Professor John R Bartlett, former Principal of the Church of Ireland Theological College, published an account of Pococke’s travels in Lebanon in 1738. But Dr Finnegan’s planned series promises much more. In the first volume of a three-volume collection, she reproduces the edited Grand Tour letters of that first voyage (1733-34). Their tour was cut short when Milles decided to return to Ireland to become Treasurer of Lismore Cathedral in his uncle’s diocese. The second and third volumes promise to follow their second tour of Continental Europe (1736-37) and Pococke’s continuing tour of the eastern Mediterranean (1737-41), beginning with his arrival at Leghorn.

This volume also includes biographies of the two correspondents and of the recipients of the letters, Pococke’s mother, Elizabeth, who lived near Southampton, and her brother, the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore.

Dr Finnegan was previously at the British School of Archaeology at Athens (1989-91), and worked at the Royal Irish Academy (1991-95). She has written on the connoisseurship of the 2nd Earl of Bessborough, the Divan Club, Richard Twiss’s Tour of Ireland in 1775, and Bishop Pococke’s improvements to Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny. Now in these three volumes she promises to rescue Pococke from a previous description as ‘the dullest man that ever travelled’.

She has gone through the letters from Pococke and Milles in the British Library (and has found three further letters in the Gloucestershire Archives), carefully reconstructing the passages deleted by either Pococke or his mother, giving us fresh insights, from his financial problems dealings with an Irish banker, and his careful attention to his wigs and his wardrobe, to his petty observations of the great and powerful: the Doge of Venice was ‘like an old woman’, the Pope, then 84, was ‘blind, they say, but looks well’.

The Bishop of Waterford and Lismore was totally unfazed during these years by the fact that his nephew was absent from his diocese for such as lengthy period even though he was Vicar-General of Lismore, Precentor of Lismore Cathedral and the incumbent of at last nine parishes. Indeed, the bishop may have financed the tours.

Certainly, Pocoke was typical of the many pluralist and absentee clergy of the day, though better travelled. Absence and neglect were no hindrance to preferment, and he went on to become Archdeacon of Dublin (1746), Bishop of Ossory (1756) and Bishop of Meath (1765). In Kilkenny, where he spent almost a decade, he is best remembered as the founder of the Pococke School, now amalgamated with Kilkenny College.

At first, Pococke may have decided not to publish his letters and journals because of the scathing attacks and disdain he endured from fellow travellers, but he later wrote up his travels in two volumes, A Description of the East (1743 and 1745).

Apart from leaving letters and papers, Pococke also left mummies, both human and animal, he had acquired in Egypt. How did he come to acquire them? To know this and to learn about his travels in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, we must wait for the later volumes, and Volume 3 in particular, promised in 2012.

Patrick Comerford

The reviewer lectures in Anglicanism and Liturgy at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute and Trinity College Dublin.

Tis book review appears in Astene Bulletin, Notes and Queries (Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East), Number 50: Winter 2011-12 (February 2012), London.

Reading George Herbert’s ‘Easter’

2012-02-09T19:15:00.000Z

Trinity Lane, Cambridge, in the snow this week, with the walls of Trinity College on the right ... George Herbert was a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge until he entered parish ministry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

In our discussion of 16th and 17th century art and theology this morning [9 February 2012], the offerings included poems by Richard Crawshaw, John Donne, John Dryden, George Herbert and John Milton, paintings by Carravagio, and compositions and settings by music by Henry Purcell (Te Deum), Gregorio Allegri (Miserere) and Thomas Tallis (Agnus Dei).

I concluded by reading George Herbert’s poem ‘Easter.’ I had bought two collections of Herbert’s poetry last weekend in Cambridge, where Herbert had been a fellow of Trinity College before entering parochial ministry.

‘Easter’ by George Herbert (1593-1633)

RIse heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all musick is but three parts vied
And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

Poetry, music and architecture

In his potry, George Herbert brings together poetry, music and architecture. This poem, ‘Easter,’ was first published in The Temple shortly after his death (1633).

‘Easter’ is a complex poem, in two parts. Herbert’s poems sometimes take a double-poem organisation with two separate stanza forms – for example, he also used a two-part structure in a companion poem, ‘Good Friday.’

In this poem, Herbert addresses his heart as he prepares for Easter. In reflecting on the Resurrection, he is moved to compose a song (lines 1-18), which he then shares (lines 19-30).

There is good reason to believe that Herbert intended the second, less formal part to be sung to the accompaniment of a lute. Herbert was an accomplished player of the lute and a great fan of the works of John Dowland.

Dowland’s ‘The Most Sacred Queen Elizabeth, Her Galliard’ (1610) perfectly matches the meter and rhyming scheme of Herbert’s ‘Easter’ and may have been intended as the music to which it would be sung. The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams also composed Five Musical Songs using George Herbert’s poems, including the first section of Easter, lines 1-18.

In this poem, Herbert turns to his lute to assist him in song, and draws on Scripture to illustrate the poem. Words from Psalm 57: 8-10 and the theme of Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans, with its exploration of how we are made right with God through Christ’s death on the cross.

In line 5, “calcined” is a chemical term referring to the process where impurities are removed from precious metals, or the means reducing things lime or some other similar substance. In this case, Herbert is thinking of how at death our bones are reduced to chalk or our lowest commonest denominator, the dust of which we all are made.

Herbert may be reflecting on Romans 6: 4, where we participate in Christ’s death and resurrection, being re-created into a new creation.

In line 11 (“His stretched sinews”), Herbert pictures Christ’s arms stretched tight on the cross, like lute strings, which in Herbert’s days were made from the muscle fibres of animals. Sacred music was traditionally set to higher keys than secular music – and the tighter the string, the higher the pitch.

Just as the wooden cross proclaimed Christ’s saving work, so Herbert’s wooden lute resonates with the same message.

In line 15, “three parts” refers to the fact that most chords have only three different notes that are repeated and multiplied at different octaves in different voices or instruments. Just as chords are fundamentally composed of triads, Herbert sees the worship of his heart and lute as incomplete without the aid of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit makes “up our defects with his sweet art” (line 18).

The heart responds to the melody by joining with it, as instrumentalists join together in consort to make music. But since none can sing this tune perfectly, a further strand needs to be woven: that of the Spirit who makes up “our defects with his sweet art.”

The change of structure in line 19 indicates the beginning of the song alluded to in line 1.In this song of joyful celebration, Herbert sees the day of Christ’s resurrection as unsurpassed in glory. “Can there be any day like this” (verse 19) – the sun that rises each day of the year cannot shine as brightly as the Son of God as he brings light to the world.

The first allusion in the song, in lines 19 to 22, is to Palm Sunday (see Mark 11: 8-9).

The second allusion, in lines 23 to 26, is to the women who brought spices to Jesus’s tomb (see Mark 16: 1-2).

However, the Risen Christ does not need their gifts. In fact, all gifts offered to Christ – including the sun illumining the empty grave, and the Magi providing gold, frankincense and myrrh years before – pale in comparison throughout the year (the “three hundred” days in line 29) to the glory of the Resurrection. For this reason Herbert sees Easter as the definitive moment in human history.

Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Anglican Studies (4.2): Contextual understandings (2): art, music and culture in the development of Anglicanism

2012-02-09T11:30:00.004Z

The Canticles, sung by great cathedral choirs, provide the first introduction for many to the riches of Anglican spirituality and creativity

Patrick Comerford

Church of Ireland Theological Institute

MTh Year II

EM8825: Anglican Studies in an Irish context:

Thursdays: 10 a.m. to 12 noon, The Hartin Room.

Thursday, 9 February 2012, 11 a.m.:

4.2: Contextual understandings (2): art, music and culture in the development of Anglicanism.

Introduction:

The Elizabethan Reformation was a major factor in the cultural development of these islands. The Collects of Thomas Cranmer and the literary style of his collects, the language of the King James Version of the Bible, edited by Lancelot Andrewes, and the writings of Lancelot Andrewes and Richard Hooker, contributed to the development and character of the English language at the same time as Shakespeare was writing his plays and sonnets.

Later, Jeremy Taylor stood out among the Caroline Divines for his contribution to English literature. Coleridge placed him among the four great geniuses of English literature, alongside Shakespeare, Bacon and Milton.

The period we have been looking at was a time of great cultural ferment in these islands, and Anglican religious thought played a major role in the production of great works of literature, including poetry, grand works of architecture and outstanding musical compositions.

Poets and Priests

John Donne ... “... any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

Among the foremost literary giants of the time was the poet and priest, John Donne (1572-1631), who was Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London.

Donne is a major representative of the metaphysical poets of the period, his works are notable for their realistic and sensual style, and they include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons.

Donne’s poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially when he is compared with his contemporaries. His masculine, ingenious style is characterised by abrupt openings, paradoxes, dislocations, argumentative structure, and “conceits” – images that yoke things seemingly unlike.

These features, combined with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax, and his tough eloquence were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques.

His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of contemporary English society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne’s poetry was the idea of true religion, which he spent much time considering and theorising. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic poems and love poems, and is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.

Donne came from a Catholic family – his mother was a great-niece of Thomas More – and he was unable to graduate from Oxford or Cambridge because he could not take the Oath of Supremacy. In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne Moore with whom he had 12 children. He was an MP in 1601 and in 1614, and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1615, not because he wanted to but because King James I persistently ordered it. Eventually, the University of Cambridge made him a Doctor of Divinity in 1618, and he was appointed the Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, in 1621. He died ten years later on 31 March 1631, and is buried in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London.

John Donne is best remembered today for his lines:

No man is an island,
entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thine own
or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
for I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
for whom the bell tolls,
it tolls for thee. — John Donne, Meditation XVII

George Herbert ... Prayer, the Church’s banquet

In the immediate post-Elizabethan age, Anglican spiritual writers included country parsons such as George Herbert (1593-1633), who is remembered for his careful pastoral nurturing of his parish and his parishioners, and for his poetry, much of which has been adapted as hymns. His spirituality is the Anglican Via Media or Middle Way par excellence. His poetry is constantly evident of the intimacy of his dealings with God and his assurance that, alone in a vast universe, he is held safe by the Crucified Christ. Richard Baxter later said of him that Herbert speaks to God like one that really believes a God and as one who whose business in this world is most with God.

Herbert was born into an artistic and wealthy family, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and – like John Donne – he too was an MP before he was ordained priest. In 1630, by then in his late 30s, Herbert gave up his political and courtly ambitions and was ordained priest. He spent the rest of his life as Rector of the little Wiltshire country parish of Fugglestone St Peter with Bemerton St Andrew, near Salisbury.

Herbert was noted for his unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill, and providing food and clothing for those in need. His contemporary poet, Henry Vaughan, said he was “a most glorious saint and seer.” Charles Cotton described him as a “soul composed of harmonies.”

Throughout his life, Herbert wrote religious poems characterised by a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favoured by the metaphysical school of poets.

In a letter to Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding, Herbert said of his writings: “They are a picture of spiritual conflicts between God and my soul before I could subject my will to Jesus, my Master.”

Some of Herbert’s poems have endured as hymns, including King of Glory, King of Peace, Let All the World in Every Corner Sing Teach me, my God and King.

In his poem Obedience, George Herbert wrote:

O let thy sacred will
All thy delight in me fulfil!
Let me not think an action mine own way.
But as thy love shall sway,
Refining up the rudder to thy skill.

For George Herbert, prayer is concerned not only with things heavenly, but also with the earthly. In his poem Prayer he writes:

Prayer, the Church’s banquet, Angels’ age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The Milky Way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

In this poem, Herbert is saying that in prayer it is possible to be transported, even if momentarily, to another realm. “Angel’s age,” “the milky way,” and a “tune beyond the stars” suggest that prayer touches the infinite. The poem concludes with “something understood” – a profound but elusive encounter with the mysterious otherness of God.

Herbert was close to Nicholas Ferrar and the Community of Little Gidding, which showed that prayer, community life, and a life of discipleship and service ought to be inter-woven.

Having mentioned Henry Vaughan (1622-1695), perhaps I should also refer to him as an example from the time of a lay Anglican who wrote mystical poetry too. Here his is an example of an especially beautiful fragment of one of his poems, The World:

I saw eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright,
And round beneath it time in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved in which the world
And all her train were hurled.

Izaak Walton ... biographer of Donne, Hooker and Herbert

Another lay writer worth noting was Izaak Walton (1593-1683), best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, but of interest to us as the biographer of many of the key Anglican bishops and theologians of that time.

As a young man living in London, Walton befriended John Donne, who was then Vicar of the parish of Saint Dunstan’s. Walton also married into interesting Church circles: his first wife, Rachel Floud, was a great-great-niece of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, while his second wife, Anne Ken, was a half-sister of Thomas Ken, later bishop of Bath and Wells, and then a leading Nonjuror.

Walton’s best known work in The Compleat Angler, which was first published in 1653, although he continued to add to it for a quarter of a century, so that is grew from 13 chapters to 21.

The full title of his book of short biographies is Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich’d Hooker, George Herbert, &c. Walton had already contributed an Elegy to the 1633 edition of Donne’s poems, and he completed and published his biography of Donne in 1640. His biography of Sir Henry Wotton was published in 1651, his life of Richard Hooker in 1662, that of George Herbert in 1670, and that of Bishop Richard Sanderson in 1678. Three of these subjects at least – Donne, Wotton and Herbert – were anglers.

John Milton, the poet of mid-17th century England

The Caroline age was also a period of great literary works by the heirs of the Puritan revolution. John Milton (1608-1674), who had been a radical Presbyterian, then an Independent, and a critic of Cromwell, was blind by the time his Paradise Lost was published in 1667.

At the Caroline restoration in 1660, John Bunyan (1628-1688) was imprisoned for his preaching, and remained in jail almost continuously until 1672. He was jailed again in 1677, and died in 1688 as the persecution of dissenters was coming to an end. In jail he wrote his best-known works, Grace Abounding (1666) and Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).

The poet John Dryden (1631-1700) had been brought up as a Puritan and had served under Cromwell, but welcomed the restoration of Charles II and in 1670 was appointed poet laureate and royal historiographer. He defended the biblical scholar Richard Simon (1638-1712), generally regarded as the founder of Old Testament criticism, and his work on the Old Testament as compatible with Anglican freedom in his Religio Laici (1682), depicting Anglicanism as providing a middle way between Rome and fanaticism.

After James II’s accession, Dryden became a Roman Catholic, defending his new church as the “milk white hind” in the allegorical Hind and the Panther (1687).

Rembrandt drew on Biblical imagery and scenes for much of his work

Art and architecture

Culturally, we must remember that Rembrandt was still painting in Amsterdam, drawing on many Biblical scenes. But this was also the age of baroque, which left its mark on church music, church architecture, and the paintings and sculptures in churches throughout Europe, particularly in France, Spain and Italy.

The west entrance of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, the crowning glory of Christopher Wren’s work in the City of London

Baroque became the style of the Counter-Reformation and one of its finest expressions is in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, completed in 1655. In England, the crowning glory of architecture for Anglicans was in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, designed by Christopher Wren. Building began in 1675, 20 years after Saint Peter’s was completed, but Wren’s real gems are the many smaller churches he built in London after the Great Fire of 1666.

Anglican music and composers

The Canticles, sung by great cathedral choirs, often provide the first introduction for many to the riches of Anglican spirituality

The Canticles and the Psalms are traditional parts of Anglican spirituality, and the use of the canticles in Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer is a deeply formative part and parcel of Anglican liturgy, Anglican tradition, and Anglican spirituality.

The beauty of the choral tradition that has been built up around the canticles, including, in particular, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis within Evening Prayer, has attracted many to Anglicanism. As Douglas Galbraith of Bangor University has written, Choral Evensong is, undoubtedly, one of Anglicanism’s greatest cultural and spiritual gifts to the whole Church. Thomas Cranmer’s combination of Vespers and Compline created a pattern that allows for musical embellishment without overly increasing the length of the office.

Galbraith says: “Its script is light enough to be endlessly renewed by a variety of musical idiom, a form of worship in which it is as involving to be a listener as it is to be an active participant.”

Let me just briefly introduce you to some of the wonderful and outstanding Anglican composers, from those who worked at the beginning of the Anglican Reformation, to those who were contemporaries of the Caroline Divines:

Christ Church, Oxford … John Taverner was the first Organist and Master of the Choristers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John Taverner (ca 1490-1545) is regarded as the most important English composer of his era. In 1526, Taverner became the first Organist and Master of the Choristers at Christ Church, Oxford, the college founded a year earlier by Cardinal Wolsey. In 1528, he was reprimanded for his links with Lutherans, but escaped punishment for being “but a musician.” When Wolsey fell from favour, Taverner left Christ Church, he appears to have held no further musical appointments, and may have ceased composing.

Most of Taverner’s music is vocal, and includes masses, Magnificats and motets, mainly from the 1520s. His best-known motet is Dum Transisset Sabbatum. His best known Mass, The Westron Wynde Mass, is based on the melody of a popular love song, bringing the mystery of the Mass into touch with the realities of life. It is unusual for the period because the theme tune appears in each of the four parts at different times. Mediaeval music comes of age in this mature and ingenious Mass setting. Commonly his masses are designed so that each of the four sections (Gloria, Credo, Sanctus-Benedictus and Agnus Dei) are about the same length, often achieved by putting the same number of repetitions of the thematic material in each.

Thomas Sternhold (1500–1549), who may have known Taverner at Christ Church, Oxford, was a courtier and the principal author of the first English metrical version of the Psalms, originally attached to The Book of Common Prayer as augmented by John Hopkins. The Sternhold-Hopkins Psalter remained the definitive psalter for 140 years, and continued in general use until the publication in 1698 of the New Version of the Psalms of David.

Thomas Tallis (ca 1505-1585) occupies a primary place in anthologies of English church music, and is considered among the best of England’s early composers.

Throughout his service to successive Tudor monarchs as organist and composer, Tallis avoided the religious controversies of the day. He was one of the first church musicians to write anthems set to English, although it is said that like William Byrd he remained an “unreformed Roman Catholic.”

John Merbecke (ca.1510-ca1585) was a theological writer and musician who produced a standard setting of Anglican liturgy. He is also known for his setting of the Eucharist, Missa per arma justitiae.

Merbecke began his career as a boy chorister at Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor, and was an organist there from about 1541. Two years later he was convicted with four others of heresy and sentenced to the stake, but received a pardon after the intervention of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.

In 1550, Merbecke published his Booke of Common Praier Noted, a one-syllable, one-note setting for all parts of the Book of Common Prayer (1549). He set the liturgy to semi-rhythmical melodies partly adapted from Gregorian chant. However, his work became obsolete when the Book of Common Prayer was revised in 1552, but was rediscovered in the 19th century, and adaptations for the 1662 liturgy are still in use throughout Anglicanism. He died in 1585, while he was probably still organist at Windsor.

William Byrd (1539/1540-1623), who was the outstanding composer of his generation, wrote in many of the forms then current in England, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music. The Reformers, “for the comforting of such as delight in music,” had called for “modest and distinct song” so that “the prayers ... be plainly understood.” Byrd made the regulations work for him in his Ave Verum Corpus (1605), his best-known single work.

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) was another leading composer of the late Tudor and early Jacobean period. One of the most versatile composers of his time, he wrote many keyboard works, around 30 fantasias for viols, a number of madrigals, and many popular verse anthems. His choral music is distinguished by his complete mastery of counterpoint, combined with his wonderful gift for melody. Perhaps his best-known verse anthem is This is the record of John, which sets an Advent text for solo countertenor or tenor, alternating with full chorus.

At the end of this period we find Henry Purcell (1659-1695), whose best-known anthem is They that go down to the sea in ships, written in gratitude for Charles II’s escape from a shipwreck, and drawing on verses from the Psalms in the form of an anthem. Two of his finest anthems, I was glad and My heart is inditing, were written for the coronation of King James II. Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate Deo were written for Saint Cecilia’s Day, 1693, the first English Te Deum ever composed with orchestral accompaniment, and this work was then annually performed at Saint Paul’s Cathedral until 1712. He is buried close to the organ in Westminster Abbey.

Next Thursday:

5.1: The Church of Ireland from the Penal Laws to Disestablishment

5.2: Understanding sectarianism and transforming societies

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin. These notes were prepared for a seminar on 9 February 2012 as part of the MTh Year II course, EM8825: Anglican Studies in an Irish context.

Anglican Studies (4.1): The Elizabethan and Caroline Settlements

2012-02-09T10:30:00.011Z

Key figures in the story of the Anglican Reformation depicted in a window in Trinity College, Cambridge, from left (top row): Hugh Latimer, Edward VI, Nicholas Ridley, Elizabeth I; (second row): John Wycliffe, Erasmus, William Tyndale and Thomas Cranmer (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Patrick Comerford

Church of Ireland Theological Institute

MTh Year II

EM8825: Anglican Studies in an Irish context:

Thursdays: 10 a.m. to 12 noon, The Hartin Room.

Thursday, 9 February 2012, 10 a.m.:

Anglican Studies (4.1):
The Elizabethan and Caroline Settlements.

Introduction:

Last week, we left Mary Tudor on the throne, and began to ask some questions about why the Reformation may have failed in Ireland, compared to the way it eventually succeeded in England.

Mary Tudor’s reign was short if not sweet. In Ireland, although there was no persecution of the reformers, as there had been in England, Mary and her husband, King Philip of Spain, initiated one of the largest-scale plantations, creating the plantations of Queen’s County and King’s County in the Midlands – now Laois and Offaly.

She was succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth, and once again an effort was made to introduce the Anglican Reformation in Ireland.

The Elizabethan Settlement

Despite the changes introduced under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary Tudor, the people of Ireland would have noticed little in terms of religious changes until 1560.

In that year, the Elizabethan settlement was promulgated in the form of the parliamentary acts of supremacy and uniformity, laying the foundations for a sustained Reformation.

Queen Elizabeth I was affirmed as the Supreme Governor of the Church of Ireland, which was now the state church, established by and to which all her subjects were required to belong. Elizabeth can be credited with holding together in one Anglican tradition the competing claims within the Church of England and Anglicanism after the death of her half-sister Mary. And it is she who is said to have written of the Eucharist:

His was the Word that spake it:
He tooke the bread and brake it:
And what that Word did make it,
I do believe and take it.

Under the Act of Uniformity, all were enjoined – under penalty of fine – to attend church services according to The Book of Common Prayer, and new bodies for enforcing discipline among the clergy and laity were put in place. But comparatively little attempt was made by church and state officials in Ireland to enforce conformity either to Queen Elizabeth’s supremacy or to Anglican liturgical reforms, creating an atmosphere of leniency in the 1560s and 1570s.

In general, the Anglican Church of Ireland maintained the continuity of Church structures and institutions, in place since time immemorial, or at least since the great reforms of the 12th century.

The Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer of 1559 was moderate in tone. As a concession to, or in recognition, of the situation in Ireland, it was permitted to circulate The Book of Common Prayer in Latin in places where English was not understood. This recognised that Gaelic-Irish was the first language in many places, but also pointed to the gulf between the plans and their effect for the Tudor reformation in Ireland. The survival of Latin as the language of public worship in many places cloaked the religious changes in a familiar medium.

The clergy in the Church of Ireland in 1560 were mixed in terms of background and outlook. The ranged from priests of mainly English descent inter Anglicos to the hereditary erenaghs of the Church inter Hibernicos.

Rathfarnham Castle, the home of Archbishop Adam Loftus … he accused the clergy of the two cathedrals in Dublin of dressing up old liturgical practices in the vestments of the new order (Photograph © Patrick Comerford, 2008)

Archbishop Adam Loftus accused the clergy of the two cathedrals in Dublin of dressing up old liturgical practices in the vestments of the new order. Dublin officials such as James Bathe, John Plunket and James Stanihurst are notable members of a coterie of “church papists” who publicly attended divine services in the 1560s and 1570s but who heard mass privately in their own homes, where they retained Catholic priests as their chaplains and as tutors to their children.

For some members of the married hereditary clergy inherited from the pre-Reformation, Gaelic Church, the Anglican Reformation offered legitimacy for their wives and children.

Sir Henry Sidney’s monument in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford

Sir Henry Sidney reported to Queen Elizabeth that in Meath, one of the wealthiest dioceses in Ireland, the incumbents in almost half the parishes were “Irish rogues, having very little Latin, less learning and civility,” and that they lived on “the gain of masses, dirges, shrivings and such like trumpery, godly abolished by your majesty.”

But many of the clergy remained attached to the old order, were native Irish speakers, were unreformed and managed to work against the introduction of reforms.

A more rigorous application of the Act of Uniformity was introduced from the 1570s and 1580s onwards, and the differences turned to conflict with major revolts in support of the restoration of Roman Catholicism in Leinster and Munster around 1580. The Catholic cause was given its martyrs with the hanging of Archbishop Dermot O’Hurley of Cashel in Dublin in 1584, the death in the dungeons of Dublin Castle of a wealthy Dublin widow, Margaret Ball, arrested on the orders of her son Walter Ball, Anglican Mayor of Dublin, and the death by poisoning of Archbishop Richard Creagh of Armagh in the Tower of London in 1585.

Front Square in Trinity College Dublin in the dark ... established in 1592 in the hope of training Irish-born Anglican clergy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

The chronic under-funding of the majority of benefices with the Church militated against finding an educated and motivated clergy, but also against the establishment of schools and the foundation of a university in which future clergy could be educated and trained. A parliamentary proposal in 1570 for the foundation of diocesan grammar schools fell largely because impoverished bishops in poor dioceses were unwilling to commit scarce resources to these projects. It was not until 1592 that Trinity College Dublin was established in the hope of training Irish-born Anglican clergy.

Only a small number of dioceses could claim to have sufficient well-endowed livings that would attract clergy of a high calibre.

A Gaelic-language printing-press was established in Dublin to produce an Irish version of the Bible, but produced no major work before 1600, and prayer book in Irish was not printed until 1608. These two factors combined to give an essentially English complexion to the Reformation in Ireland.

Even in English-speaking areas, such as Dublin and the neighbouring counties in the Pale, conformity was only skin-deep, and efforts to recruit Irish-speaking clergy for training in English universities lacked success, and those who were recruited were questionable in their loyalty to the state church.

To rectify these failings, especially the chronic shortage of clergy, Trinity College Dublin was founded in 1592. Meanwhile, Archbishop Loftus was appointing English graduate clergy to the chapter of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

By the opening decades of the 17th century, the Protestant community in Ireland may have been increasing in numbers but remained small, and was based largely in Dublin. Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh strongly protested that the Church of Ireland’ maintained continuity with the ancient Irish Church. But the Counter-reformation was speaking significant progress among the English-speaking urban populations in Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway.

The Church of Ireland shaped its own distinctive identity with the adoption of the 104 Irish Articles in 1615, and which we looked at last week. But little attention was being given to the re-endowment or the recovery of alienated Church resources.

It was only after the political turmoils and violence of the mid-17th century – including the Rebellion of 1641, the Confederation of Kilkenny and the Cromwellian wars – had come to an end with the Caroline restoration in 1660 that a more confident Church of Ireland emerged.

Key figures in the Elizabethan and Jacobite church

1, Archbishop Adam Loftus

Archbishop Adam Loftus … his portrait in Trinity College Dublin

Adam Loftus (1533-1605) was Archbishop of Armagh, later Archbishop of Dublin, Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1581, and the first Provost of Trinity College Dublin.

Loftus was born in the Yorkshire Dales in 1533, the son of a monastery bailiff. While he was a student at Trinity College Cambridge, it is said, he came to the notice of the young Queen Elizabeth on account of his intellect and his oratory.

He came to Ireland in 1560 as chaplain to Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex. He was only 28 when he was consecrated Archbishop of Armagh in 1563, He came to Dublin in 1564 and in 1565, while he was still Archbishop of Armagh, he was offered the Deanery of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, “in lieu of better times ahead.”

In 1567 Loftus was made Archbishop of Dublin, where the queen expected him to carry out reforms of the Church. In 1569-1570 the divisions in Irish politics took on a religious tinge with the first Desmond Rebellion in Munster, and the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, issued in 1570, questioned Elizabeth’s authority, so that Roman Catholics were suspected of disloyalty from then on.

Loftus took a leading part in the execution of Dermot O’Hurley in 1584. He was also entangled in clashes with Sir John Perrot over the location of an Irish university. Perrot wanted to use Saint Patrick’s Cathedral as the site of the new university, but Loftus won the argument and Trinity College Dublin was founded at its present location in 1592, with Loftus as named as its first Provost.

Loftus died at his Episcopal Palace in Kevin Street, Dublin, “worn out with age” and in Dublin in 1605 and was buried in his family vault in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

2, Archbishop James Ussher

Archbishop James Ussher … a key figure in shaping the Church of Ireland in the first half of the 17th century

James Ussher (1581-1656) was Archbishop of Armagh (1625–56). He was a prolific scholar, best known for his chronology that stated the time and date of creation as the night before Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC, although we should know him as the author of the Irish 104 Articles and a key figure in shaping the Church of Ireland in the first half of the 17th century.

Ussher was born in Dublin, the grandson of James Stanihurst, speaker of the Irish Parliament. He studied at Trinity College Dublin, and was ordained in the Chapel of Trinity College by his uncle Henry Ussher, the Archbishop of Armagh.

In 1615, he was closely involved in drawing up the 104 Articles of the Church of Ireland. In 1621, King James I nominated him Bishop of Meath, but from 1623 until 1626 he was in England, excused from his episcopal duties, studying church history. He became Archbishop of Armagh in 1625 and was consecrated n 1626.

Ussher was a Calvinist, and opposed any concessions by Charles I to the Catholics of Ireland. He called a secret meeting of the Irish bishops in his house in November of 1626, the result being the Judgement of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops of Ireland, which begins: “The religion of the papists is superstitious and idolatrous; their faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical; their church in respect of both, apostatical; to give them therefore a toleration, or to consent that they may freely exercise their religion, and profess their faith and doctrine, is a grievous sin.”

In 1633, Ussher wrote to Archbishop William laud of Canterbury seeking support for the imposition of recusancy fines on Irish Catholics. He worked closely with the Lord Deputy, Thomas Wentworth, to deflect pressure for conformity by the Church of Ireland to the Church of England, seeking to resource and re-endow his church, and settling the long-running primacy dispute between Armagh and Dublin.

However, the 39 Articles were adopted by the Church of Ireland at a convocation in 1634, and the Irish canons had to be redrafted to conform to the English ones rather than replaced by them. After that convocation in 1634, Ussher left Dublin for his episcopal residence in Drogheda, and there he concentrated on his diocese and his research. By 1635, he had lost de facto control of the church to John Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, in everyday matters, and to Archbishop William Laud of Canterbury in matters of policy.

Ussher also wrote extensively on theology, Patristics and ecclesiastical history, seeking to show that the early Irish Church differed from Rome and was much closer to the Church of the Anglican Reformation. This was to prove highly influential, establishing the idea that the Church of Ireland is the true successor of the early Celtic church.

In 1640, he left Ireland for England for the last time. Despite his royalist loyalties, he was protected by his friends in Parliament. He watched the execution of Charles I in London, but fainted before the axe fell. When he died in 1656, Cromwell insisted on giving him a state funeral, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

3, Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer … his legacy includes The Book of Common Prayer, the Collects and the 39 Articles

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), who began his career as a theologian at Jesus College, Cambridge, was perhaps the key figure in the Anglican Reformation in England as Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI.

He helped build the case for Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, with Thomas Cromwell he supported the principle of Royal Supremacy, and as Archbishop of Canterbury he was responsible for establishing the first doctrinal and liturgical structures of the reformed Church of England.

During the reign of Henry VIII, Cranmer did not introduce many radical changes, but succeeded in publishing the first officially authorised vernacular service, the Exhortation and Litany.

During the reign of Edward VI, Cranmer was able to promote major reforms. He as the main author and editor of the first two editions of The Book of Common Prayer, and in consultation with refugee Continental reformers, he developed new doctrinal standards in areas such as the Eucharist and clerical celibacy, promulgated through The Book of Common Prayer, The Homilies, and other publications.

The Martyrs’ Memorial at the south end of St Giles at the south end of St Giles’ near Baliol College in Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Cranmer was tried for treason and heresy during the reign of Mary I. He was jailed over two years and made several recantations, apparently being reconciled to the old order.

However, on the day of his execution in Oxford, 21 March 1556, he dramatically withdrew his recantations. As the flames drew around him, he placed his right hand into the heart of the fire and his dying words were, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ... I see the heavens open and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”

His legacy lives on through The Book of Common Prayer and the 39 Articles.

4, John Jewel

John Jewel ... literary apologist of the Elizabethan settlement and the author of Apologia ecclesiae Anglicanae

John Jewel (1522-1571), Bishop of Salisbury, first made his mark as a lecturer in Oxford, where he composed a congratulatory message to Mary Tudor on her accession. However, he was forced to seek refuge on the Continent because of his links with Cranmer and Ridley.

When Elizabeth succeeded he returned to England, and became strongly committed to the Elizabethan reforms. We could see him as the literary apologist of the Elizabethan settlement, expressed in Apologia ecclesiae Anglicanae (1562).

Richard Hooker speaks of Jewel as the “worthiest divine that Christendom bath bred for some hundreds of years.” Indeed, Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity owes much to Jewel’s thinking.

5, Richard Hooker

Richard Hooker’s statue at Exeter Cathedral ... ‘the most influential theologian in the Anglican reformation

Richard Hooker (1554-1600) was perhaps the most influential theologian in the Anglican reformation, and his emphases on reason, tolerance and the value of tradition have had a lasting influence on the development of Anglican theology. Alongside Thomas Cranmer and Matthew Parker, he could be seen as a founder of Anglican theological thought.

Hooker’s Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie is his best-known work, with the first four books being published in 1594. The fifth was published in 1597, while the final three were published posthumously, and some say they may not all be his own work.

Hooker argued for a middle way or via media between the positions held by the Roman Catholics and by the Puritans. He argued that reason and tradition were important when interpreting the Scriptures, and that it was important to recognise that the Bible was written in a particular historical context, in response to specific situations: “Words must be taken according to the matter whereof they are uttered.”

Hooker’s principal subject is the proper governance of the church, and he sought to work out which methods of organising the Church are best. His Lawes is still respected, not only for its stature as a monumental work of Anglican theology, but for its influence in the development of theology, political theory, and English prose.

6, Lancelot Andrewes

The tomb of Lancelot Andrewes in Southwark Cathedral … “he who prays for others, labours for himself” (Photograph: Patrick Comerford

Bishop Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626) oversaw and edited the translation of the Authorised Version, or the King James Version of the Bible, published 400 years ago in 1611.

As a theologian, he was typically Anglican, equally removed from the Puritan and the Roman positions. A good summary of his position is found in his First Answer to Cardinal Perron, who had challenged James I’s use of the title “Catholic.” His theology of the Eucharist is more mature than that of the first reformers:

“As to the Real Presence we are agreed; our controversy is as to the mode of it. As to the mode we define nothing rashly, nor anxiously investigate, any more than in the Incarnation of Christ we ask how the human is united to the divine nature in One Person. There is a real change in the elements—we allow ut panis iam consecratus non sit panis quem natura formavit; sed, quem benedictio consecravit, et consecrando etiam immutavit.” (Responsio, p. 263).

“Adoration is permitted, and the use of the terms ‘sacrifice’ and ‘altar’ maintained as being consonant with scripture and antiquity. Christ is ‘a sacrifice – so, to be slain; a propitiatory sacrifice – so, to be eaten.” (Sermons, vol 2, p. 296).

Andrewes drew on Patristic sources in writing his Latin Devotions; there he wrote that “he who prays for others, labours for himself.”

It was Andrewes who summarised Anglicanism in the dictum: “One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries and the series of Fathers in that period … determine the boundary of our faith.” In other words, Andrewes is saying the tradition of the Church in Anglicanism finds its foundations in the three creeds – the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed – the decisions of the first four General Councils of the Church (Nicaea, 325; Constantinople, 381; Ephesus, 431; and Chalcedon, 451); the first five centuries of the history of the Church, and the corpus of Patristic writings.

Archbishop John Bramhall ... his portrait in Armagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In providing this succinct summary of the foundations of tradition, Andrewes was influential for all of Anglicanism. So, for example, after the Caroline restoration in the 17th century, John Bramhall (1594-1663), Archbishop of Armagh, declared that he would admit all to Communion, especially the Lutherans, but also Greeks, Armenians, Abyssinians, Russians, and all who confess the apostolic creed and accept the first four general councils, even Roman Catholics “if they did not make their errors to be a condition of their communion.”

Next to Ussher, Andrewes was considered the most learned theologian of his day. He continues to influence religious thinkers to the present day, and influenced TS Eliot, who borrowed, almost word for word and without acknowledgement, the opening of Andrewes’s 1622 Christmas Day sermon for his poem, 'The Journey of the Magi.

The Caroline Settlement

The period 1660-1690 is important for a number of reasons:

Heritage and memory: This period is packed with negative memories for Presbyterians – who were excluded from the Restoration settlement; for Roman Catholics – who recall the martyrdom of Oliver Plunket; and for the Church of Ireland – for this is the age in which we really defined the Church of Ireland and differentiated ourselves from the other traditions arising from the Reformations.

Heritage and culture: Our church architecture owes much to this period. Lisburn Cathedral in the Diocese of Connor is an example of our architectural heritage from this period. But so too are Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London and Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Culturally, this too is also the age of baroque, Milton, Bunyan, Rembrandt, Vivaldi and Bach.

Heritage and theology: This is the age of Jeremy Taylor, but also the defining year (1662) for The Book of Common Prayer.

Heritage and politics: This period asks us whether Protestant political culture in Ireland – including the political culture of members of the Church of Ireland – was shaped definitively by the events of the Williamite Revolution.

The setting:

The restoration of Charles II was accompanied by the restoration of episcopacy in both the Church of Ireland and the Church of England. It marked the end of a period of great turbulence both in Church and State on these islands, and the introduction of a period of relative calm that would last for the best part of 25 years.

In this sense, these islands were catching up on the state of affairs that was unfolding throughout many parts of Europe. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) had already brought an end to a generation of war and a century of strife, and marked the end, not only of the 30 Years War, but also of religious wars in general.

During the next century and a half, the peace of Europe was often broken. There was warfare between the nations, but religion seldom provided the pretext. From now on, doctrinal disputes were settled within states and not between them. Matters of faith ceased to be an important irritant in international affairs, and the Pope’s influence had dwindled to a point where he could no longer effectively participate in the political affairs of Europe.

René Descartes: the world was beginning to think differently, and it was a different world

But it was also a world that was beginning to think differently. René Descartes (1596-1650), who died in 1650, is best known for his proposition, “I think, therefore I am.” His Cartesian system of thought immediately posed a challenge to the Aristotelian thinking that still held sway in most European countries. And those who opposed the new philosophy included one of the most brilliant figures of the period, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), who combined mathematical and scientific gifts with a religious faith of unusual depth and intensity.

In the second half of the 17th century, a new understanding of the physical universe became increasingly available. New discoveries revealed the nature of the universe, and the change that took place in the latter years of the century would profoundly affect religious thought. This change was in large measure promoted by convinced Christians, such as Thomas Spratt, Bishop of Rochester, and Joseph Glanvill, Rector of Bath, who claimed that faith could not be destroyed by knowledge. They saw science as being concerned with God, humanity and nature.

Among the scientists who agreed with them was Robert Boyle, the great chemist, who was born in Lismore, Co Waterford, into a family that provided many of the bishops of the 17th century Church of Ireland. In his will, Boyle endowed a lectureship for the defence of Christian truth.

But the restoration also ushered in a period that saw a greater toleration of libertinism. It is not that in some way we might consider the general level of sin was higher than at any other time. But there was a libertinism in vogue in the court, on the stage, and among the coffee house intelligentsia that challenged the Church in many ways. How could the Church openly criticise the court when it so openly preached the divine rights of kings? When a courageous Vicar of Tewksbury tried to bring Charles II into line with a diatribe against royal adultery and fornication, he was ejected from office.

In this climate, there was a political justification of immorality that was combined with scepticism or atheistic flippancy, so that Thomas Fuller could warn: “Take heed, atheism knocks at the door of the hearts of all men, and where luxury is the porter it will be let in.”

Ireland at the restoration

By 1660, the impetus of the Puritan revolution had run its course. It had produced no leader to replace Cromwell, and it had no policy to enable it to continue to hold political power.

In Ireland, at the time of the restoration of the monarchy and the Episcopal model of the Church, the population of the island was about 1.1 million, of whom probably 800,000 were Roman Catholics and 300,000 Protestants.

Of those 300,000 Protestants, more than half were members of the Church of Ireland, with the rest mainly Presbyterians concentrated in Ulster – many of them Covenanters driven from Scotland by persecution.

The population of Dublin was probably 32,000, and the majority were members of the Church of Ireland. So, what was the state of the Church of Ireland in 1660 as it recovered its episcopal structures and reintroduced its defining, Anglican liturgy?

We must remember that under Cromwell, while it suffered gravely, the Church of Ireland had not been disestablished.

Nevertheless, during the Cromwellian era, vacant bishoprics had not been filled; the parish system had been suspended; instead the church was served by 376 “ministers of the Gospel.” They might be Congregationalists (or Independents, probably the majority), Presbyterians (67), Baptists and Anabaptists, and we must remember that at least 65 of those clergy were Episcopalians of the Church of Ireland.

In some instances, the clergy of the Church of Ireland had remained in their parishes, officiating without salary, as was the case of Diggory Holman, Rector of Magheralin and Precentor of Dromore. Others had co-operated openly with and supported the Commonwealth: Henry Jones, Bishop of Clogher, was Scoutmaster-General to Cromwell. But the use of the Book of Common Prayer had been banned; there were no church courts or synods, church laws, &c.

These changes, issues and personalities raised questions not just about law and order within the Church in Ireland, but raised fundamental questions of ecclesiology, the theology of the church:

What was the nature of the Church in Ireland, who had authority, how was that authority to be exercised, and what force did it have, what were the visible symbols and signs of office? Who could hold office in the Church, and how was authority to be shared and delegated?

In those days, those questions could not be resolved without some consideration by the civil powers. But who exercised civil power in Ireland in the aftermath of the Cromwellian Commonwealth before the king had been restored legally? There was a king, at least in theory. But he had not been proclaimed king legally by the beginning of 1660, and there was no parliament to legislate in his name. In January 1660, three people were appointed Commissioners for Government and Management of Affairs in Ireland. Instead of a parliament, a General Convention met and this also had the oversight of ecclesiastical affairs.

At the time, clergy numbers were estimated at about 500. A petition from Church of Ireland clergy from Co Cork for their tithes indicated the Episcopal clergy were ready to return and, slowly, the clergy began to recover their parishes.

The Restoration and the Church of Ireland

A monument to Charles II outside Lichfield Cathedral … the restoration of the monarchy brought with it the restoration of the episcopacy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In May 1660, Charles II was restored to the throne, and he was proclaimed king in Dublin on 14 May. Despite the restoration, in Scotland there was still a debate about the form the new establishment should take: should it be Presbyterian or Episcopalian? Charles II had signed the covenant, the Presbyterians had played an important part in the Restoration, and so Presbyterians felt their hopes were well-founded in both Ireland and Scotland, and they had some hopes for a greater role in church and state affairs in England. A deputation of Presbyterian ministers arrived in Dublin to petition the General Council, only to find the majority were “prelatical.”

Lord Charlemont deemed the Presbyterians the “most dangerous” faction, saying they “preach up the authority of the kirk to be above that of the crown and our dread sovereign,” and that “the kirk hath power to excommunicate their kings.”

And so, from the beginning, questions of ecclesiology were also questions of politics, and church/state relations were inseparable. Preparations quickly began for the re-establishment of the Episcopal Church of Ireland.

Eight Irish bishops had survived the Cromwellian era: John Bramhall, Derry; Henry Jones, Clogher; Henry Leslie, Down; John Leslie, Raphoe; Robert Maxwell, Kilmore; Griffith Williams, Ossory; Thomas Fulwar, Ardfert; and William Baylie, Clonfert. But there were 16 vacant dioceses in 1660, including the four archbishoprics: Armagh, Meath, Ardagh, Dromore, Tuam, Killala, Elphin, Dublin, Kildare, Ferns, Cashel, Waterford, Cork, Cloyne, Limerick and Killaloe.

Consider the names of those eight remaining bishops: at least four were of Scots birth or descent: Leslie of Down, Leslie of Raphoe, Maxwell of Kilmore and Baylie of Clonfert, and a fifth, Williams of Ossory, was of Welsh descent. This alone challenges the myth that the Ulster-Scots heritage is the preserve of Northern Presbyterians, or the image conveyed by some that the Church of Ireland was merely a transplant of the Church of England.

Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in the snow earlier this week: Archbishop John Bramhall of Armagh was an undergraduate here in the early 17th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

In August 1660, Bishop John Bramhall of Derry was nominated as Archbishop of Armagh.

Declarations and Instructions issued by the King on 30 November 1660 formed the basis for the later Act of Settlement. Lands held by the Church in 1641 were to be restored, a glebe was to be provided for every parish, there were new provisions for the two cathedrals in Dublin, and provision was made for church endowments. But the doctrine and discipline of the church were not yet settled.

On 18 January 1661, Bramhall was formally appointed Archbishop of Armagh. Without waiting for Parliament to sit, he threw himself into reorganising the dioceses: Parker of Elphin became Archbishop of Tuam; Fulwar of Ardfert became Archbishop of Cashel; Henry Leslie moved from Down to Meath, but soon died and was replaced by Jones who moved from Clogher to Meath, and would be replaced in Clogher by John Leslie, who had been consecrated for Raphoe; Robert Leslie moved from Dromore to Raphoe; Maxwell remained in Kilmore, to which Ardagh was united; and Cloyne was united to Cork.

Bramhall also moved ahead to fill the ranks of the depleted episcopate: on 27 January 1661, more than three months before Parliament met, two new archbishops and ten new bishops were consecrated in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. The new archbishops were James Margetson of Dublin and Samuel Pullen of Tuam. The new bishops were: Michael Boyle (Cork and Ross); John Parker (Elphin); Robert Price (Ferns and Leighlin); Henry Hall (Killala); George Baker (Waterford and Lismore); Edward Synge (Limerick); Edward Worth (Killaloe); Robert Leslie (Raphoe); George Wild (Derry); and the saintly Jeremy Taylor (Down and Connor). The five consecrating bishops were Bramhall of Armagh, Maxwell of Kilmore, Williams of Ossory, Leslie of Raphoe, and Jones of Clogher. Some weeks later, Thomas Price was consecrated for Kildare, giving the Church of Ireland a complement of four archbishops and 17 bishops. And these diocesan structures were, more or less, retained unchanged for the next 170 years.

The attendance of church, university, state and civic officials at the large consecration in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral provided a striking demonstration of the unity of church and state.

William Fuller, Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and later Bishop of Limerick, composed a special anthem, Quam denuo exaltavit Dominus coronam, with the opening lines:

Now that the Lord hath re-advanced the Crown;
Which Thirst of Spoyl, and frantick zeal threw down:
Now that the Lord the Miter restored
Which, with the Crown, lay in the dust abhor’d:
Praise him ye Kings,
Praise him ye Priests.

It was not until 8 May 1661 that Parliament met in Dublin, with one of the newly-consecrated bishops, Jeremy Taylor, preaching at its opening. Taylor argued for a state composed of none but those who accept the Apostles’ Creed, and that “tenderness of conscience” could not be pleaded against the law of the land.

Membership of the new parliament was overwhelmingly Protestant, with only one Roman Catholic MP. Archbishop Bramhall of Armagh presided in the House of Lords, where the bishops would often form the working majority.

By the beginning of June, Bramhall could claim victory: “We have established the liturgy, doctrines and disciplines of the Church. We have condemned the Covenant engagement.”

At the same time as Parliament met, the Convocation – the equivalent of a National Synod – met. This consisted of two houses: the archbishops and bishops formed the upper house, and the Lower House was composed of the archdeacons, deans and “proctors” of the clergy. It continued sitting until 1666, but from 1666 to 1692 there was neither Parliament nor Convocation, and although Parliament would meet again in 1692, convocation did not meet again until 1703.

In 1662, the Act of Settlement restored and protected much, though not all, of the property of the Church of Ireland. But in the north-east, particularly in Jeremy Taylor’s diocese, the clergy of the Church of Ireland found it difficult to assert their claims against the Presbyterians, with many Presbyterian ministers remaining in place.

Bramhall also wanted to exclude from the Church of Ireland those clergy who had served during the Commonwealth. He insisted on episcopal ordination and refused to accept Presbyterian ordinations, even when these had been legal in the past.

Prayer Book revision

The 1662 revision of The Book of Common Prayer resulted in:

● The 1611 translation of the Bible being substituted in the prefatory sentences, in the Epistles and the Gospels, and in all other extracts (with the exception of the Psalter, the 10 Commandments, and some portions of the Communion Office);
● The direction to knell at the Holy Communion, which had been in Edward VI’s prayer book, and omitted from Elizabeth I’s, was restored;
● In an explanatory note at the end of the Communion service, the words “corporal presence of Christ’s natural flesh and blood” were substituted for “any real or essential presence therein being of Christ’s natural flesh and blood”;
● The word priest was substituted for minister in the description of the person who was to read the absolution;
● Prayers were added for times of dearth and famine, for Ember week, for parliament, for the chief governor or governors of Ireland, and “for all sorts and conditions,” and a thanksgiving for restoring public peace and the general thanksgiving were introduced;
● In the prayer for the church militant, the clause respecting those who have departed this life was added;
● There were forms to be used at sea, and a service of baptism for those of riper years.

Special services were introduced for 30 January, 29 May, 23 October and (later) 5 November.

These four special commemorations cemented the links between Church and State, and reinforced the established nature of the Church of Ireland:

● 30 January: The martyrdom of Charles I (commemorated in the dedication of the chapel at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham);
● 29 May: The anniversary of the Restoration;
● 23 October: The anniversary of the massacre of 1641;
● 5 November: The anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot.

There were efforts too to introduce real reforms within the Church: in 1666, an act was passed disabling clergy from simultaneously holding benefices in the Church of England and the Church of Ireland.

Church and State

Meanwhile, many of the bishops also held high office in the state, and this also supplemented their income. In 1668, Primate Margetson had over £3,500 a year, including his fees as Prerogative Judge and King’s Almoner; Archbishop Boyle of Dublin had £1,200 a year, and was Lord Chancellor; Robert Mossom of Derry was the best paid bishop with £1,800 a year; of the rest, 12 had incomes ranging from £1,600 to £1,000, and five between £1,000 and £600. The poorest bishoprics were Clonfert (£400) and Kildare (£200).

The best-paid deanery was Christ Church Cathedral Dublin (£600 a year). The worst paid clergy were those in Connacht, where vicars received from 16 shillings to 40 shillings a year. Hardly one parish in 10 had a glebe. Despite his wealth, Mossom of Derry reported that all the churches in the city and county of L/Derry were ruinous, and that the “holy offices of God’s publick worship were, for the most part, administered either in a dirty cabin or in a common alehouse.”

The end of an era

Perhaps the end of an era came in 1671 with the death of John Leslie, Bishop of Clogher: he had been consecrated in Scotland in 1628, and at the time of his death is reputed to have been the oldest bishop in the world. In a way we could say that his death marked not only an end of the personal links that bridged the Jacobite or even the Elizabethan church with the Church of the restoration, but also symbolised the shift in thinking that was taking place in the Church and throughout Europe.

The restoration era was distinguished by far-reaching intellectual changes. Evidences of a new spirit had started to appear with the Cambridge Platonists, who turned from the way in which religious problems had been conceived and debated. With the Puritans, the prevailing theology had become dogmatic and theoretical; the Cambridge Platonists showed that a broader and simpler system was necessary. They believed that preoccupation with abstruse doctrines did more harm than good. They sought a middle way between the Laudians and the Calvinists, and adopted a mediating position.

Nor should we should be in any doubt that the church was still in need of reform.

In 1678, the new Primate was Michael Boyle, who came from a family that might appear to have been a line of hereditary bishops: his father had been Archbishop of Tuam and his uncle Bishop of Waterford and Lismore. When he was Bishop of Cork he held six other benefices until his kinsman, the Earl of Orrery, as President of Munster, forced him to resign them.

Boyle was the last prelate to fill the office of Lord Chancellor. But as Primate his biggest challenge was the change in religious culture throughout the land with the accession of James II in 1685.

James II was a professed Roman Catholic, and with his succession Anglicanism faced real dilemmas. For 25 years, the Anglican Church – both the Church of Ireland and the Church of England – had long been, effectively, the handmaiden of the state. For long, the concept of non-resistance had been regularly preached from the Anglican pulpit. What role would the Church now have with an antagonistic monarch on the throne? And how could it consider legitimately oppose any measures against its interests that were introduced by the king?

According to the Church historian Murray, with the accession of James II “the Church of Ireland once more fell upon evil days. The Duke of Ormond was replaced as Viceroy by the king’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Clarendon, while Richard Talbot, Earl (and later Duke) of Tyrconnell, and brother of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, became commander-in-chief of Ireland.

Matters become worse for the Church of Ireland in 1687 when Tyrconnell succeeded Clarendon, and the outlawries resulting from the events of 1641 were reversed. Church of Ireland clergy lost their tithes, churches were seized and the Mass said in them, vacant sees, including Cashel, Clonfert, Clogher and Elphin, were not filled, and their revenues were handed over to the Roman Catholic bishops of those dioceses.

John Vesey, Archbishop of Tuam and Richard Tennison, Bishop of Killala, fled to England, and were soon followed by the Archbishop of Dublin and the bishops of Kilmore, Dromore, Kildare, Ferns and Leighlin, Cloyne, Raphoe, and Derry. Those who are unkind would say they abandoned the Church of Ireland at the time, but many of them would return. And, indeed, many of the bishops remained, including the Archbishop of Armagh and the bishops of Meath, Ossory, Limerick, Cork and Ross, Killaloe and Waterford and Lismore.

Dean King, who had been left behind by Archbishop Marsh as his commissary in Dublin, said he knew of 16 or 17 clergymen who were assaulted, imprisoned and threatened with death.

In an effort to recover his throne after the Williamite revolt, James II left his exile in France in 1689, and landed in Ireland. The Irish Parliament was summoned, but few Protestants were in attendance: apart from four bishops, four lay peers and six MPs, the rest of parliament was made up of Roman Catholics. Those who were attainted and had their estates confiscated included Archbishop Marsh and Archbishop Vesey, and Bishop Hopkins, Sheridan, Moreton, Smith, Marsh of Ferns, Jones and Wiseman, and 83 of the clergy of the Church of Ireland.

The vacant sees were to be filled by Roman Catholics, churches were seized, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, was seized and mass was celebrated in it, part of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, was used as military stables, and finally an order was issued, under penalty of death, forbidding more than five Protestants to meet together.

William III landed in Ireland on 1 July 1690. He entered Dublin on 6 July, the same day a solemn service of thanksgiving was held in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and the sermon was preached by Dean King. A new era was ushered in, for both the island of Ireland, and the Church of Ireland. But there were problems for the Church of Ireland too, and we shall look at those next week.

Key figures in the Caroline church in Ireland

1, John Bramhall (1594-1663), Archbishop of Armagh:

John Bramhall (1594-1663), Archbishop of Armagh ...portrait in the Old Library in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

John Bramhall, who was born in Cheshire, came to Ireland with Wentworth and had survived the Cromwellian era as Bishop of Derry. In August 1660 he was nominated Archbishop of Armagh. He arrived in Dublin on October 1660 to be greeted by Lord Caulfield (later Lord Charlemont), and was formally appointed on 18 January 1661.

His rule as primate from 1661 to 1663 was vigorous and left its mark on the Church of Ireland at a critical period. The Presbyterians called him “Bishop Bramble,” but Cromwell had shown a more shrewd insight when he called him “the Irish Canterbury.”

Bramhall was a vigorous defender of the catholicity of the Church of England and the Church of Ireland against claims by Roman Catholics that it was either schismatic or heretical: “I make not the least doubt in the world that the Church of England before the Reformation, and the Church of England after the Reformation, are as much the same Church as a garden before it be weeded and after it be weeded is the same garden; or a vine, before it be pruned and after it is pruned and freed from luxurious branches, is one and the same vine.”

He offered a broad interpretation of the 39 Articles, with the Church including both Arminians and Calvinists, “walking to the House of God as friends.” He argued that the Roman Catholics of Ireland suffered no persecution for their religion, but only for their politics. He declared that he would admit all to communion, especially the Lutherans, but also Greeks, Armenians, Abyssinians, Russians, and all who confess the apostolic creed and accept the first four general councils, even the Roman Catholics “if they did not make their errors to be a condition of their communion.”

Bramhall believed firmly that Church and State must be one, and that unity could only be obtained under the crown as supreme in all matters both temporal and spiritual.

Overworked, he died in 1663 at the age of 68. His funeral sermon was preached by Jeremy Taylor. He was succeeded by James Margetson (1663-1678), who pursued a policy of conciliation, softened down the asperities of the ministers to Jeremy Taylor, and rebuilt Armagh Cathedral.

2, Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667):

Jeremy Taylor … described as “the glory of the whole Anglican Communion”

The saintly and ascetic Jeremy Taylor has been described as “The glory of the whole Anglican Communion.” Coleridge placed him among the four great geniuses of English literature, alongside Shakespeare, Bacon and Milton.

Outside Ireland, his fame rests mainly on his devotional writings, especially The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living (1650) and The Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying (1651), which are characteristic expressions of Anglican spirituality in their insistence on a well-ordered piety which stresses temperance and moderation. His Holy Living and Holy Dying had a profound influence spiritually on later generations, including figures as diverse as John Wesley and John Keble. No book other than the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer has had a more profound and lasting influence on the distinctive inwardness of Anglican devotion. No other book so clearly expresses the essence of the classical Anglican understanding of the spiritual life, with its insistence that there is no division between what is religious and what is secular.

Taylor was the preacher at his own consecration in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, in January 1661, and preached at the opening of the Irish parliament three months later.

He gave reluctant permission for the use of organs in churches, and although he allowed the use of hymns, it is not known whether he allowed them to be sung in public services.

He stated that if the Irish would not learn English, the sooner he learnt Irish the better.

In 1662, he made the parish church of Lisburn the cathedral for the united dioceses of Down and Connor, which had been without a cathedral since 1538. He also rebuilt the choir of Dromore Cathedral at his own expense.

A major weakness in Taylor was his antipathy towards the Scots, whom he regarded as “intolerable.” However, this was partly due to his experiences of the strong Presbyterian presence in his dioceses, which left him out of sympathy with the majority of people there. He told the Duke of Ormond: “Here I am perpetually contending with the worst of the Scottish ministers. I have a most uncomfortable employment, but, I bless God, I have broken their knot, I have overcome the biggest difficulty, and made my charge easy for my successor.”

When he declared 36 of the parishes in his dioceses vacant, seven of the former Commonwealth ministers conformed to the Church of Ireland, and the rest of the vacancies were filled with clergy from the Church of England.

Taylor hoped continually to be promoted out of Ireland, and he pleaded with Archbishop Sheldon of Canterbury not to overlook him. However, he was left in Ireland, and died here in 1667.

3, Narcissus Marsh (1638-1713):

Marsh’s Library, Dublin … a lasting tribute to the achievements of Archbishop Narcissus Marsh

Archbishop Narcissus March should not to be confused with Francis Marsh (1626-1693), whom he succeeded as Archbishop of Dublin.

Narcissus Marsh was born in Wiltshire and educated in Oxford, where he was ordained. He was chaplain to the Earl of Clarendon, who brought him to Ireland, and he was Provost of TCD (1679-1683). There he found that the undergraduates who came to college had little previous education, “whereby they are both rude and ignorant, and I was quickly weary of 340 young men and boys in this lewd debauched town.”

Marsh was especially zealous for the development of Celtic studies and for a knowledge of the Irish Bible and The Book of Common Prayer among the students of TCD. Thirty scholars, who were native Irish, had to learn Irish as well as Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and to teach these subjects he employed the Revd Andrew Sall (1612-1693), a former Jesuit, and the Revd Paul Higgins, a former Roman Catholic priest. Sall had been Rector of the Irish College in Salamanca in Spain (1652-1655) and Provincial of the Irish Jesuits (1662). On becoming an Anglican, he became both a canon of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (1675-1682), and a domestic chaplain to Charles II, living first in Oxford (1675-1680) and then in Dublin (1680-1682).

Through the efforts of both Marsh and Sall, the Irish sermons and services in the college chapel in TCD were well attended.

Marsh became Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin in 1683, but fled his diocese during the reign of James II. After the Williamite revolution, he became Archbishop of Cashel, then Archbishop of Dublin, and finally Archbishop of Armagh.

Marsh founded, endowed and built Marsh’s Library in Dublin, was one of the founders of the Dublin Philosophical Society, a forerunner of the Royal Irish Academy, and maintained a lifelong interest in translating and printing the Bible in Irish. He is buried in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

4, James Butler, Duke of Ormond (1610-1680):

James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond … strengthened the restored Established Church of Ireland

The Maynooth church historian Ray Gillespie says that “the Church of Ireland after the Restoration was caught between a Catholic anvil and a Protestant hammer.” One of the priorities of James Butler, Duke of Ormond, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1661-1669), was strengthening the established church.

Ormond supported Bramhall’s demands for a full restoration of Church properties. He thought the Nonconformists of the north the greatest threat to the security of the state. Ulster, in his judgment, was full of “the worst Protestants and Papists in the whole kingdom.”

His major building programme in restoration Ireland included the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, where his churchmanship is evident in the dedication of the chapel, used in the 1990s for the Holy Communion at the opening of General Synod, to Charles King and Martyr.

Ormond’s political career was linked to that of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon and Secretary of State in London, and the fall of Clarendon in 1667 led to Ormond’s dismissal in 1669.

The other churches in Ireland

1, The Presbyterians:

Adelaide Road Presbyterian Church, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Presbyterians were to be found mainly in the north-east, and remain the most lasting of the Crowmellian era traditions, as the Baptists dwindled and the Independents or Congregationalists virtually disappeared.

In doctrine and discipline, the Presbyterians maintained strict conformity with the Church of Scotland. But many of the Ulster Presbyterians were Covenanters, who had been driven from Scotland by the moderating policies of Lauderdale and the subsequent persecutions. Before ordination, a Presbyterian minister in Ulster was required to take the oath to the Solemn League and Covenant.

We find strong correspondence from leading state figures, including Ormond, Orrery, and Charlemont, and from the bishops of the day, including Jeremy Taylor, accusing the Presbyterians of preaching seditiously, and the House of Commons condemned the Covenant as “schismatical, seditious and treasonable.”

Griffith Williams (Bishop of Ossory, 1641-1672) celebrated the restoration with the publication of his Ho Antichristos, the Great Antichrist Revealed, in which he proved to his own satisfaction that the Antichrist was “neither pope nor Turk’ but in truth the Westminster Assembly of Divines,” whom he characterised as a “collected pack or multitude of hypocritical, heretical, blasphemous, and most scandalous wicked men, that have fulfilled all the prophecies of the Scriptures, which have forespoken of the coming of the great Antichrist.”

For their part, the Presbyterians feared the restoration of episcopacy was a step towards restoring Papacy.

2, The Huguenots:

Ray Gillespie identifies three major periods of Huguenot immigration into Ireland:

1, The early Ormondite period (1662-1669): As early as 1663, the first Huguenot refugees who had arrived were provided with the use of a chapel in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

They had been encouraged to come to Ireland for economic reasons, and were offered considerable latitude. But we should not see this situation as unique: similar hospitality was offered to the Huguenots in Canterbury Cathedral.

In return for a certain measure of self-government, the Huguenots for their part accepted the use of a French translation of the Book of Common Prayer, Episcopal ordination, and the ultimate authority of the Archbishop of Dublin.

This first community probably numbered about 500 throughout Ireland.

2, The late Ormondite period (1681-1687): This second influx followed the Draggonades of 1681. In 1685, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Huguenot refugees fled from France to Ireland in even greater numbers.

3, The Ruvignan period (1692-ca. 1706).

It is interesting to ask why, in the main, they and their descendants found a place within the Church of Ireland and not among Presbyterians. Certainly the Rye House Plot of 1683, which Ormond linked to dissenting Protestants in Ireland, was a clear motivation for Irish Huguenots, who had benefited from Ormond’s hospitality, to avoid too close an identification with Irish Presbyterians.

3, The Roman Catholics:

After the 1641 rebellion, the Roman Catholics had briefly gained the upper hand in Ireland.

An indication of Catholic liberties under Charles II is provided at a later date: When it came to signing the Treaty of Limerick in 1691, the defeated Roman Catholics appealed to “the privileges enjoyed under Charles II.” The appeal was to actual practice rather than the statutes on the book.

But the statute legislation made it a criminal offence for a Roman Catholic priest to say Mass and for a lay person to hear it; there were heavy fines for not attending the services of the Church of Ireland; priests, teachers, tutors and MPs had to take the Oath of Supremacy and to renounce the authority of the Pope in civil matters; no Roman Catholic could become a magistrate (JP), mayor, recorder, alderman, magistrate, or burgess of any corporation.

In 1662, the Papal Nuncio in Brussels, De Vechii, declared that a proposed address by the Roman Catholic priests of Ireland, stating their loyalty to the new monarch, was a violation of their faith. Cardinal Barverini and Cardinal Rospigliosi concurred.

Nevertheless, in 1666 the Roman Catholics held a synod in Dublin at which a loyal remonstrance was framed, expressing loyalty to Charles II, was signed by 69 of the estimated 4,000 priests and friars resident in Ireland.

There appears to have been a great measure of religious liberty and freedom of conscience. This was enhanced by Ormond’s succession as Viceroy by Berkeley, who was openly sympathetic to Roman Catholics, and who was said to once sent a message to Archbishop Peter Talbot of Dublin that he “hoped to see high mass at Christ Church.”

That religious tolerance continued until the fictitious “Popish Plot” of 1678, which led to the execution of Archbishop Oliver Plunket, a saintly prelate who suffered a traitor’s death at Tyburn on 1 July 1681 on a false charge of having conspired towards a French invasion of Ireland. England’s fear of France was rivalled only by the Pope’s loathing of France, where Louis XIV had asserted royal prerogatives in many areas that Pope regarded as his own, and flirted with Gallicanism, whose model of the church stands up to interesting comparison to that of Anglicanism.

However, we should also remember that there was the Rye House Plot of 1683, which Ormond linked to nonconformists in Ireland. But the tide turned again in favour of the Roman Catholic Church with the accession to the throne of James II in 1685.

Two other communities with a strong presence in Ireland at the time and who survived the Cromwellian period with varying degrees of strength numerically and theologically after the restoration were the Baptists and the Quakers. They have been the subject of many scholarly studies and are worth exploring too.

The wider church:

The wider church, beyond Ireland, and beyond Anglicanism, at this time, produced great contributions to our theology, thinking and culture.

We have already referred to Descartes, who shaped and changed the thinking of this age, and to his greatest opponent, Pascal. But this period also saw the rise in France of Gallicanism and Jansenism.

Jansenism owed its origins to Cornelius Otto Jansen (1585-1638), Bishop of Ypres, and the posthumous publication in 1640 of his Augustinus, which was condemned as heretical by Innocent X. Jansen argued that without a special grace from God, the performance of his commands is impossible for us, and the operation of his grace is irresistible. Hence, human beings are the victims of either a natural or a supernatural determinism, limited only by not being coercive.

The most important centre of Jansenism was at the Convent of Port Royal, south-west of Paris, where Antoin Arnauld became the leader of the movement. The Jansenists sought to evade Innocent X’s condemnation by admitting that the propositions condemned were heretical, but declaring them to be unrepresentative of Jansen’s ideas. In 1668, the movement was persuaded into a qualified submission, but continued to gain followers and sympathisers.

The movement eventually led to the formation of the Old Catholics at Utrecht.

The other great movement to mark French Catholicism at this time was Gallicanism. In 1516, the Pope had conceded the right of the French king to appoint bishops. In 1663, the Sorbonne published a declaration, reaffirmed by the French clergy at their assembly in 1682 and known as the Four Gallican Articles. These denied the Pope had dominion over things temporal and affirmed that kings are not subject to the Church in civil matters; reaffirmed the authority of a General Council of the Church over the Pope; insisted that the ancient liberties of the French church were inviolable; and asserted that the judgment of the Pope was not irreformable.

Gallicanism persisted well into the 18th century. We see parallels with Anglicanism, and even with some of the assertions in the 39 Articles. But we can also see the beginning of thinking that would lead to the French revolution, and see the debate that would culminate, long after Gallicanism had become a spent force, in the crowning of Napoleon as Emperor by a captive Pope.

Next:

4.2: Contextual understandings (2): art, music and culture in the development of Anglicanism.

Next Week:

5.1: The Church of Ireland from the Penal Laws to Disestablishment

5.2: Understanding sectarianism and transforming societies

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin. This lecture on 9 February 2012 was part of the MTh Year II course, EM8825: Anglican Studies in an Irish context.

Reading ‘John in the Spirit’

2012-02-08T20:56:00.004Z

Saint John’s Church, Kilkenny, where this week’s clergy conference came to an end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

The Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Clergy Conference came to an end this afternoon. We had been meeting since Monday afternoon in the River Court Hotel in John Street, Kilkenny, looking out on the River Nore, with Kilkenny Caste towering majestically above on the other bank of the river.

In his fourth presentation to the conference, Professor David Ford, who is Regius Professor of Divinity in Cambridge University, spoke to us about “John in the Spirit.”

Professor Ford is working on a major commentary on Saint John’s Gospel, began, though, by identifying three ingredients that he says are needed in the theological interpretation of Scripture:

1, Scholarship, which is at the heart of any theological interpretation of Scripture. One needs to listen to what good scholars are saying about the text. He referred to this as the “archaeology of the text.”

2, But scholarship is not enough on its own. In reading Scripture, we continue to generate new meanings and new understandings. If scholarship is the “archaeology of the text,” then hermeneutics is “the teleology of the text.” That exercise is utterly unpredictable as we are invited to constantly interpret the texts anew.

3, In the theological interpretation of Scripture, theology, we also need to be in dialogue with other disciples, including science and the arts.

He then outlined a set of maxims offered for reflection, presented within two all-encompassing maxims.

His first all-encompassing maxims is that we read Scripture for the sake of God and God’s purposes, we do things for God’s sake. “Hallowed be thy name” is the basic motive for the reading of scripture – we are “reading for God’s sake.”

He then presented these nine maxims:

1, We listen to the Bible as God’s loving cry to humanity, the cry of wisdom. God longs for us to listen attentively, and we do this through reading Scripture.

2, We must figure ourselves into God’s continuing drama. The call to follow is for us all, and we are taking part in a significant drama, in which we have responsibility for moving on to the next scene or part in that drama.

3, We read the Old Testament with the New Testament, taking it seriously.

4, We give priority to the plain sense of Scripture, and its multiple meanings, and its different levels and dimensions.

5, We learn from the many witnesses to Jesus Christ within and beyond the Bible. Unlike Muslims with the Quran, we have Four Gospels and not one text, with four different and diverse human testimonies to Christ.

6, We learn as part of the Church, which is the primary community of interpretation of the Bible. The only faith that is healthy is a faith that has been taught to think, he said, adding that an educated Church is “utterly central” for the 21st century.

7, We learn especially from wise readers of Scripture, past and present – he gave as example Jean Vanier work on Saint John’s Gospel.

8, We learn from studying with those beyond the Church, and this includes inter-faith engagement.

9, We read in the Spirit, desiring God and God’s future.

He then presented the second of his two all-encompassing maxims as his “wrapping-up maxim or principle,” which is to read in love, a love that is for God and all God’s creatures, the rule of love. Any interpretation of Scripture that goes against the love of God and the love of neighbour goes against God’s plan.

And, returning to a point he made repeatedly over the last three days, he said God is involved in such a way that evil can never have the last word.

Turning to the title of his paper, ‘John in the Spirit,’ he recalled leading a Bible study on John 20 in a prison in Louisiana, and the impact on prisoners of the account of in that chapter of Jesus appearing behind locked doors.

If John believes his own Gospel, and that he has been given the spirit, then he believes he is writing the Gospel in the Spirit, and that he is being led into all truth (John 16: 13), he said. “He is doing theology and believes he is being led into all truth.”

John has a pervading perception of being led into more and more and more truth. He is writing at the transition into the next generation, and believes greater things are going to happen.

He said every Christian community can hope for more and more in the future, rather than thinking it is facing a deterioration from the “good old days.” We must believes that the Spirit is going to lead us further into more and more truth.

John saw himself as writing Scripture, and when John interprets Genesis in the way he does in the Prologue, he is teaching us how to read him.

Turning to the story of Nicodemus in John 3, he pointed out that John does not have a birth narrative, but all the elements are here.

This chapter provides the last time the “Kingdom of God” is mentioned in Saint John’s Gospel, and he then switches to talking about “eternal life.”

The stairs inside Saint John’s Church Kilkenny ... what does Saint John mean by being born from above? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

In John 3, the elements of that we find that are in the nativity narratives in the other Gospels include the dark night, the birth, the mother’s womb, the Spirit above and the question ‘How can these things be?’ (John 3: 9), which echoes Mary’s question to the angel: ‘How can this be?’ (Luke 1: 34.)

He asked what it means when John says: “so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (John 3: 21). He put this within the context of the invitation to indwelling. John is inviting us to inhabit a place, and to inhabit it above all in prayer.

He closed by inviting us to meditate on the verse: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth ...” (John 16: 13).

After a morning of Johannine studies, it was appropriate that the conference came to an end with a celebration of the Eucharist in Saint John’s Church, which is just a short walk from the River Court Hotel.

Time for prayer and poetry in Kilkenny

2012-02-08T00:51:00.010Z

The former Kilkenny College reflected in the waters of the River Nore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

Our two principal speakers at the Dublin and Glendalough Clergy Conference this afternoon [Tuesday 7 February 2012] were Professor David Ford of Cambridge and the poet Micheal O Siadhail.

David Ford, who spoke about ‘Theology and Poetry in the Drama of Living,’ spoke of those cries that are central to our Christian faith. The Psalms remind us constantly that “I cry aloud to God, and he will hear me,” while we are told constantly that “Wisdom cries out ...”

We emit cries and are cried to, and there are key cries. Wisdom is worked out in the heat and the intensity of life, and wisdom is the discernment of cries. Even in politics, governments try to respond to multiple cries. Wise living is a test of wisdom, of how we discern our own responsibilities and priorities in relation to the cries that come to us from many quarters.

He asked: what is the wise way to live our faith in this world? And he identified the cries that set up the dynamic of Christian living:

1, “The Lord is God”, to which the response is : “Allelulia, praise the Lord” – in which ia or “I am” speaks of God.

2, “Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again.” The response: is: “Come Lord Jesus.”

3, Receive the Holy Spirit. The response is: “Come, Holy Spirit.” All we have to do is ask and it shall be given.

He then spoke of four further cries:

4, “Beloved let us love one another.” Response: “Let everyone who is thirsty come.”

5, The cry of the world. The response is “Your kingdom come.”

6, “Hear instruction and be wise.” Response: “But where shall wisdom be found?”

7, The call to each of us by name, to which the response is: “Here I am.”

Turning to the ending of Saint John’s Gospel, he said that in response to “Follow me” in the drama of living, we only know your own story in that following of the living Jesus through the rest of our life, in the drama of loving.

These are Intensities that are also expressed in poetry. Professor Ellen Dais of Duke University points out that Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs are poetry. So too is most of the Book of Job.

He spoke too of his work with the poet Micheal O Siadhail and how it has had an impact on how he writes theology, and introduced us to the Biblical prayer, “Hallowed be thy name,” and the rabbinical concept, expressed in the Talmud of Kiddush hashem, the concept of martyrdom as hallowing the name of God.

He asked us how we can live with joy after the Holocaust, for if we do not live a vibrant life Hitler wins.

Speaking out of his experiences of meeting survivors of genocide in Rwanda, he hoped that evil does not have the last word, yet recognised the reality of genocide, and spoke of the need to hold together the Cross and the Resurrection.

As he spoke of Patrick Kavanagh as “the poet is a theologian,” and how he speaks openly in his Self-Portrait (1962) that “the poet is a theologian,” I was reminded how John Jordan sp0eaks of Kavanagh as “an instinctive theologian.”

But he regretted how s often the Old Testament is ignored in liturgy and in preaching. In Saint Bene’t’s, Cambridge, the tradition is on e of preaching on all three readings. And he reminded us of how as Anglicans so many of us have been shaped spiritually and theologically by the canticles in Saint Luke’s Gospel: < i>Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), Benedictus (Luke 1:68-79) and Nunc Dimittis (Luke 2:29-32).

Wisdom from the past ... Saint Kieran’s College, Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Later, Professor Micheal O Siadhail, the poet and author who was speaking on ‘Talking in tongues,’ talked of how he and David Ford had been friends for over 46 years, and how each had been the other’s first reader.

He spoke of the knot-tiers who knot together the strands of the story, including those who are living, such as Jean Vanier and Nelson Mandela, and figures from the past, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

He told the story of how Karl Barth had once preached a university sermon. Afterwards, an astronomer approached him and said he knew little about theology but said all religion could be summarised in the words: “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

Barth, with typical humour, replied that he was only a theologian and knew nothing about astronomy, but thought it could be summarised ih the words: “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.”

A glimpse into the past ... Rothe House in Parliament Street, Kilkenny, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

During a break in the conference this afternoon, I took a stroll through the streets Kilkenny, dropping into the bookshops and into Rothe House, the Tudor merchant house that serves as the offices, museum and library of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society.

Kilkenny is so rich in architectural heritage that is difficult to pick and choose which buildings to visit in such a short time.

On my way to Rothe House, I stopped briefly at the Langton House, which had been home to a few generations of the Comerford family in the 18th and 19th centuries. Over the last few decades it has changed hands as a restaurant, and in recent years it has been Colosseum, an Italian restaurant, but it was difficult to know this afternoon whether it is still open.

From Rothe House, I walked back along High Street again, stopping here and there to photograph buildings, and then made my way up Patrick Street and turned onto Ormonde Road to photograph Saint Kieran’s College, one of the finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture in Kilkenny.

The Parade, Kilkenny ... repaved in recent month (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

The Parade has been pleasantly repaved in the last two years or so, and I stopped briefly to look in at Kilkenny Castle, which I have mentioned in my current columns in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel and Ossory).

Back in Rose Inn Street, in a small antique shop opposite Shee’s Almshouse, I bought a home communion set that one of my colleagues had spotted in the shop window. We then went for a walk along the banks of the River Nore, beneath the castle ramparts, as far as the junction of the river and the old canal.

On the other bank of the River Nore, the River Court Hotel, where I am staying, spread out beside us, and then beside the hotel, the former premises of Kilkenny, just where the river cascades over a weir on its way down to Inistioge and New Ross.

Kilkenny College traces its history back to a college of vicars’ choral in Saint Canice’s Cathedral that existed from the 13th century. In 1538, Piers Butler, Earl of Ormonde, and his wife, Margaret, founded a school to the west of the Cathedral, where the library now stands. So, when James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde, founded Kilkenny College in John Street ca1666, he was following the Butler tradition of promoting education in the city. The school motto, Comme je trouve, comes from the Ormonde Butler coat-of-arms.

Kilkenny College soon became a famous school, and during the reign of James II in the 1680s the college had a short-lived status as a university. In the 1780s, a new college was built on the same site overlooking the River Nore.

The long list of famous past pupils includes Jonathan Swift, the author and satirist, who was Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and Bishop George Berkeley, the philosopher and Bishop of Cloyne, who gave his name to the university city of Berkeley in California. Others include William Congreve and George Farqhuar, both Restoration playwrights, John Banim, Thomas Prior, founder of the Royal Dublin Society, and David Beatty, first Sea Lord at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

At the end of the 19th century, the College was reduced to one pupil, and an amalgamation with the nearby Pococke School was its saving. In 1973, Kilkenny College and the Collegiate School, Celbridge, were amalgamated, and Kilkenny College became co-educational. In 1985, the college moved to a green-field site on Castlecomer Road.

The Georgian school building, with its elegant facade, now houses the offices of Kilkenny County Council.

Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, before the Conference Eucharist this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

From my room looking out onto the River Nore and across to Kilkenny Castle, I walked up to Saint Canice’s Cathedral this evening for our Eucharist. After a reception in the Old Palace, we returned to the River Court Hotel for dinner. Tomorrow, David Ford talks about “John in the Spirit” before we leave Kilkenny and return to our parishes and our work and commitments.

Dean honours cathedral outreach group’s work with the homeless

2012-02-07T13:30:00.000Z

The current [February] edition of the Church Review (Diocese of Dublin and Glendalough) publishes the following photograph and half-page news report on page 21:

Cathedral clergy and some of the members of the Christ Church Cathedral outreach group working with the Mendicity Institution, photographed at Thomas Abbott’s monument at the West Door (left to right): Marie Hammond, Máire Dewar, Canon Patrick Comerford (preacher), Roger Sterling, Doug Hammond, Larry O’Raw, Philomena O’Raw, Charles Richards (of the Mendicity Institution), Barbara Comerford, and the Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, the Very Revd Dermot Dunne.

Dean honours cathedral outreach group’s
work with the homeless

THE work of an outreach group from Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and its engagement with the Mendicity Institution and inner-city poverty was praised recently special events in the cathedral.

The outreach group, which is co-ordinated a member of the cathedral congregation, Barbara Comerford, works regularly on Sundays with the Mendicity Institution, one of Dublin’s oldest charities.

The Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, the Very Revd Dermot Dunne, who entertained the outreach group to lunch, praised their work as part of the mission and ministry of the cathedral. He pointed out that one of the founders of the institution, Thomas Abbott, is commemorated in a monument at the West Door of the Cathedral.

The dean is an ex-officio patron of the charity, along with the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, and the Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

Preaching at the Cathedral Eucharist earlier in the day, Canon Patrick Comerford said: “Today, the ‘Mendo’ works from Island Street, providing meals for about 70 people each day. Over the years, the people it helps have changed, but the basic object remains the same: to make it unnecessary for men, women and children to beg in the streets of this city, no matter what their religion may be, no matter what their nationality is.”

He said the members of this small group “are working not for themselves, but on behalf of this whole cathedral community, to serve Christ in all they find on those Sunday afternoons.”

Getting from Cambridge to Kilkenny

2012-02-07T00:19:00.004Z

The snow covered fields and trees and East Anglia at sunrise this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

It took some time to get from Cambridge to Kilkenny on Monday morning – a taxi from Sidney Sussex College through the melting sludge to Cambridge railway station; a train from Cambridge through snow covered fields in East Anglia to Stansted Airport; a delayed flight from Stansted to Dublin; a lift from Dublin Airport to Kingsbridge (aka Heuston) Station; a train from Dublin to Kilkenny; and a walk from Kilkenny station to the Kilkenny River Court Hotel.

It was a late night in Sidney Sussex last night [Sunday]. After [reaching in the college chapel at Choral Evensong there was formal dinner in the hall, followed by the usual post-dinner, but late night conversations with dons and guests in the Combination Room in Cloister Court.

I was woken shortly after 4 this [Monday] morning by a blackbird singing in the dark. A few hours later – thankfully – I was in taxi, arranged by my host, the Revd Dr Peter Waddell, and the college porters in the early morning. It was a drive around the city, into Jesus Lane and past Parker’s Piece, through the melting and freezing snow, to the station.

Snow at Cambridge station this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Some early morning trains, including the train to Ely, were cancelled. But my train journey through the flat open countryside was blissful – even though I do not normally appreciate snow.

The fields, the villages and the woods of East Anglia were covered in a blanket of snow this morning. Here there was a hare, hopping though once green fields. There, a brace of pheasants picking through to the feed below the snow. And then a dramatic sunrise, as a red globe intruded, peeking through the indistinct horizon between a white landscape and a white, cloud-filled sky.

The flight was delayed because of the delays experienced by the incoming flight. But no-one explained why that in turn had been delayed.

Thankfully, I got to Kilkenny in time to hear the first paper at the Dublin and Glendalough Clergy Conference, by a distinguished speaker who had also made his way from Cambridge to Kilkenny. Professor David Ford, who was born in Dublin, is the speaker at the conference, along with the poet Micheal O Siadhail.David Ford, who is talking to us about ‘The Future of Christian Theology’ – the title of his most recent book – has been the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge since 1991.

David Ford went to school in the High School in Dublin. As an undergraduate, he studied classics at Trinity College Dublin. From there, he went on to Saint John’s College, Cambridge, where he completed a degree in theology. He later studied at Yale and Tubingen, and completed his doctoral theses in Karl Barth at Cambridge.

After lecturing at the University of Birmingham, he moved to Cambridge in 1991 as successor to Bishop Stephen Sykes as the Regius Professor of Divinity – the first person to hold this chair who was not in ordained Anglican ministry.

He helped found and chairs the Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies at Cambridge, and he is a member of Saint John’s College and a fellow of Selwyn College. As Regius Professor, he is also attached to Trinity College, Cambridge. His books include The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, now in its third edition; Theology: A Very Short Introduction (1999); and The Future of Christian Theology, published last year,

In 1996, David Ford, his father-in-law Daniel Hardy, and the Jewish theologian Peter Ochs founded the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, and he has been an active promoter of scriptural reasoning ever since. In 2002, he became the founding director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme, and he is the founding director of the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme. He is also a lay canon of Ely Cathedral. His wife, the Revd Deborah Ford, is an assistant chaplain at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

Now he is working on a major new project – a theological interpretation of Saint John’s Gospel of John. But his research interests are focussed, firstly, on the direction of hermeneutics, the interpretation of scripture and substantive issues in contemporary Christian thought and practice; and, secondly, in the direction of inter-faith theology and relations, particularly the issues of inter-faith scriptural interpretation and the relation of faiths to secular cultures, traditions and forces.

His other research interests include the shaping of universities and of the field of theology and religious studies within them; political theology; theology and poetry; ecumenical theology; and Christian theologians and theologies.

Later this afternoon, we moved to Saint John’s Church in John Street, Kilkenny, for Evening Prayer. Over dinner, it was good to hear more about David Ford’s work and to renew friendships with friends and colleagues. This promises to be an interesting conference.

Meanwhile, I have a room looking out across the River Nore to Kilkenny Castle. Midnight has passed, and this city and its castle are sparkling and glowing in the dark – quite a contrast to Cambridge in the snow.

Kilkenny Castle aglow in the dark after midnight tonight (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Downton Abbey is fine in England, but what about Ireland?

2012-02-06T12:30:00.000Z

‘Downton Abbey’ has become the most successful British costume drama since ‘Brideshead Revisited’

Patrick Comerford

In the dark, cold evenings immediately after Christmas and the New Year, I spent time in front of the television watching the box set of Downton Abbey. The series is the creation of Julian Fellowes and has attracted many awards and nominations. With over 10 million viewers for each episode, it is the most successful British costume drama since Brideshead Revisited in 1981 and the Guinness Book of Records describes it as the “most critically acclaimed television show.”

Downton Abbey is set in the early 20th century on a fictional North Yorkshire estate that is home to the Earl and Countess of Grantham. Highclere Castle in Hampshire provides the location for Downton Abbey, with other filming in the Ealing Studios and the village of Bampton in Oxfordshire.

The story follows the lives of the Crawley family and their servants. The first series, at the end of 2010, begins with news of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The second series last autumn runs from the Battle of the Somme (1916) to the Spanish ’flu pandemic (1919). The 2011 Christmas Special is set in December 1919 and January 1920. ITV has commissioned a third series for next September.

Following the storyline

‘Downton Abbey’ shows that snobbery exists at every level

The first series tells of the need for a male heir to the Grantham estate, and Lady Mary Crawley’s troubled love life as she searches for a suitable husband. The estate is entailed, so that Downton Abbey is inherited with the title of Earl of Grantham. The estate was saved from near-ruin when the present earl married a rich American heiress.

Lord Grantham, who has three daughters but no son, arranges for his eldest daughter, Lady Mary, to marry her cousin to keep both the title and the estate in the immediate family. But the heir dies on the Titanic, and a third cousin once removed, a young solicitor from Manchester, stands to inherit both the title and the estate, to the exclusion of the three daughters.

The second series deals with social divisions (many of them now petty), sexuality, Easter 1916, the Russian revolution, redemption and death. The heir, Matthew Crawley, and two servants fight in World War I, while Lady Sybil Crawley defies her father and joins the Voluntary Aid Department. In the Christmas Day special, the relationship between Matthew Crawley and Lady Mary takes a twist when she jilts her fiancé and accepts his proposal of marriage.

Although the first series is beautifully made and artfully acted, critics think the second series races through plot lines that are difficult to believe. The Guardian describes it as “an institution that began life as an upstairs-downstairs costume drama and ended as pure comedy.”

A house party in 1901 at Oak Park, the Co Carlow home of the Breun family. House parties were a significant feature of ‘Big House’ life (National Photographic Archive, Dublin)

Downton Abbey is a reminder of a by-gone era and that the snobberies of the past remain with us. It is a comment too on life today: the disdain for a newspaper proprietor brings to mind the disdain for the Murdoch Empire; the introduction of the telephone parallels the introduction of broadband to many homes. Nor is it accidental that Brideshead Revisited was a success at the height of the Thatcher government, while Downton Abbey is a success when the Tories are in office once again.

Some of the characters are Irish, including Branson the chauffeur and the mother of Bates the valet, while many of the actors are Irish too or with Irish parents. Allen Leech (Branson) is from Killiney, Co Dublin; Robert Bathurst (Sir Anthony Strallan), went to school in Dublin and Kells, Co Meath; and Maria Doyle Kennedy (Vera Bates) is from Dublin. Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary), Brendan Coyle (Bates), Siobhan Finneran (Sarah O’Brien, the lady’s maid) and Joseph Molesley (Matthew Crawley’s butler) have Irish parents, and Coyle also studied acting in Dublin

Women taking part in an otter hunt at Curraghmore, the Co Waterford home of the Beresford family, in 1901 (National Photographic Archive, Dublin)

Indeed, Downton Abbey could have been set in Ireland, as I was reminded by a recent exhibition at the National Photographic Archive in Dublin. “Power and Privilege: Photographs of the Big House in Ireland, 1858-1922” captured life in the “Big House” in Ireland at the same time as Downton Abbey. It was a period of radical change and the exhibition captured people fast losing their position in Irish society.

Saved by the ‘belle’

Imogene Wolseley has charted the story of American heiresses marrying Irish and English aristocrats, including the great-grandparents of her husband Sir Charles Wolseley (Photograph: Daily Mail)

Lord Grantham’s marriage to the American heiress Cora is typical of the stories of many landed aristocrats at the time, in both Ireland and England, when marrying American heiresses helped many to save their indebted and entailed estates.

The most famous marriages at the time involved the three daughters of Leonard Jerome, a New York stockbroker – one married a leading English aristocrat, and two married Irish heirs.

In 1874, Jennie Jerome, with a dowry of $200,000, married Lord Randolph Churchill, younger son of the Duke of Marlborough, and was the mother of Sir Winston Churchill.

Castle Leslie, home of Sir John Leslie who married Leonie Jerome, one of the three Jerome sisters (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In 1881, Clara Jerome married the charming Moreton Frewen, who gambled away his wealth in America, where he was known as “Mortal Ruin.” He returned to Ireland to inherit the Innishannon Estate in Co Cork, and was elected a Home Rule MP, although he was an uncle of Sir Edward Carson and he later signed the Ulster Covenant. His daughter, the sculptor and writer Clare Frewen Sheridan, lived for some decades in Comerford House beside the Spanish Arch in Galway.

In 1884, the youngest sister, Leonie Jerome, married Sir John Leslie of Castle Leslie in Co Monaghan. The Leslies, with over 70,000 acres, were one of the largest landowning families in Ireland.

Other American heiresses also married into the Churchill family. In 1888, Lord Randolph Churchill’s brother, the divorced George Churchill, 8th Duke of Marlborough, married Lillian Price, a New York heiress with a fortune of $7 million. In 1895, his son, Charles Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, married yet another heiress, Consuelo Vanderbilt, godmother to Moreton Frewen’s daughter, Clare Frewen Sheridan. The matchmaker was Minnie Paget – another American heiress, Mary Livingstone of Georgia, who was the third wife of Henry Paget, 4th Marquess of Angelsey.

Comerford House beside the Spanish Arch in Galway was home for many years to Clare Frewen Sheridan (1885-1970), cousin of Sir Winston Churchill and both daughter and goddaughter of two American heiresses (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Pagets were near neighbours of Sir Charles Wolseley of Wolseley Hall, a Roman Catholic baronet. In 1882, Esther Grehan wrote from London to her husband in Dublin, Stephen Grehan, a solicitor, describing how Sir Charles came to London to look for an heiress and was introduced to two Irish-American Murphy sisters from San Francisco, who were “vulgar but pretty.” He fell in love, but had a reputation as a fortune hunter, and was distraught when he was rejected. But in 1883 he married the elder sister, Anita Theresa Murphy.

Her inheritance at first was put at $2 million, but Wolseley never got his hands on it. By the time the marriage contract was signed, her father, Daniel T. Murphy, had died and her sisters contested his will and endowment. When she received the money, it was for her personally and not for her husband.

Imogene Wolseley, wife of the present Sir Charles Wolseley, says the marriage was relatively happy to begin with. But Anita soon tired of life at Wolseley Hall and began travelling abroad alone. She sent Charles a regular allowance, but this dropped steadily. By 1919, he had to sell almost all the contents of Wolseley Hall and several hundred acres of his estate. He moved to Surrey a broken man, Wolseley Hall fell into disrepair and it was finally levelled in 1995.

In 1885, another New York heiress, the divorced Ann Reid, married the widowed Sir Arthur Percy Fitzgerald Aylmer of Donadea Castle, Co Kildare. He was her second husband, she was his second wife, and she brought a fortune of $250,000 with her, but they were divorced again a year later. The marriage failed to save a family estate that once totalled 16,000 acres. When Miss Caroline Aylmer died in 1935, Donadea passed to the Irish state. The castle has been left unoccupied, and its roof was stripped off in the 1950s.

Kilkenny Castle was sold to the people of Kilkenny in 1967 for a nominal £50 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Lord James Butler married Ellen Stager of Chicago in 1887, but her $1 million fortune was not enough to save Kilkenny Castle for his family either. When he became the fourth Marquis of Ormonde in 1919, the estate’s financial burdens included £166,000 in death duties. The castle contents were sold off and it was forlorn for decades before being sold by his son to the people of Kilkenny in 1967 for a nominal £50.

Leinster House ... once the Dublin townhouse of the Dukes of Leinster (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Some “Big Houses” still belong to the original families, including Lismore Castle, Currgahmore and Castle Leslie, a few were burned, others fell into ruin or were sold. But the Butlers are long gone from Kilkenny Castle; the FitzGeralds from Carton House and Kilkea Castle, Co Kildare, Leinster House in Dublin and Johnstown Castle, Co Wexford; the Conollys from Castletown House; the Wingfields from Powerscourt; the Maxwell-Barrys from Newtownbarry and Farnham; the Prestons from Gormanston; the Taylours from Headfort House, Virginia Lodge and Ardgillan Castle; and the Wolseleys from Mount Wolseley.

Many “Big Houses” are now hotels, golf courses, schools, heritage sites or wedding venues. Ten years ago, Castle Leslie was the venue for the wedding of Paul McCartney – to an American heiress.

Dealing with snobbery

The domed cast-iron glasshouse at Ardgillan Castle, near Skerries, once home to the Taylour family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When the Irish Wolseley title – but not Mount Wolseley – passed to a Merseyside cobbler in the 1950s, the popular press hailed a change in society that challenged generations of presumptions and snobberies. A recent television programme on RTÉ claimed to have discovered the 11th Earl of Mayo – although there was never any doubt about who Charles Burke is.

In previous decades, landowning aristocrats were prominent members of the general synod and diocesan synods. Some must have wondered whether they were elected merely because of their social rank; the peers, for their part, may have wondered whether anyone valued them for their personal contributions and skills rather than their titles.

Gormanston Castle, Co Meath, once home to the Preston family, is now a boarding school (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In 1848, Cecil Frances Alexander wrote:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

In the 1980s, many schools banned this verse of All Things Bright and Beautiful. But, rather than imputing God’s sanction for the Victorian social hierarchy, Mrs Alexander wanted to convey the all-embracing inclusiveness of God’s love.

Farnham House, Co Cavan, the last part of the Maxwell-Barry family’s large estates, is now a luxury hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Downton Abbey shows that snobbery exists at every level, and that people are too easily accepted or too easily dismissed because of their social status. It works both ways.

Because Ireland is a democratic republic does not mean we have freed ourselves from social snobberies and discrimination. Some of the present discussions about fee-paying schools reveal inherent snobberies, many expressed as inverted snobbery. We can disagree with social structures, we can see them as vain and self-serving, we can challenge them and seek to change them. But we cannot change where and when we were born.

Powerscourt House, once the Dublin townhouse of the Wingfields of Powerscourt, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute and a canon Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Castletown House, near Celbridge, Co Kildare, the former home of the Conolly family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)