DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47496#0121
METAL- WORK.
IOI
Maine ... St. Grellan presides over their battles,” i.e. the crosier
of St. Grellan is borne in the standard of the kings of Hy Many.
Dr. Lynch, writing about the year 1660, mentions that this
pastoral staff was held in veneration in his day, and that the
image was stamped upon the standard of the O'Kellys. The
stasf itself remained with the family of the hereditary keepers,
O’Crongaile (anglic'e, Cronelly), till 1836, near Ahascra, in the
east of the county of Galway, but it has disappeared.
The next example of Irish ornamental metal-work, the date of
which may be surmised srom the inscription which it bears, is the
crosier of Kells, in the County Meath. Before describing this
relic, we may say a few words on the peculiarities of the Irish
crosier in general. This stasf was not designed to represent the
shepherd’s crook, only to be carried as an emblem of episcopal
functions, but it was the covering made to protect the old oak
stasf or walking-stick of the founder of the church in which it
had been preserved. Thus the form differs- srom that of the
ordinary mediaeval crosier, the top of which, imitating the
shepherd’s crook, takes the curve of an S reversed, a double
curve, not the mere crook-handle of the Irish staff. No example
of a crosier in the form adopted in the East—not crooked, but
shaped like a letter T—has been found in Ireland; and the
probability is that the “crook-like” staff of the first Christian
missionary is aliuded to in an ancient prophecy preserved by the
Scholiast on Fiacc’s Hymn (see Todd’s “Life of St. Patrick”), and
the oldest representations of crosiers preserve the same form—
representations, such as may be seen on the box or cumdach of
the Stowe Missal, on the tympanum of the priest’s house at
Glendalough, and on the ancient doorway of Maghera. The
foreign type, as we have it in the crosiers of Cashel and
Glendalough,* was probably introduced in the time of St. Malachy
the friend of Bernard of Clairvaux.t
Although no metal crosier, except perhaps that of St. Berach,
* Now in Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.
+ See Petrie, “ Essay on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland.”
IOI
Maine ... St. Grellan presides over their battles,” i.e. the crosier
of St. Grellan is borne in the standard of the kings of Hy Many.
Dr. Lynch, writing about the year 1660, mentions that this
pastoral staff was held in veneration in his day, and that the
image was stamped upon the standard of the O'Kellys. The
stasf itself remained with the family of the hereditary keepers,
O’Crongaile (anglic'e, Cronelly), till 1836, near Ahascra, in the
east of the county of Galway, but it has disappeared.
The next example of Irish ornamental metal-work, the date of
which may be surmised srom the inscription which it bears, is the
crosier of Kells, in the County Meath. Before describing this
relic, we may say a few words on the peculiarities of the Irish
crosier in general. This stasf was not designed to represent the
shepherd’s crook, only to be carried as an emblem of episcopal
functions, but it was the covering made to protect the old oak
stasf or walking-stick of the founder of the church in which it
had been preserved. Thus the form differs- srom that of the
ordinary mediaeval crosier, the top of which, imitating the
shepherd’s crook, takes the curve of an S reversed, a double
curve, not the mere crook-handle of the Irish staff. No example
of a crosier in the form adopted in the East—not crooked, but
shaped like a letter T—has been found in Ireland; and the
probability is that the “crook-like” staff of the first Christian
missionary is aliuded to in an ancient prophecy preserved by the
Scholiast on Fiacc’s Hymn (see Todd’s “Life of St. Patrick”), and
the oldest representations of crosiers preserve the same form—
representations, such as may be seen on the box or cumdach of
the Stowe Missal, on the tympanum of the priest’s house at
Glendalough, and on the ancient doorway of Maghera. The
foreign type, as we have it in the crosiers of Cashel and
Glendalough,* was probably introduced in the time of St. Malachy
the friend of Bernard of Clairvaux.t
Although no metal crosier, except perhaps that of St. Berach,
* Now in Museum of the Royal Irish Academy.
+ See Petrie, “ Essay on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland.”