Franciscan Monastery of Nenagh

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South-east view of the monastery with the three lancet windows in the east gable

The Franciscan monastery Nenagh ( Irish Mainistir an Aonaigh , English Nenagh Friary ) was founded around 1250 as a house of the Franciscans in Nenagh in Ireland . Bishop Domnall Uí Chennétig († 1252) of the diocese of Killaloe is believed to be the founder . The monastery was abolished around 1550 and fell to Robert Collum in 1587. In 1632 observants settled in the monastery, who were able to hold out until 1766 with interruptions.

history

The exact founding circumstances are unclear. In a genealogical work, Richard Francis Cronnelly quotes an unidentified entry "from the annals", dated to the year 1254, which names "O'Kennedy, Lord of Ormond" as the founder. The Uí Chennétigs (Anglicized: O'Kennedys) had been the rulers of Urmuma (Anglicized: Ormond), a small region ( trícha cét ) in the north of County Tipperary , which originally reached as far as Nenagh and through the Uí Chennétigs , since 1159 at the latest South was expanding. After the English invasion , Theobald Butler succeeded in conquering the region around 1200. He founded the town of Nenagh and a nearby hospital of the Order of the Cross . His son of the same name built a castle around 1217. All of this would rather suggest the Butler family as founders of the Franciscan monastery. It was by no means the case that the Uí Chennétigs had been forced out of the country or no longer owned any land. Instead, dealings with one another could be friendly and respectful as long as there were no open armed conflicts. And here the Uí Chennétigs apparently took the opportunity to set a visible sign by establishing a Franciscan house about 300 m away from the Butler's castle on the land they owned.

The monastery was first mentioned in documents in 1291, when Nicholas IV issued a letter of indulgence . However, the series of eleven lancet windows in the north wall of the choir and the three lancet windows in the east gable confirm that the building was built in the middle of the 13th century.

One of the special privileges of the Franciscans in Ireland was that they were given their own religious province as early as 1230 and did not have to submit to a province with a head office in England like the Dominicans . The Irish province, as elsewhere, was divided into custodies , each headed by a custos who had full authority over all houses under his control. He could appoint and recall the Guardians who ran the individual houses. He was expected to visit each of the houses under his control at least once a year. Nenagh is mentioned in the oldest surviving list of Irish custodians and their monasteries, which is dated from around 1263 to 1270.

Since the invasion of 1169 there have been monasteries in Ireland that were founded by the invaders and those that went back to the founding of the original Irish ruling families. While this led to considerable tensions among the Cistercians between the monasteries with different loyalties, this did not happen at the beginning with the Franciscans and Dominicans in Ireland, which was certainly due to the ideals of the mendicant movement and the fate of the first two Franciscan Provincials . This was significant for Nenagh, as it was Irish when it was founded, but was directly under the Butler’s realm. The invasion of Edward Bruce , who came from Scotland in May 1315 and who sought to unite the Scots and the Irish against England, led to increasing polarization, which did not leave the Mendicant Orders untouched when some Irish Franciscans supported the invaders and the English Franciscan monastery in Dundalk was pillaged by the Scottish troops. Although came Edward Bruce in October 1318 the Battle of Faughart order, but the added made distrust still remained, u. a. because the Dominican John Pembridge saw in the subsequent famine a just punishment for the crimes committed during the invasion. It came to a through John XXII. arranged investigation and visitation, as a result of which the English side prevailed. The commission recommended that Nenagh should be one of those monasteries where all Irish brothers had to move to another monastery. Obviously there was considerable opposition, so that in the course of the following month the Commission revised its proposal. In the end, a new Irish influenced custody Nenagh was created, to which the subordinate houses in Athlone , Ennis , Claregalway , Armagh , Killeigh , Galway and later also Cavan belonged. In 1344 a provincial synod was held in Nenagh.

Since the middle of the 14th century, the rulership in Nenagh had changed, as the Uí Chennétigs Urmuma again fully controlled. Like some other houses, Nenagh was not directly affected by the Reformation around 1540 because the English government did not advance that far. This only succeeded in the Elizabethan period after 1548, when the brothers were forcibly evicted and the monastery fell into ruin. In 1587 the monastery fell to Robert Collum, who had to pay an annual rent for it. In 1632 observant Franciscans settled in the monastery. According to information from the Irish Franciscans, they were expelled a little later during the reconquest of Cromwell , but they were able to return a little later and last until 1766. After that, only a few Franciscans were active in the region. The last of them was Patrick Harty, who died in 1817.

architecture

The north wall of the choir is dominated by a series of lancet windows

A single long room with east-west orientation and the external dimensions 10 m × 45.3 m, with the walls being 1.18 m thick, has been preserved. These dimensions are comparable to Claregalway and Kilconnell . This is based on the needs of a church that is geared towards sermons in which the preacher should be heard and seen by as many people as possible. Similar to those by Ardfert , Buttevant or Castledermot, the choir area is dominated by a long series of lancet windows in the north wall. This design was evidently adopted by monasteries of the Augustinian canons such as Athassel . Leask counts a total of 11 windows in the north wall of the choir, Farelly mentions 15 and adds that there were probably 16 originally. The lancet windows in the east gable and the single lancet window in the south wall may have been counted here. In the 15th century the archway in the west gable was changed; the bell gable on the same gable seems to come from the same time period. The no longer preserved sacristy was on the south wall of the choir and had the dimensions 10.3 m × 3.75 m (the latter in east-west direction). The no longer preserved monastery garden with the surrounding residential and farm buildings was probably on the south side of the monastery church.

literature

  • Dermot F. Gleeson: The Annals of Nenagh . In: Analecta Hibernica . No. 12 , 1943, pp. 155, 157-164 .
  • Aubrey Gwynn , R. Neville Hadcock: Medieval Religious Houses Ireland . Longman, London 1970, ISBN 0-582-11229-X , pp. 256-257 .
  • Jean Farrelly, Caimin O'Brien: Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary: Vol. I - North Tipperary . Stationery Office, Dublin 2002, ISBN 0-7557-1264-1 , pp. 261-262 .
  • Edel Bhreathnach, Joseph MacMahon, John McCafferty (Eds.): The Irish Franciscans 1534–1990 . Four Courts Press, Dublin 2009, ISBN 978-1-84682-210-0 .
  • Colmán Ó Clabaigh: The Friars in Ireland 1224-1540 . Four Courts Press, Dublin 2012, ISBN 978-1-84682-225-4 .

Web links

Commons : Nenagh Friary  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Gwynn, pp. 256-257.
  2. ↑ a b Nenagh (Co. Tipperary) / An tAonach. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 3, 2014 ; accessed on January 2, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.franciscans.ie
  3. ↑ Quote taken from Gleeson, p. 157, who could not find the original source. His reference is imprecise, apparently referring to the following work: Richard Francis Cronnelly: A History of the Dal-cais or Dalcassians, descendants of Eoghan More or Eugene the great . Goodwin, Son & Nethercott, Dublin 1865, pp. 324 .
  4. ↑ Paul MacCotter: Medieval Ireland . Territorial, Political and Economic Divisions. Four Courts Press, Dublin 2008, ISBN 978-1-84682-098-4 , pp. 211 .
  5. ↑ Lord Killanin, Michael V. Duignan: The Shell Guide to Ireland . 2nd Edition. Ebury Press, London 1967, pp. 386 .
  6. ^ AJ Otway-Ruthven: A History of Medieval Ireland . Barnes & Noble, 1993, ISBN 1-56619-216-1 , pp. 73-74 .
  7. ^ Gwynn, p. 214.
  8. ↑ James Ware named the Uí Chennétigs, but pointed out that others consider the Butlers to be the founders: Ord. Minorum. Fundatur regnante Henrico 3, à Kenedæis, vel (ut alii putant) a Pincernis. James Ware: De Hibernia . London 1654, p. 209 .
  9. ^ Dermot F. Gleeson, HG Leask: The Castle and Manor of Nenagh . In: The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Seventh Series . Vol. 6, No. 2 , 1936, pp. 249 .
  10. ↑ Gwynn, p. 257; EB Fitzmaurice, AG Little (Ed.): Materials for the history of the Franciscan province of Ireland, AD 1230-1450 . Manchester University Press, Manchester 1920, pp. 63 ( openlibrary.org ).
  11. ↑ Harold G. Leask: Irish Churches and Monastic Buildings II . Gothic Architecture to AD 1400. Dundalgan Press, Dundalk 1960, pp. 114 .
  12. ↑ Ó Clabaigh, pp. 25-26.
  13. ^ Gwynn, p. 238.
  14. ↑ Ó Clabaigh, p. 31.
  15. ↑ Ó Clabaigh, p. 35.
  16. ↑ Ó Clabaigh, pp. 37-39, 275; Gwynn, p. 238; Bernadette Williams (Ed.): The Annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn . Four Courts Press, Dublin 2007, ISBN 978-1-84682-034-2 , pp. 182 .
  17. ↑ a b Farrelly, p. 261.
  18. ^ Dermot F. Gleeson, HG Leask: The Castle and Manor of Nenagh . In: The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Seventh Series . Vol. 6, No. 2 , 1936, pp. 251-253 .
  19. ^ Colm Lennon: The dissolution to the foundation of St Anthony's College Louvain , p. 10, from Breathnach.
  20. ^ Gwynn, p. 257.
  21. ^ Michael O'Neill: Irish Franciscan friary architecture , p. 311, from Bhreathnach.
  22. ^ Colmán N. Ó Clabaigh: The Franciscans in Ireland, 1400–1534 . Four Courts Press, Dublin 2002, ISBN 1-85182-548-7 , pp. 142 .
  23. ^ Michael O'Neill: Irish Franciscan friary architecture , p. 309, from Bhreathnach.
  24. ↑ Leask, p. 114; Farrelly, p. 261. Eight completely preserved lancet windows can be seen on site in the north wall. Some window stumps follow at a distance (as of 2010).
  25. ↑ Farelly, pp. 261-262.
  26. ^ Michael O'Neill: Irish Franciscan friary architecture , p. 314, from Bhreathnach.

Coordinates: 52 ° 51 '46.6 "  N , 8 ° 11' 48.1"  W.