Burrishoole Monastery

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South-east view of the monastery with the choir on the right and the south transept on the left

The monastery Burrishoole ( Irish Buiríos Umhaill ) was founded around 1469 as the house of the Dominicans in the Diocese of Tuam and approved subsequently by a papal bull in 1486 . The monastery was closed during the Reformation , but was used for some time afterwards.

Geographical location

View of the hill with the monastery from the south-east with the Burrishoole Channel and the mountain An Bhinn Ghorm in the background

The monastery is located near Newport in County Mayo on a small hill on the Burrishoole Channel , a small inlet that diverts two lakes, Lough Feeagh and Furnace Lough , into the Atlantic on the west coast of Ireland. The arm of the sea forms a very protected natural harbor around the hill, which is still in use today. At the time of the monastery, fishing was an important economic resource. All around there are wide views of the Mayos mountains . The Croagh Patrick can be seen in the south and the mountains of the Nephin-Beg massif in the north.

Name of the monastery

The area around the monastery was called Umall in Old Irish and was a small Irish kingdom. During the Anglo-Norman invasion, after the conquest of Connacht in 1235, the territory fell to Henry Butler, who built a castle and a town there. Such fiefs , for which an annual rent had to be paid to the crown, were called burgage in English in the 13th century . In the Central Irish language was taken from buiríos , which was later anglicized to the prefix burris . The name Burrishoole arose from burris and the old Irish name Umall , which was Anglicized to Oules in the time of the Tudors .

history

It was founded in 1469 by Richard de Burgo von Turlough, but without papal approval, which meant that both the founder and the first Dominicans to enter the country were at risk of excommunication . The founder himself took on the habit of the order and died in 1473 in the monastery. It was not until 1486 that a papal bull was issued which subsequently approved the establishment and instructed the Archbishop of Tuam to forgive the monks for this canonical offense.

During the Desmond Rebellions , the area around the monastery was devastated by Sir Nicholas Maltby in the 1580s. The story goes from this time that Honor Burke, a young nun from a Dominican convent nearby, hid in the convent for a week without food while on the run. She was canonized in 1653.

As part of the Reformation, the monastery was initially given to Nicholas Weston. In 1606 the monastery passed to John King in Dublin. Regardless of this, the monks remained in the monastery. The monks even managed to return after being expelled. For example, a letter from Richard Butler, 1st Earl of Arran , in his capacity as Lord Deputy of Ireland , in which he asked Lord Ormonde in August 1683 what he had done to bring the monks and nuns of Burrishoole to us has survived to evict. However, the monastery was already in ruins after the last return, and the Dominicans could only stay there for a few more years.

architecture

View from the south transept through the two arcades into the nave

The church belonging to the monastery consists of a choir, a tower, a nave and a south transept , which is separated from the nave by two arcades . The monastery garden is attached to the northern side , the surrounding residential buildings have almost completely collapsed. The tower, which differs significantly from the architecture of the Dominicans in Ireland, is unusual; it is kept very low and follows the example of the Cistercians .

literature

  • Benedict O'Sullivan: Medieval Irish Dominican Studies . Written between 1948 and 1953, edited by Hugh Fenning, Four Courts Press, Dublin 2009, ISBN 978-1-84682-151-6 .
  • Harold G. Leask: Irish Churches and Monastic Buildings, Volume Three . Dundalgan Press, Dundalk 1960.
  • Aubrey Gwynn and R. Neville Hadcock: Medieval Religious Houses Ireland. Longman, London 1970, ISBN 0-582-11229-X .
  • Thomas S. Flynn: The Irish Dominicans 1536-1641 . Four Courts Press, Dublin 1993, ISBN 1-85182-122-8 .
  • Joseph F. Quinn: History of Mayo, Volume 5 . Brendan Quinn, Ballina 2002, ISBN 0-9519280-5-8 .

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c cf. Flynn, p. 79.
  2. ↑ For the spelling and classification as a small kingdom cf. FJ Byrne: The viking age . From: Prehistoric and Early Ireland , edited by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, ISBN 0-19-821737-4 , p. 610.
  3. ↑ See p. 36, entry buiríos in Deirdre Flanagan et al .: Irish Place Names . Gill & Macmillan, Dublin 1994, ISBN 0-7171-2066-X .
  4. ↑ See O'Sullivan, p. 79.
  5. ↑ a b See Gwynn and Hadcock, p. 222.
  6. ↑ See Quinn, pp. 177-178.
  7. ↑ See Leask, p. 54.

Web links

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

Coordinates: 53 ° 53 ′ 55.8 "  N , 9 ° 34 ′ 20.4"  W.