IRELAND, DUBLIN: IRISH WRITERS WALKING TOUR, PART II (ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL AND MARSH'S LIBRARY)

 July 13, 2024

After lunch we headed to St. Patrick's Park, where a church has stood for over 1300 years. Today the church on that spot is known as St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin (there are a bazillion St. Patrick's churches in Ireland), and it is not only the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland, but also the largest church building in Ireland. A small part of the present church on the site dates all the way back to its 8th century origins.

The park and cathedral are notable for a couple of reasons.  First, tradition has it that about 1500 years ago, St. Patrick baptized the first Irish Christians in a well located next to the cathedral. 

The legend is supported by this artifact: a thousand-year-old engraving of a Celtic cross on a stone that was found in 1901 six feet underground covering the remains of an ancient well. 

The second notable feature of the cathedral is that it contains the grave of Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels and many other works of satiric fiction and essays, who also happened to be the Dean of the cathedral from 1713 until his death in 1745. Buried next to him is his friend Esther Johnson (aka "Stella"). Some historians believe they were secretly married, but there is no concrete evidence for that. She did live in his home, though always with a female companion. Fourteen years Swift's junior, Stella died at age 46, 17 years before Swift died. 

Information at the site says, "On the night of her funeral, Swift was so overcome with grief that he could not bring himself to attend her funeral. He even moved out of his usual bedroom to avoid seeing the lights of her funeral through the Cathedral's windows."

When Swift died at age 78, he was buried next to Stella by his own request.

In 2017 a professor at the University of Dundee created this image of what the pair may have looked like using forensic anthropology and pathology, diagnostic imaging, and 3D facial reconstruction and printing. Swift's death mask and skull cast and Stella's skull cast were an important part of the forensics.

The image of Jonathan Swift above looks pretty comparable to the death mask of his actual face. Making death masks of prominent people was a common practice in the 1700s and 1800s.

Here is Swift's skull cast. Stella's is in Marsh's Library, next door to the cathedral.

Swift wrote his epitaph--but in Latin (below left). The translation is given (below right):

"Here is laid the body of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Divinity, Dean of this Cathedral Church, where Fierce indignation can no longer rend the heart. Go traveller, and imitate, if you can, this earnest and dedicated Champion of Liberty."  Poetic tributes by W. B. Yeats and Alexander Pope are also included.

A tribute to Stella also hangs on the cathedral wall. 

Yet another tribute to the great satirist, this marble bust was commissioned by George Faulkner, Swift's publisher and friend.

Plaques honoring two past presidents of Ireland are also on the cathedral walls. On the left below is Douglas Hyde, who was an academic, scholar of the Irish language (his plaque is in Irish), and the first president of Ireland from 1938-1945. Erskine Childers (below right) was the fourth president of Ireland from 1973-1974 and the only Irish president to have died in office. Both of these men were Protestants, which has been the exception rather than the rule for Irish presidents. Funeral services for both of them were held in this cathedral.

I love this bronze memorial to soldiers killed in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Note the angel's hands placed protectively over the Irish shamrock.

So far, you may think this is not a religious site, but there is plenty of church here too. At one time, Catholics were not allowed to attend Protestant church services, but that changed mid-20th century, and so perhaps this pew for the President of Ireland gets occasional use from Catholics as well as Protestants.

A carving of the British royal coat of arms still adorns the front of the pew box.

But the Celtic harp, the symbol of Ireland, is on display as well.

The choir is lined with what one source says are the regimental colors from various wars in memory of the men (and women) who died in service. The first flags were hung in the 1850s after the Napoleonic Wars. However, another source says these are the family coats of arms of the members of the Illustrious Order of the Knights of St. Patrick. Either way, there are lots of flags.

This is a gorgeous pulpit, ringed by what I think are the authors of the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Little angels with blossoms for hats form the mid-level.

There are 94 stained glass windows in the cathedral with the oldest being from the mid-1800s, which isn't all that old as far as cathedral windows go. The newest window in the cathedral was installed in 1937. Many of them were installed during what is known at the "Guinness Restoration" between 1860-65. More on that later.

The largest monument in the cathedral is the Boyle Monument. Erected in 1632 by an earl in memory of his wife, it shows four generations of her family.

Look at the repeated arches behind and above the altar. Such exquisite architecture.

Close-up of the altar cloth:

In general, Protestant/Episcopalian cathedrals are less ornamented than Catholic cathedrals, but St. Patrick's is an exception.

After the Jonathan Swift stuff, my favorite thing in the cathedral is definitely the floor. Its richly colored mosaic squares bordered in black stripes make it look like a 19th century patchwork quilt.

This makes the tweedy, all-weather carpet in my church at home look pretty dowdy.

The hand-stitched needlepoint kneeling pads are also quite charming.

If you visit the cathedral, don't forget to say thank you to Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, whose statue is just outside. In the early 19th century, the cathedral had fallen into such disrepair that it was thought to be more economical to tear it down and start from scratch rather than restore it. It was Sir Benjamin's charitable gift of what would be $9 million in today's funds that saved the cathedral building. The restoration work was completed between 1860 and 1865. Later, his sons added the tile floor, and the Guinness family continues its generous contributions to the cathedral to this day.

Adjacent to St. Patrick's Cathedral is Marsh's Library, which was also restored by Sir Benjamin Guinness. He died during the process, and the project was finished by one of his sons. 

Founded in 1707, it was the first public library in Ireland. It was built with money provided by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh, who served for a time as the provost of the Trinity College of Dublin (and had an obvious interest in books).

Its collection includes 25,000 books and 300 manuscripts primarily from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, although 80 books date before 1501. Ten thousand of the books are from Marsh's personal library.

BOOKS 

You really shouldn't go to Ireland without reading a bit of Jonathan Swift. Most people are familiar with the first section of Gulliver's Travels, where our eponymous hero encounters the tiny Lilliputians. But that is only the first of four shipwrecks that land Gulliver in strange countries. Swift wrote an entertaining tale, it is true, but he intended for his book to be a critical commentary of the government and social norms of his day. 

One of Swift's most well-known essays, "A Modest Proposal," is also worth a read. This satiric essay suggests the sale of babies to the Irish elite for the purpose of consumption as a way of solving the shortage of food in Ireland and the economic troubles among the poor.