St Patrick'S Cathedral; (Coi), Armagh

Church of Ireland Cathedral

The Metropolitan Cathedral of St Patrick, Armagh, is set on a hill from which the name of the city derives – Ard Macha - the Height of Macha. Macha, a legendary pre-christian tribal princess – some say goddess – is also linked with the nearby Emain Macha, a major ritual site occupied from late Neolithic /early Bronze Age times which is regarded as having been the ancient royal centre of Iron Age Ulster. Emain Macha is associated with the epic Ulster cycle known as the Tain bo Cuailnge whose doomed hero figure is Cuchulain, the ‘Hound of Ulster’, and which features also the King of Ulster Conchobhar MacNessa, his adversary Queen Maeve of Connaught, as well as Conail Cernach, the Red Branch knights and the Boy Troop of Ulster.
After the ritual destruction of the sanctuary at Emain it is likely that the nearby hill of Ard Macha became the centre of the Ulaid (the local tribal group that gave its name to Ulster). It is this hilltop enclosure which St Patrick acquired and within which he built his first ‘Great Stone Church’. St Patrick’s earliest church in Armagh was probably ‘Templum na Ferta’, the Church of the Relics on a site close to Scotch Street, below the Hill of Armagh.
The steep streets in today’s city lead down from the hilltop enclosure to the city below. To the left, as one leaves the Cathedral gates, is the Armagh Public Library, founded in 1771 and across the road is the former Armagh Infirmary, dating from 1774. The eighteenth century is further represented in the eleven houses of Vicar’s Hill facing the west wall of the Cathedral. Opposite the Library is the neo-Elizabethan Synod Hall, built in 1912, and, to its right, the limestone pillars and impressive eighteenth century iron gates, formerly sited at the archbishops’ Palace, leading to the present See House.
St. Patrick
From the fifth century of the Christian era, the hill acquired a new significance with the arrival in Armagh of St Patrick. Patrick, as a boy, had spent some years as a slave in Ireland. He managed to escape and return to his family in Britain. After a time, Patrick claimed to have had a vision in which a man called Victoricus implored him to return to Ireland. Accordingly, he prepared himself for ordination and eventually, as a bishop, began his ministry in Ireland in, according to tradition, 432.
In his travels throughout the country, Patrick eventually reached Armagh where, following some hard negotiating with a local Chieftain, Daire, he was given his desired site on the hill of Armagh. In what is believed to be the year 445, he built his church. Whether or not the building was of stone, as the Irish name Damhliag Mor implies, is uncertain but there certainly was a great stone church at Armagh in the ninth century according to the Annals of Ireland. It is on this same site that today’s Cathedral stands and it was Patrick who decreed that the Great Church at Armagh should be the premier church in Ireland.
The Cathedral and the Archbishops
As can be seen from a list in a panel on the north-west wall, Armagh has, since Patrick, first Bishop of Armagh, an unbroken succession of, first, bishops and abbots - these two roles often being vested in the same person - and, since Celsus in 1106, archbishops of Armagh. When the Acts of Supremacy of 1536 and 1560 renounced the jurisdiction of the Pope over the English and Irish churches, and proclaimed the monarch as, initially, Supreme Head on Earth and, later, Supreme Governor of the Churches of England and Ireland, the Irish episcopate followed divergent lines, the Church of Ireland marking its succession from Adam Loftus and the Roman Catholic from Richard Creagh. Today’s cathedral contains a number of memorials to previous archbishops.
Expansion, Destruction and Renewal
After the death of Patrick, Cormac, one of his successors as Bishop of Armagh, made the church the centre of a monastic settlement and for many centuries Armagh was a celebrated seat of learning, attracting students from all over Europe. Indeed, by the twelfth century, only those who had studied at Armagh were permitted to teach theology.
The history of the Church at Armagh also reflects that of a country where violence was rarely far away. An early threat, which lasted intermittently for over two centuries, was from the Vikings of Norway who raided the hill on at least ten occasions between 832 and 943. This danger was only finally removed in 1014 when the Irish High King, Brian Boroimhe (Boru), defeated the Viking Army at the Battle of Clontarf. Brian, himself, had acknowledged the dominant position of Armagh in 1004 when he laid a gift of gold on the High Altar and, on his death in the field at Clontarf, his remains were brought to the hill of Armagh for interment in a spot indicated today by a stone inscription on the exterior west wall of the north transept.
Apart from the destruction caused by the Vikings, the Church also suffered a lightning strike in 995 and remained a ruin until 1125 when it was repaired and re-roofed by Bishop Celsus. The most far-reaching work of restoration, however, was that carried out by Archbishop O’Scannail. Further damage required major rebuilding by Archbishop Sweetman in the 1360s and by Archbishop Swayne in the 1420s. In the 1560s, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, the Earl of Sussex, in his attempts to curb the aggressive activities of Shane ‘the Proud’ O Neill, fortified the cathedral against him but in 1566 O Neill ‘utterly destroyed the Cathedral by fire, lest the English should again lodge in it’. In 1641 it again became a target for the O Neills when Sir Phelim O Neill burned it during the rising of Catholics who had been dispossessed in the early seventeenth century Plantation of Ulster. Repair work was carried out in the 1660s by Archbishop Margetson. Further restorations were undergone in 1727, 1765, 1802, 1834, 1888, 1903, 1950 and 1970 and, most recently, in 2004 under the scrupulous and wise direction of Dean Herbert Cassidy.
‘Cottingham’s Cathedral’
Probably the most extensive restoration carried on in the Cathedral took place from 1834 until 1837, commissioned and largely paid for by Archbishop John George Beresford, a man of considerable wealth and a generous benefactor to the Church and to education. The architect, Lewis Nockalls Cottingham (1787-1847), addressed the structural vulnerability of the Cathedral by restoring the nave walls to the perpendicular and removing the short wooden spire which can be
seen on the seal of the Cathedral. He also re-opened the clerestory windows which had been blocked by Archbishop Margetson and restyled them in decorated Gothic, enlarged the choir windows and overlaid the timber vaulting with plasterwork.
Cottingham came to Armagh from his involvement in the restoration work in St Albans Abbey which had begun in 1832 and attempted to replicate in Armagh certain features which had impressed him in St Albans as when he erected a stone screen to separate the nave from the choir. This innovation was in line with the influence on Cottingham of the ideas of Augustus Welby Pugin and the early Gothic Revival as were his restoration of the High Altar (and removal) from the west end, where it had been relegated by Archbishop Stuart in the early nineteenth century, to its proper eastward position in the form of a stone altar backed by a reredos of canopied niches, also copied from St Albans. Despite these features, however, many felt that, rather than providing a sense of medievalism, Cottingham’s work was too deliberate and precise and tended to eclipse the earlier features of the Cathedral. According to William Makepeace Thackeray, Cottingham’s Cathedral was ‘too complete…not the least venerable. It is as neat and trim as a lady’s drawing-room. ’
Although the choir screen was removed in 1888, much of Cottingham’s work remains and, while his restoration did indeed suggest a new interior, the basic shape of the Cathedral is still as conceived by Archbishop Maelpatrick
O’Scannail in the twelfth century.
Music
Armagh Cathedral can lay claim to the oldest choral tradition in Ireland. In the ninth century, a branch of the Ceile De (or Culdees) – ‘the companions of God’ – a religious brotherhood, which had originated in Tallacht near Dublin, came to Armagh, establishing itself in a ‘priory’ near the Cathedral. The Culdees were committed to a rigorous asceticism but they are also associated with preserving standards of worship including choral music. With the beginnings of a diocesan system in Ireland in the early eleventh century and the adoption of the title of archbishop by the bishops of Armagh, the Church at Armagh fulfilled more clearly the role of a Cathedral with the Culdees as Vicars Choral until the sixteenth century. The name is perpetuated in the modern Culdees housing development in Armagh.
A major fillip was given to music at Armagh when King Charles I, by royal charter, instituted the ‘the college of King Charles in the church of St Patrick in Armagh’. In 1482 the Cathedral had the first of its seven organs. The present Walker organ was installed in 1840 and has been restored on a number of occasions, the last, in 1996, giving it a new resonance and flexibility of range and tone.
During the Commonwealth period in the seventeenth century, the Armagh choir, like those of other cathedrals, was disbanded and only really revived when Thomas Lindsay, Archbishop from 1714 until 1724, provided it with a substantial income. It was also in Archbishop Lindsay’s time that a second Royal Charter, that of George I in 1773, allowed for an additional four boys in the choir.
One of Armagh’s most illustrious choristers was Charles Wood who was born in 1866 within sight of the Cathedral where his father was a gentleman of the choir. Wood was to become Professor of Music at Cambridge and composer of such church music as the famous anthem ‘O Thou the Central Orb’ and the St Mark Passion. In recent years he has been commemorated in the Charles Wood Summer School held in Armagh during August.
Worship
Today, the Cathedral offers two full choral services each Sunday and on other selected occasions and has frequently been invited to broadcast on radio. In addition, a daily service, usually the office of Matins, is said and Holy Days are marked by celebrations of the Eucharist. To further develop the Cathedral’s diocesan role, the present Dean has recently introduced a system by which it is regularly used by individual parishes from the diocese for their principal Sunday worship. For the wider community, the Cathedral hosts ecumenical and civic services, stages concerts and recitals and is used by schools and organisations for Christmas Carol Services.
The Cathedral is seen at its best in major services such as those marking the General Synod of the Church of Ireland, the enthronement of archbishops and occasions, like those in 1991 and 2005, when the Primates of the Anglican Communion visited Armagh. Carefully arranged orders of service, meticulously organised processions and majestic music continue to ensure faithfulness to Patrick’s ideal that the first in Irish Christendom should be the Great Church at Armagh.