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The Shrine of Our Lady of Dublin, Whitefriar Street Church
Ireland is fortunate in that she still possesses a number of ancient wooden
sculptures, including several of Our Lady and a few of the Irish saints. The
oldest of these figures is the twelfth-century Madonna and Child from
Kilcorban, Co. Galway. The figure venerated in the Carmelite church today
under the title of “Our Lady of Dublin” has been compared in style to some
of the early sixteenth-century sculptures in the Henry VII chapel at
Westminster, and is probably of this period. It is a life size figure in
oak, showing Our Lady holding her Child. Originally brightly painted, the
figure had been later whitewashed over, unfortunately, the removal of the
whitewash in 1914 also took off the ancient polychrome surface as well. The
extended arm of the Child is a modern restoration.
It is
said that this statue originally belonged to St. Mary’s Cistercian abbey on
the north bank of the Liffey in Dublin. This abbey was frequently visited
both by the English nobility and by royal officials from England who. stayed
there when in Dublin. Thus it would not be surprising to find the Dublin
Cistercians in possession of a statue belonging to the same school of art
as some of the sculptures in Westminster Abbey. St. Mary’s was surrendered
in 1539, at the Reformation, and the statue is said to have been used as a
trough in an adjacent inn yard. It was common practice to hollow the backs
of such wooden figures, both to reduce weight and prevent the wood warping
and splitting; thus laid face down, the figure could form a shallow trough
for pigs.
It is
first mentioned in an account of the Catholic chapels of Dublin written by
an unnamed Protestant in 1749. This states that “In Mary’s Lane is a
parochial chapel whose jurisdiction extends from one side of Boot Lane to
one side of Church Street. It is a large and irregular building. On the
Epistle side of the altar stands a large image of the Blessed Virgin with
Jesus in her arms, carved in wood; which statue at the dissolution belonged
to St. Mary’s Abbey”. Mary’s Lane chapel was served by the Jesuits; its site
is now occupied by a block of flats called St. Michan’s House. In 1816, the
old chapel was converted for use as a school and a new church erected in St.
Michan’s parish. The whitewashed figure appears to have been discarded, and
found its way into a secondhand shop in Capel Street. Here, Father Spratt of
Whitefriars saw it in 1824 and immediately went in and purchased it, for a
nominal sum.
Although Dr. Spratt saved the figure, the ancient silver crown that went
with it was sold for the value of the metal and melted down. The last
account of the crown is given by the distinguished archaeologist Petrie, who
saw it in a jeweller’s window waiting sale. He said that “it was a double
arched crown such as appears on the coins of Henry VII and on his only: a
circumstance which marks with exact precision the age of the statue which it
had adorned”. Petrie’s dating of the crown, and thus the statue, corresponds
with the dating of the statue on stylistic grounds by comparison with the
work in Westminster Abbey. But if the crown really belonged to the statue,
it raises a grave doubt of the truth of the story of the use of the statue
as a trough, and suggests rather that crown and figure were concealed
together in some hiding place at the Reformation and subsequently restored
for Catholic veneration to some Catholic chapel as soon as it was safe to do
so. It may well have been venerated elsewhere before it appears in the
Mary’s Lane chapel.
Dr.
Spratt placed the statue on the Epistle side of the high altar in the new
Whitefriars church. In 1915, after the figure had been cleaned, the shrine
of Our Lady of Dublin was formally erected in the Carmelite church.
Taken from:
Whitefriar St. Church: A Short Guide, by Daphne Pochin Mould.
Dublin: Carmelite
Publications: 1964.
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