Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin / Its foundation and pristine secular state, A. D. 1038-1163.

Introduction | 1038-1163

The Danes, who established settlements on various parts of the Irish coast, had long maintained a military supremacy in Dublin. So early as the year 837 they entered the Liffey with a powerful fleet and took possession of the city, where they established a form of government free from the control of the King of Leinster, whose authority they appear to habitually set at defiance. And in the year 853, the Norwegian Prince Amlave or Ableb, accompanied by his two brothers, Sitric and Ivar, came to Ireland, became the acknowledged chieftain of all the Ostman in the country, and exacted contributions from the native Irish. While Ivar and Sitric occupied Limerick and Waterford respectively, Amlave located himself in Dublin, and converted it into a strong fortress, from which his followers issued with fire and sword carrying rapine and slaughter into the surrounding country. Indeed, it would be impossible to describe the state of desolation to which Ireland was reduced by these fierce and brutal marauders, or the miseries which the native Irish suffered during the ninth and tenth centuries at their hands. We are told that in the year 948 the Danes of Dublin embraced Christianity. Notwithstanding this, the remainder of that century witnessed the frequent perpetration by them of sacrilegious outrages upon the religious institutions of the country, and acts of ferocious cruelty to their occupants. Their influence and power were, however, then on the wane, for they appear to have driven from the greater part of Ireland, and were at last compelled to take refuge in Dublin and a few other strongholds that remained to them along the coasts.

Malachy II., the supreme monarch of Ireland, was foremost in resisting the Danes, and in 976, the first year of his reign, inflicted upon them such a signal defeat at the battle of Tara, that their King, Ableb, abdicated, and died soon afterwards from mortification at this disaster to his arms. The decline of the Danish power was, however, still more attributable to the martial prowess ofBrian Boroimhe, better known as Brian Boru, the provincial King of Munster, who distinguished himself in several victories over them. This celebrated chieftain, who aspired to the sole sovereignty of Ireland, availed himself of the assistance of the Danes to crush King Malachy; and having vanquished him at Tara in the year 1000, usurped the throne of all Ireland, and turned his victorious arms against the common enemies of his country. Pressed hard by their formidable antagonist, the Danes, under Sitric, their King, prepared to regain their waning power, and collected troops from every direction. Large reinforcements poured in from Norway and the neighbouring countries, from Scotland, the Orkneys, and the Isle of Man, with the intention of exterminating the Irish from the country, and taking possession of it for themselves. The hostile armies met on the plains of Clontarf, within two miles of the city of Dublin, on Good. Friday, the 23rd April, 1014, when a sanguinary battle was fought. Brian, though now in his eighty-eighth year, took the command of his army, and rode through 'the ranks holding a crucifix in one hand and his sword in the other, encouraging his countrymen to fight valiantly and terminate the oppression of those foreign tyrants who had for so many years devastated their land. The battle raged from eight o'clock in the morning until Jour in the evening, when the Danes, overborne by the impetuosity of the Irish, were routed with great slaughter. This victory, however, was dearly purchased by the death of the valiant Brian, who fell that day, together with his son Morogh, his grandson Turlogh, and many other princes and nobles.

This signal defeat of the Danes in the battle of Clontarf gave a blow to their power from which they never wholly recovered; but they were still able to retain possession of Dublin for more than a century afterwards, down to the English conquest, and sometimes even to act on the aggressive. The very next year they plundered Armagh, Swords, and Clonard; and the burning of Kildare, and other like deeds of violence, attest a continuance of their power during the remainder of this century.

It was this gloomy period of Irish history that witnessed the original foundation of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity; and to the Danish King, Sitric or Sytryg, son of Ableb, not long after his defeat at Clontarf, we are indebted for the first endowment of that venerable institution now known as Christ Church Cathedral. It appears from Sir James Ware's "History of Ireland" that about "the year 1038 Sitric, aided by Donat, who is termed the first Bishop of Dublin (by which is probably meant the first Danish Bishop of that see) built the original edifice, in what was then the centre of the city; and Archbishop Alan, in the "Repertorium Viride," states that it was at its original foundation, aS at present, a Cathedral for secular canons, though it was subsequently changed into a priory for an order of regular clergy. Besides giving the site of the Cathedral and supplying funds for its erection, Sitric endowed. it with certain lands-" Bealdu-. leck, Rechen, and Portrahern [ now known as Baldoyle, Raheny, and Portrane ], with their villains, cattle, and corn," and soon afterwards Donat erected his episcopal palace within the precincts of the Cathedral, where subsequently the Courts of Justice stood until their removal to their present situation on the King's Inn's Quay. This Danish Bishop is said to have built the nave and wings or aisles of the Cathedral, the Chapel of St. Nicholas, on the north side of the church, and the adjoining Chapel of St. Michael, the latter being subsequently converted in the fifteenth century by Richard Talbot, one of Donat's successors in the see, into a parish church, on the site of which the new Synod Hall has been erected by Mr. Roe for the deliberative assembly of the Church of Ireland.

The appointment of Bishop Donat, and the works just mentioned, are the first indications that exist of any active interest in Christianity being taken by the Irish Danes. This good Bishop died on the 6th,of May, 1074, and was buried in his Cathedral, on the right-hand side of the high altar. With respect to the original edifice of the Cathedral there is no record to convey any idea of its style beyond what has been already stated,-and hardly a trace of Bishop Donat's work remains to serve as a reminiscence ofhis piety, or as an object of interest to the antiquary.