Mendicant orders in late medieval and early modern Ireland: material heritage in its historical context
Dr John McCafferty is the Principal Investigator in collaboration with Raghnall Ó Floinn (National Museum of Ireland, employing Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB and Malgorzata Krasnodebska-D'Aughton as postdoctoral researchers.
IRCHSS-funded project Jan2006-Dec 2008. Funding of €220,000
The project aims at creating an inventory (textual and photographic) of the surviving portable ecclesiastical artifacts that predate 1829 and are in the houses of the mendicant orders in Ireland.
This IRCHSS-funded project is being undertaken by the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute, UCD with the advice of the National Museum of Ireland. The project is unique in European terms, aiming to compile a national inventory, to modern museum standards, of ecclesiastical objects associated with the mendicant orders in Ireland.
To date, the project has identified some 200 objects, the majority of which were hitherto unrecorded and which are of major national artistic and historical importance. These range from 14th- and 15th-century sculptures of ivory and stone to a bronze bell associated with Daniel O’Connell, who led the movement for Catholic emancipation. They include vestments, altar cloths and personal objects such as reliquaries and rosaries. The majority consist of church plate of 17th and early 18th century, a field which so far has received little attention by experts in the field of Irish decorative arts.
Their full recording will ensure not only a permanent record of these objects but will make available for the first time a resource for study by art historians and historians alike, shedding light on a variety of issues such as Irish taste and design, and the influence of foreign exemplars. The corpus of inscriptions associated with the majority of pieces (many of which are dated) enhances their importance and will enable the identification of hitherto unknown names of patrons, craftsmen and the location of their workshops.