Rite and Reason: A summer exhibition at Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral is making history, writes Dr Kenneth Milne.
A once-in-a-lifetime exhibition is on view this summer at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. For the first time in almost 500 years a group of manuscripts, once housed in the cathedral but subsequently dispersed, are together again and can be seen by visitors.
The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (or, as it has long been more commonly called, Christ Church) was founded about the year 1030 by Sitriuc "Silkbeard", king of the Dublin Vikings. For a period, because it was in the Danish kingdom of Dublin, it was under the ecclesiastical authority of Canterbury, but eventually became the seat of the new archbishopric of Dublin, following the Treaty of Mellifont in 1152.
Lorcan Ua Tuathail (Lawrence O'Toole), who came from Glendalough to be Dublin's second archbishop, placed the cathedral in the care of Augustinian canons regular, and so, until the Reformation the cathedral was also an Augustinian priory.
The manuscripts now on display belonged to the priory. One consequence of Henry VIII's suppression of the Irish religious houses that is often overlooked was the breaking up of their libraries. Christ Church survived the Reformation, the existing prior and canons becoming the first dean and chapter, but manuscripts and books migrated, in many cases to find new homes in repositories elsewhere.
Now, through the generosity of their present custodians, important items such as the 14th century Christ Church Psalter and the 15th century Book of Obits are together again under one roof, rejoining the ancient Liber Niger (Black Book) and Liber Albus (White Book), both of which, apart from brief periods of exile, have remained at the cathedral.
Why the Liber Niger and Liber Albus (in each case named according to the colour of their cover) were kept is a matter of some speculation, but scholars tend to the view that Christ Church clung to them because they contain documents that are seminal to any study of the origins of the cathedral.
This is especially so in the case of the Liber Niger, which contains material touching on Christ Church in its early Benedictine years and its subsequent Augustinian transformation. Interestingly enough, just as the Jewish scriptures of the Old Testament contain two versions of the Creation, so the Liber Niger provides two accounts of how Christ Church came into being!
Now, thanks to the co-operation of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the board of Trinity College Dublin, these unique medieval volumes can be seen in the crypt of Christ Church (itself one of Dublin's few surviving medieval spaces) in the company of other material which had its origins there.
From the Bodleian has come what we have traditionally known as the Christ Church Psalter, a splendidly illuminated manuscript made for Stephen of Derby, who was prior of Holy Trinity (Christ Church) from 1348 to 1382. Not only, as is to be expected, does it contain the psalms, ornately decorated, but also memoranda of priory business in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
The psalter is the earliest and only certain source we have for music in the priory. Another musical item also comes from Oxford: a 14th century "processional", providing insight into liturgical practices of the time.
From Trinity College Dublin, comes a 13th century martyrology and a 15th century book of obits. The martyrology is the oldest surviving Christ Church manuscript. It is a register of saints and martyrs, to be read in quire, while the Book of Obits lists the names of those (Archbishop Ua Tuathail included) for whom the Augustinian canons regularly prayed.
Temporary exhibitions are, of their nature, ephemeral, but there can be permanent results. Much of the material at present on loan to Christ Church is musical, offering a tantalizing glimpse of what music at the cathedral must have been like just prior to the Reformation.
The cathedral's musical staff have been studying it and preparing it for performance at concerts associated with the exhibition. The fruits of their labours were to be heard when the British ambassador, Mr Stuart Eldon OBE, opened the exhibition last Monday evening, and at a subsequent concert last Saturday.
Some of it will surely remain in the cathedral repertory, and so this exhibition, short-lived though it must be, can make a contribution to our understanding of church music in Ireland during a period for which we have sadly little other evidence.
"The Christ Church Psalter in Context: manuscripts from the medieval priory", a special exhibition in the crypt of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, featuring loans from the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and Trinity College, Dublin, runs to August 31st and is open seven days a week. An article by Raymond Refausse on items in the exhibition, illustrated in colour, appears in the current Irish Arts Review.