St Oliver Plunkett saw more of the world dead than alive. The Catholic archbishop, primate and saint was born 400 years ago in Loughcrew, Co Meath, and was executed 55 years later. For nearly half of the four centuries since, his remains resided rent-free in Germany.
On Saturday afternoon locals in the Lower Saxon town of Lamspringe honoured their favourite Irish saint, as they do every year on the last weekend in August.
Beyond his 400th birthday, this year marks 50 years since Plunkett was canonised. Last month a group from Lamspringe visited Ireland’s sites linked to the saint, including the (in)famous box in St Peter’s Church in Drogheda.
“Drogheda may have his head but we’ll always have his heart,” joked Fr Stefan Lampe, who lead the visitor group.
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Lamspringe, a small town of 5,500 in the open, agricultural plains of Lower Saxony, is dominated by the muscular baroque church of Saints Hadrian and Dionysius. This former Benedictine abbey church is home to remains of the Irish saint, whose posthumous path to Germany was as dramatic as his life.
Plunkett left Ireland for Rome in 1647, was ordained a priest and returned 23 years later as archbishop of Armagh to a homeland wracked by colonial and religious conflict.
Accounts of Plunkett’s subsequent years have more intrigue, disguises and double-crossing than Game of Thrones crossed with House of Cards, ending in his arrest on trumped-up charges related to an anti-Catholic plot.
While in prison – before a trial that would end in him being hanged, drawn and quartered – fellow clergyman prisoner Maurus Corker, an English Benedictine monk, promised to give Plunkett a Christian burial if he could. Corker survived and, in 1683, he had Plunkett’s remains smuggled to Lamspringe’s Benedictine monastery.
While Plunkett’s head went to Rome and eventually back to Ireland, what remained was interred in the wall of the abbey church crypt until the Benedictines returned to England in 1881. They took Plunkett’s remaining remains with them. But did they leave Lamspringe Plunkett’s heart?
“They say we were left a thigh bone,” said local man Hans-Werner Kindervater, keeper of Lamspringe’s Plunkett tradition, which has intrigued and inspired him since he was an altar boy.
“When you hear what St Oliver Plunkett experienced and why he acted as he did, he is a fascinating witness to his faith,” said Kindervater. ”The memorial service is a big effort each year, but it’s only right to honour his memory.”
Whatever was left behind in Lamspringe isn’t in the crypt wall any more. Half a century ago it was moved upstairs to beneath the modern altar. The oblong bronze ossuary, so heavy it takes four people to carry it at the annual procession, is kept in a cage flanked by two small Tricolours, signed by Irish visitors on a detour from 2005’s World Youth Day in Cologne.
The Plunkett pilgrims move in both directions and other Irish visitors here include the Archbishop Eamon Martin – Plunkett’s successor as primate – in 2017.
Lamspringe parish pastoral worker Nicole Mohr is another recent visitor to Ireland. What fascinates her about Plunkett is how his life and death “reads like a whodunnit crossed with a horror story ending in a death sentence and Plunkett saying deo gratias – thanks be to God”.
“Here, we view Plunkett not just as a tradition but as an example of living faith, because he remained steadfast without being obstinate,” said Mohr. “Plunkett asks the question of us: what can I reconcile with my Catholic values and conscience with the state, where is the line and when is it crossed?”
