The Domnach Airgid (; also Domhnach Airgid, English: Silver Church or Shrine of Saint Patrick's Gospels)
[Shrine of Saint Patrick's Gospels: early 20th century (original dated 1080–1100)]
. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
. Retrieved 2 July 2021 is an 8th-century Irish wooden
reliquary
A reliquary (also referred to as a ''shrine'', by the French term ''châsse'', and historically including ''wikt:phylactery, phylacteries'') is a container for relics. A portable reliquary may be called a ''fereter'', and a chapel in which it i ...
. It was considerably reworked between the 13th and 15th centuries and became a
cumdach
A (, in Irish "cover"Joynt (1917), p. 186) or book shrine is an elaborate ornamented metal reliquary box or case used to hold Early Medieval Irish manuscripts or relics. They are typically later than the book they contain, often by several c ...
or "book shrine", when its basic timber structure was reinforced and decorated by elaborate silver-gilt metalwork. Its front-piece was enhanced by
gilded
Gilding is a decorative technique for applying a very thin coating of gold over solid surfaces such as metal (most common), wood, porcelain, or stone. A gilded object is also described as "gilt". Where metal is gilded, the metal below was tradi ...
relief
Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the ...
showing Jesus in "
Arma Christi
Arma Christi ("weapons of Christ"), or the Instruments of the Passion, are the objects associated with the Passion of Jesus Christ in Christian symbolism and art. They are seen as arms in the sense of heraldry, and also as the weapons Christ ...
" (with Instruments of the Passion), alongside depictions of saints, angels and clerics, in scenes imbued with complex
iconography
Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...
. It is thus considered a mixture of the early
Insular and later
International Gothic
International Gothic is a period of Gothic art which began in Burgundy, France, and northern Italy in the late 14th and early 15th century. It then spread very widely across Western Europe, hence the name for the period, which was introduced by th ...
styles.
The Domnach Airgid is one of the few extant Irish shrines thought to have held non-Irish relics.
[Moss (2014), p. 295] When opened in the 19th century, the shrine was found to hold badly decayed leaves from a 6th-9th century
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...
recounting the
Gospels
Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...
written in Vulgate Latin. Thirty-nine pages of the manuscript survive, each measuring about nine inches in height.
Based on the inscriptions, it is thought to be one of the earliest surviving depictions of apostles portrayed with their
attributes
Attribute may refer to:
* Attribute (philosophy), an extrinsic property of an object
* Attribute (research), a characteristic of an object
* Grammatical modifier, in natural languages
* Attribute (computing), a specification that defines a proper ...
and Instruments of the Passion.
[Moss (2014), p. 294] It has been in the
National Museum of Ireland
The National Museum of Ireland ( ga, Ard-Mhúsaem na hÉireann) is Ireland's leading museum institution, with a strong emphasis on national and some international archaeology, Irish history, Irish art, culture, and natural history. It has thre ...
(Kildare Street site) in Dublin since 1847. There is an early 20th century replica in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
in New York.
The earliest records title the shrine as "Domnach" (pronounced ''Donagh''), a word derived from the Latin "
Dominicus" (''Belonging to God'' or ''of the Master''). The antiquarian
George Petrie (1790–1866) was one of the first to describe the Domnach Airgid, and strongly believed the early medieval box was created as a host for relics, and only later became decorative shrine and container for Gospel manuscripts.
[Petrie (1839), p. 20]
Description
The Domnach Airgid is oblong in shape, and is 23cm high, 16.7cm wide and 9.8cm long. It contains three covers, each build during separate phases. The inner-most is made of
Yew-wood and dates to the early medieval period, when the object was built to hold relics and portions of a Gospel. The middle cover dates from the 14th century and is made of
tinned
Tinning is the process of thinly coating sheets of wrought iron or steel with tin, and the resulting product is known as tinplate. The term is also widely used for the different process of coating a metal with solder before soldering.
It is most ...
copper-alloy
Copper alloys are metal alloys that have copper as their principal component. They have high resistance against corrosion. The best known traditional types are bronze, where tin is a significant addition, and brass, using zinc instead. Both of t ...
plates lined with sliver, while the 15th century outer cover is formed from silver plated with gold.
[Bourke (2006), p. 35]
Early medieval casket
The original early medieval casket was built to hold
relic
In religion, a relic is an object or article of religious significance from the past. It usually consists of the physical remains of a saint or the personal effects of the saint or venerated person preserved for purposes of veneration as a tangi ...
s, and is dated to either the late eighth or early ninth century.
[Moss (2014), p. 31] It consisted of a single
yew-wood chamber with a sliding door, and was covered with tinned bronze plates decorated with
interlace.
[O'Curry (Wentworth, 1861), p. 322] The original plates on the sides of the shire are still visible.
[Overbey (2006), p. 489]
It is traditionally associated with Patrick and believed to have been in his possession and sanctified by him
[O'Curry (Dublin Review, 1861), p. 12] before he presented or gave it to
St Macartan (454—506), the first
Bishop of Clogher
The Bishop of Clogher is an episcopal title which takes its name after the village of Clogher in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Following the Reformation, there are now parallel apostolic successions: one of the Church of Ireland and the ot ...
in
County Tyrone
County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six Counties of Northern Ireland, counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional Counties of Ireland, counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an admini ...
. This story is first mentioned in a 7th-century vita of St. Patrick, in which the shrine is named as the Domnach Airgid.
[Overbey (2006), p. 488][O'Floinn (2002), p. 176] The original casket may have been referred to in the 10th century "Tripartite Life of St Patrick", which mentions gifts made to him, including relics of the Apostles, portions of the
True Cross
The True Cross is the cross upon which Jesus was said to have been crucified, particularly as an object of religious veneration. There are no early accounts that the apostles or early Christians preserved the physical cross themselves, althoug ...
, and tufts of
Mary
Mary may refer to:
People
* Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name)
Religious contexts
* New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below
* Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...
's hair, or the
Holy Sepulchre
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, hy, Սուրբ Հարության տաճար, la, Ecclesia Sancti Sepulchri, am, የቅዱስ መቃብር ቤተክርስቲያን, he, כנסיית הקבר, ar, كنيسة القيامة is a church i ...
.
Historians believe that such relics would have been collected during trips by Irish clergy to Rome.
[Moss (2014), p. 33]
14 and 15th century plates
The shrine was significantly remodeled around 1350 under the commission of John O’Carbri,
abbot of Clones,
County Monaghan
County Monaghan ( ; ga, Contae Mhuineacháin) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Ulster and is part of Border strategic planning area of the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the town of Monaghan. Monaghan County Cou ...
.
[Stalley (1977), p. 217] The work was completed by the Clones craftsman and goldsmith John (Eoin) Ó'Bárdáin, whose signature (
''IOHANES: O BARRDAN: FABRICAVIT'') is engraved on the shrine.
[Armstrong; Lawlor (1917), p. 126] Ó'Bárdáin is known to have lived in
Drogheda
Drogheda ( , ; , meaning "bridge at the ford") is an industrial and port town in County Louth on the east coast of Ireland, north of Dublin. It is located on the Dublin–Belfast corridor on the east coast of Ireland, mostly in County Louth ...
,
[O'Floinn (1996), p. 40] and modernised its appearance in the contemporary
International Gothic
International Gothic is a period of Gothic art which began in Burgundy, France, and northern Italy in the late 14th and early 15th century. It then spread very widely across Western Europe, hence the name for the period, which was introduced by th ...
style, including the covering of the earlier wood shrine with tin-lined bronze panels decorated with interlace knots.
[O'Toole (2013), p. 98][Hourihane (2012), p. 510] O’Carbri likely had political motivations for commissioning the redesign in the context of the
Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland
The Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland took place during the late 12th century, when Anglo-Normans gradually conquered and acquired large swathes of land from the Irish, over which the kings of England then claimed sovereignty, all allegedly sanc ...
. The Normans sought to undermine the established order, in part via an attack on Irish Christianity, in an effort to detach the island from its Celtic heritage. In response, some clerics fought back by refurbishing and restoring early medieval sacred objects in order to reinforce the island's cultural identity.
During the first phase of reworking, the front plate (frontpiece) was replaced with four rectangular, silver
gilt panels. A full-length, high-relief (''alto-relievo'') representation of the
crucified Jesus positioned between these panels forms its center point.
The
Holy Spirit
In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is the divine force, quality, and influence of God over the Universe or over his creatures. In Nicene Christianity, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is the third person of the Trinity. In Islam, the Holy Spirit acts as ...
, shown in the form of a dove enamelled in gold, hovers above his head. A small, square reliquary decorated with crystal is positioned above the dove, and is presumed to have once held what its owners believed was a fragment of the
true cross
The True Cross is the cross upon which Jesus was said to have been crucified, particularly as an object of religious veneration. There are no early accounts that the apostles or early Christians preserved the physical cross themselves, althoug ...
.
[O'Curry (Wentworth, 1861), p. 323] The four panels around Jesus contain eleven smaller, ornately and delicately figures carved in low-relief (''basso-rilievo''),
[O'Floinn (2002), pp. 261–262, 270] They depict saints and clerics dressed in clothes that draw from both early medieval Irish and European
gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
styles.
File:Domhnach Airgid Scribe.jpg, alt=Lower left hand panel with scribe handing a book shrine to a cleric, The Domnach Airgid presented by St Patrick to St Macartan in a mise en abyme
In Western art history, ''mise en abyme'' (; also ''mise en abîme'') is a formal technique of placing a copy of an image within itself, often in a way that suggests an infinitely recurring sequence. In film theory and literary theory, it refers t ...
type later known as the Droste effect
The Droste effect (), known in art as an example of ''mise en abyme'', is the effect of a picture recursively appearing within itself, in a place where a similar picture would realistically be expected to appear. This produces a loop which in ...
File:Domhnach Airgid Crop1.jpg, Upper left hand panel of the frontpiece, showing the Archangel Michael
Michael (; he, מִיכָאֵל, lit=Who is like El od, translit=Mīḵāʾēl; el, Μιχαήλ, translit=Mikhaḗl; la, Michahel; ar, ميخائيل ، مِيكَالَ ، ميكائيل, translit=Mīkāʾīl, Mīkāl, Mīkhāʾīl), also ...
and Mary
Mary may refer to:
People
* Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name)
Religious contexts
* New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below
* Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...
File:Domhnach Airgid Crop.jpg, Lower right hand panel, with an abbess
An abbess (Latin: ''abbatissa''), also known as a mother superior, is the female superior of a community of Catholic nuns in an abbey.
Description
In the Catholic Church (both the Latin Church and Eastern Catholic), Eastern Orthodox, Coptic ...
and two clerics or saints, possibly the three Irish patron saint
A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, or Eastern Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or perso ...
s, Columba
Columba or Colmcille; gd, Calum Cille; gv, Colum Keeilley; non, Kolban or at least partly reinterpreted as (7 December 521 – 9 June 597 AD) was an Irish abbot and missionary evangelist credited with spreading Christianity in what is toda ...
, St Brigid
Saint Brigid of Kildare or Brigid of Ireland ( ga, Naomh Bríd; la, Brigida; 525) is the patroness saint (or 'mother saint') of Ireland, and one of its three national saints along with Patrick and Columba. According to medieval Irish hagiogra ...
and St Patrick
Saint Patrick ( la, Patricius; ga, Pádraig ; cy, Padrig) was a fifth-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, the other patron saints be ...
.
File:Domhnach Airgid (Peter and Paul),.jpg, Upper right hand panel; unidentified figure (possibly St James Saint James or St. James may refer to:
People Saints
*James, brother of Jesus (died 62 or 69), also known as James the Just
*James the Great (died 44), Apostle, also known as James, son of Zebedee, or Saint James the Greater
**Saint James Matamoro ...
), St Peter
) (Simeon, Simon)
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Bethsaida, Gaulanitis, Syria, Roman Empire
, death_date = Between AD 64–68
, death_place = probably Vatican Hill, Rome, Italia, Roman Empire
, parents = John (or Jonah; Jona)
, occupation ...
, Paenl showing St Paul and two others
The upper left hand panel shows the
_and_the_Virgin_and_Child_depicted_in_the_Nursing_Madonna">Archangel_Michael_and_the_Virgin_and_Child_depicted_in_the_Nursing_Madonna_(''Virgo_Lactans'')_style.
_In_the_panel_to_their_right_a_unidentified_figure_wears_a_broad_brimmed_hat_and_holds_what_may_be_
_and_the_Virgin_and_Child_depicted_in_the_Nursing_Madonna">Archangel_Michael_and_the_Virgin_and_Child_depicted_in_the_Nursing_Madonna_(''Virgo_Lactans'')_style.
_In_the_panel_to_their_right_a_unidentified_figure_wears_a_broad_brimmed_hat_and_holds_what_may_be_Palm_branch">palms._He_stands_alongside_saints_
_and_the_Virgin_and_Child_depicted_in_the_Nursing_Madonna">Archangel_Michael_and_the_Virgin_and_Child_depicted_in_the_Nursing_Madonna_(''Virgo_Lactans'')_style.
_In_the_panel_to_their_right_a_unidentified_figure_wears_a_broad_brimmed_hat_and_holds_what_may_be_Palm_branch">palms._He_stands_alongside_saints_Paul_the_Apostle">Paul
_
Paul_may_refer_to:
*Paul_(given_name),_a_given_name_(includes_a_list_of_people_with_that_name)
*Paul_(surname),_a_list_of_people
_People
_Christianity
*Paul_the_Apostle_(AD_c.5–c.64/65),_also_known_as_Saul_of_Tarsus_or_Saint_Paul,_early_Chris_...
_and_
_and_the_Virgin_and_Child_depicted_in_the_Nursing_Madonna">Archangel_Michael_and_the_Virgin_and_Child_depicted_in_the_Nursing_Madonna_(''Virgo_Lactans'')_style.
_In_the_panel_to_their_right_a_unidentified_figure_wears_a_broad_brimmed_hat_and_holds_what_may_be_Palm_branch">palms._He_stands_alongside_saints_Paul_the_Apostle">Paul
_
Paul_may_refer_to:
*Paul_(given_name),_a_given_name_(includes_a_list_of_people_with_that_name)
*Paul_(surname),_a_list_of_people
_People
_Christianity
*Paul_the_Apostle_(AD_c.5–c.64/65),_also_known_as_Saul_of_Tarsus_or_Saint_Paul,_early_Chris_...
_and_Saint_Peter">Peter
_
Peter_may_refer_to:
_People
*_List_of_people_named_Peter,_a_list_of_people_and_fictional_characters_with_the_given_name
*_Peter_(given_name)
**_Saint_Peter_(died_60s),_apostle_of_Jesus,_leader_of_the_early_Christian_Church
*_Peter_(surname),_a_sur_...
.
_The_scribe_in_the_lower_right_panel,_who_may_represent_
St_Patrick_
Saint_Patrick_(_la,_Patricius;__ga,_Pádraig_;__cy,_Padrig)_was_a_fifth-century_Romano-British_Christian_missionary_and_bishop_in_Ireland._Known_as_the_"Apostle_of_Ireland",_he_is_the_primary_patron_saint_of_Ireland,_the_other_patron_saints_be_...
,_presents_a_cumdach,_seemingly_the_Domnach_Airgid_itself,_to_St_Macartan.