St. Columba's Crozer (or the Cathach of Colum Cille) is a fragment of an 8th or 9th century Irish
Insular crozier
An Insular crozier is a type of processional bishop's staff (crozier) produced in Ireland and Scotland between 800 and 1200. They are distinguished from mainland European types by their curved and open crooks, and drop (that is, the hollow box- ...
fragment. It consists of a wooden core covered by sheet bronze tubes decorated with a bronze knope lined with silver and gilt. The wooden shaft measures four feet and is elaborately decorated but incomplete: it was found broken in two, and both its foot and crook are missing.
Built for St.
Columba
Columba () or Colmcille (7 December 521 – 9 June 597 AD) was an Irish abbot and missionary evangelist credited with spreading Christianity in what is today Scotland at the start of the Hiberno-Scottish mission. He founded the important abbey ...
's (also known as St. Colmcille (d. 597)), the fragment is held at the
National Museum of Ireland
The National Museum of Ireland () 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 three branches in Dublin, the arch ...
,
Kildare Street
Kildare Street () is a street in Dublin, Ireland.
Location
Kildare Street is close to the principal shopping area of Grafton Street and Dawson Street, to which it is joined by Molesworth Street. Trinity College lies at the north end of t ...
, Dublin, but is not usually on display.
Provenance
The staff originates from the ninth century, while a number of often poor and crude refurbishments date from the 12th century and later.
["St Columba's Crozier". NMI display caption, December 2021] It is one of the saint's three well-known relics, the others being his bell-shrine and the well-known 9th century
Cathach of St. Columba
The Cathach of St. Columba, known as the Cathach (meaning "the Battler"),O'Neill (2014), p. 12 is a late 6th century Insular psalter. It is the oldest surviving manuscript in Ireland, and the second oldest Latin psalter in the world. Its cumdach ...
which was built to contain a 6th century Insular psalter once thought to have been written by Columba himself.
It is associated with
Durrow Abbey
Durrow Abbey is a historic site in Durrow, County Offaly in Ireland. It is located off the N52 some 5 miles from Tullamore. Largely undisturbed, the site is an early medieval monastic complex of ecclesiastical and secular monuments, visible an ...
in
County Meath
County Meath ( ; or simply , ) is a Counties of Ireland, county in the Eastern and Midland Region of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, within the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster. It is bordered by County Dublin to the southeast, County ...
, which was founded by Columba in the 6th century. Following the abbey's dissolution, it was kept by its hereditary keepers, the Mac Geoghegan family, until the mid-19th century. The staff was in the ownership of the
Royal Irish Academy
The Royal Irish Academy (RIA; ), based in Dublin, is an academic body that promotes study in the natural sciences, arts, literature, and social sciences. It is Ireland's premier List of Irish learned societies, learned society and one of its le ...
before 1850.
[Murray, Griffin.]
Colmcille 1500 Lecture Series: St Columba's crosier: power and devotion in medieval Ireland
. National Museum of Ireland, 10 December 2021. Retrieved 27 December 2021 Although considered to have once been one of the finest croziers, and a relic of one of Ireland's
patron saint
A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, fa ...
s, it did not receive substantial scholarly examination until its inclusion in Column Burke's 1997 "Studies in the Cult of Saint Columba".
Description
The barrel shaped knope on the upper shaft is decorated with knotted
interlace, and holds now empty settings that once contained studs, most likely of
amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin. Examples of it have been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since the Neolithic times, and worked as a gemstone since antiquity."Amber" (2004). In Maxine N. Lurie and Marc Mappen (eds.) ''Encyclopedia ...
. Although this section is the earliest metalwork component, it was later filed down to accommodate both later embellishments and repair-work. Later additions include the remnants of a downwards facing animal head on the crest positioned as a protruding wing from the main shaft.
References
Sources
* Bourke, Colm. ''Studies in the cult of Saint Columba''. Dublin : Four Courts Press, 1997.
*
Moss, Rachel. ''Medieval c. 400—c. 1600: Art and Architecture of Ireland''. London: Yale University Press, 2014.
*
Murray, Griffin. "Insular-type crosiers: their construction and characteristics". ''Making and Meaning in Insular Art: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Insular Art'', 2007
{{DEFAULTSORT:St. Columba's Crozier
Collection of the National Museum of Ireland
Insular croziers