Christ Church Lectures

Given that, as mentioned in the last issue, the Archives committee has been running for a decade now, it is worth a rummage in the dust-bin of history to see what lectures have been organised over the last few years. The tradition of historical talks is more than a century old, and can be traced back to Sir Thomas Drew's St Stephen's day lectures. These continued with numerous lecturers at least up until 1967 when Dean Salmon delivered a lecture entitled 'Christ Church - Yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow'. By the 1980s a gap was certainly felt and the first Joe Coady memorial lecture was held in the 'millennium' year 1988, when the Revd Professor F.X. Martin, O.S.A. spoke on 'Lambert Simnel: the crowning of a king'. The series fell into abeyance until 1995, when it was revived with a talk by Professor Roger Stalley entitled 'The day the roof fell in'. Since then there have been annual lectures, although the pattern of talks has been gradually modified. From 2001, it was decided to move it from its evening slot in Spring to the more convenient occasion of Trinity Sunday, when it could coincide with the patronal festivities enjoyed by the Friends. The first of these, given by cathedral treasury exhibit designer, Orna Hanley, included a guided tour as well as the lecture. However, in a new departure recently, it has instead been decided to dedicate the Spring 2004 group of four lunchtime lectures to Joe Coady's memory. The following is a complete list of the individual Joe Coady lectures (1987-2003):

As the Spring series might suggest, the cathedral lunchtime lectures have continued to be most successful, and two further series have been held since reporting on the '2000 Years of Christianity' series which ended in May 2002. Firstly in October 2002, the topic was the cathedral prebends, which nowadays exist only as honorific titles of senior chapter members. The churches themselves were St Michael's (now the synod hall, occupied by Dvblinia), St Michan's (the only one remaining as a church and indeed still a member of the cathedral group of parishes) and St John's (demolished and originally sited near the concourse between the Dublin City Council office and the cathedral). Secondly, a series on the natural resources of medieval Dublin in February 2003 yielded a number of speakers of interest, although I must apologise to Dr Siobhán Geraghty for the miraculously-forwarding-slide-projector … a little distracting to have one's talk propelled by the speed of the equipment! A full list of all the lunchtime lectures so far since they first started in October 1997 is listed in this edition of the Newsletter and, for those who like keeping score, of the array of scholars who gave talks, Dr Raymond Gillespie (referred to once by Dr Toby Barnard as a 'victor ludorum … [of] … bibliometric olympics') gave four lectures, while Dr Howard Clarke, Precentor Adrian Empey, Bishop Richard Clarke and Dr Marie Therese Flanagan creep up behind with three lectures each. Indeed such has been the generosity of the lecturers in agreeing to speak that it is worth noting that ten speakers spoke twice!

In an effort to increase the number of lectures which reach the publication stage, it is hoped to focus efforts on a series of more themed lectures which would span an entire year, such as for example, '2000 Years of Christianity', which is now being edited by the former precentor, the Revd Professor John Bartlett, for publication with Columba Press. In this way a series of twelve lectures can be assembled for publication in a larger volume. Just such another example is the series on the archbishops of Dublin and Glendalough entitled 'Episcopal episodes'. The first of the series was held in October 2000 (see Summer 2002 Newsletter), while the second was just recently in November 2003 when the spotlight fell on Bishop Gilla Pátraic (1074-84) and Archbishops Adam Loftus (1567-1605), William King (1703-49) and John Henry Bernard (1915-19). It was held in association with Dublin City Council, whose lectures preceded it in October and took place in the council chamber of the city hall. The topic was 'The Georgian Squares of Dublin', and these featured Parnell, Merrion, Mountjoy and Mountpleasant squares. This coming March 2004 the series will conclude with an examination of the life of the patron saint of Dublin, Archbishop Lorcán Ua Tuathail (Laurence O'Toole) (1162-80), his immediate successor, John Cumin (1181-1212) and more distant Anglican successors, Richard Whately (1831-63) and George Otto Simms (1956-69). The presence of only one bishop in the entire set of twelve lectures reflects the early history of the Dublin diocese, and it was not until 1152 that Dublin was raised to archepiscopal status. Since then two diocesan unions have occurred: one with Glendalough in 1214 (still intact), and another temporary union with Kildare from 1846 to 1976.

As with the first Ceiliúradh festival in 2000 when a number of lectures were held to compliment it, a lunchtime series will be held in association with an exhibition of Irish medieval liturgical manuscripts on display in the cathedral treasury over the summer of 2004. This includes the sumptuously produced 'Christ Church Psalter' which will be brought from the Bodleian library in Oxford. Dr Raymond Gillespie is arranging the speakers, and hopes to include amongst them, an expert on the Christ Church martyrology, Professor Pádraig Ó Riain, whose recent lecture on 'Dublin's oldest book' at the 2003 Friends of Medieval Dublin conference shed exciting new light on the early origins of the cathedral, suggesting that we should look to Cologne, Germany for the basis of the cathedral's early liturgy. We are also delighted to report that these lunchtime lectures will culminate on Saturday 29 May with a joint symposium with the Friends of Medieval Dublin, meeting at Trinity College in the morning, and the cathedral in the afternoon, when the focus will fall entirely on the cathedral manuscripts, most of which will be united for the first time in several centuries.

And if that was not enough, already the Archives committee is planning a large scale series of lectures for the liturgical year of 2004-5 which will look from different perspectives at the place of religion in the cosmos, our natural environment and ourselves. It promises to be peppered with scientific controversies now resolved, social dilemmas still undecided and will perhaps even postulate post-human questions not yet considered …

Stuart Kinsella
17 January 2004