The monastery of Clonmacnoise — one of the most dramatically sited in Ireland — stands on the eastern shore of the River Shannon just below the town of Athlone. Its location is no accident. This is the point at which the principal east–west route in ancient Ireland crossed the Shannon, itself the great north–south artery. (It can never be repeated often enough that water-borne transport was easier than overland until the proper metalling of roads in the early nineteenth century.) It is also close to the provincial boundary between Leinster and Connacht — the river being a very obvious part of that boundary — and as a consequence it drew patronage from both provinces. A number of Connacht kings are buried there.
The foundation is usually dated to the 540s, barely a century after St Patrick. Nothing survives from the early centuries; the buildings were almost certainly timber-built and perishable. Only when stone structures are first erected, from the tenth century, does the site assume the rough appearance with which we are familiar.
The spread of monastic settlements went hand in hand with the spread of literacy, grounded in the centrality of the Bible. Gradually, the influence of literate scholars — most of them initially in holy orders — embraced the secular world of the law. Clerical influence on the law was very marked from the eighth century. The older, customary law was gradually but decisively replaced by written codes. Moreover, it changed in nature, becoming more severe. Traditionally, the unwritten law had permitted material restitution even in some cases of murder. Clerical influence — clearly drawing from Biblical precedents — was much harsher. Kings were now encouraged to eschew milder forms of sanction in favour of capital punishment for capital crimes.
This is one of the less obvious consequences of early Irish monasticism. There are numerous examples of capital punishment. At Clonmacnoise, in the early eleventh century, a thief who had attempted to steal some of the monastery’s treasures was unceremoniously hanged by the community. He had been handed over to them by the local king.
The early monasteries were centres of learning and piety, but they were also prone to human rivalries and jealousies. Clonmacnoise saw itself, and was seen, as a rival to the ecclesiastical primacy of Armagh. As early as the seventh century, the bishop of Armagh complained of Clonmacnoise appropriating foundations, previously under the protection of Armagh, that had been abandoned due to a devastating plague. In this, the diffuse nature of ecclesiastical jurisdiction — with no agreed central authority or first among equals, despite Armagh’s claims — echoed the absence of a central political authority. No high king; no archbishop. Armagh enjoyed the prestige of its Patrician connection, but not the enforceable primacy that it asserted over the rest of the Irish church.
The Viking depredations of the late eighth and early ninth centuries affected Clonmacnoise as surely as they did other wealthy monastic targets. It was raided in 835, just as the foundation was recovering from an even more devastating raid two years earlier at the hands of the king of Munster, who killed half the community and destroyed its buildings by fire. The Vikings were back in 845, attacking monastic sites all along the Shannon, and once again Clonmacnoise was torched, although the Gaelic annals (or at least a version of them composed centuries later as a propaganda vehicle for Brian Ború) gleefully report the wife of the Viking chieftain draping herself in suggestive and lewd poses on the high altar.
The monastic enclosure that lies in a largely ruinous state on the banks of the river began to take permanent shape with the erection of the first stone buildings in the early tenth century. These were the smallest and largest churches on the site, respectively Temple Ciarán — reputed to be the burial place of the saint — and the so-called cathedral. This latter term should not confuse us: it was a small church (albeit it the principal one within the enclosure, ergo the inflated name) typical of Irish sites, not at all the large, imposing structure one immediately thinks of in a comparative European context. Over time, other small temples were added, as well as two round towers and three high crosses.
The high crosses, of which the Cross of the Scriptures is the finest, were parables in stone, representations in relief of Biblical and scriptural scenes, often employing animal symbols. In this, their purpose was similar to that of the stained-glass windows in Gothic cathedrals: offering a version of Christian instruction to an illiterate laity. The round towers were basically campaniles — bell towers — although they also served as treasuries, boltholes and lookout posts. These latter functions were secondary to a round tower’s primary purpose. The mistaken belief that they were mainly places of refuge is anachronistic, if only because they were ill-suited for that purpose, being natural flues and therefore death traps for those inside if a fire was set at the bottom. But the further error in all this proceeds from the fact that the round towers date from a period when Viking raids on monastic sites had either abated or stopped altogether.
Round towers are Ireland’s most distinctive contribution to early medieval European architecture. The two at Clonmacnoise, the smaller of which is well preserved, are by no means the most dramatic examples in the country, although their location is unrivalled for its drama.
Following the arrival of the Normans after 1169, Clonmacnoise gradually declined in fortune. Although it had developed as a proto-town, with tradesmen and other skilled laity dependent on it and available to it, the twelfth-century ecclesiastical reforms — which established the four provinces and a European-style diocesan system — bypassed it. As a result, it lost the patronage of kings and aristocrats which had sustained its wealth and prestige for seven centuries. It finally fell victim to the fury of the Reformation: an English army sailed down river from its garrison at Athlone and laid it waste in 1552.
In short, Clonmacnoise had been a place of some importance in Ireland for just under a thousand years. It seems utterly remote in time from us now, in its semi-ruinous state. But it has only been like this for half the time it was in its pomp.
