The Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church is a popular spot with visitors to the city, especially in February.
The church has never had any difficulty in attracting tourists owing to the ‘Shrine of Saint Valentine’ within it. It is noted by the Church that Pope Gregory XVI gave the relics of Valentine to Fr John Spratt, an Irish Carmelite associated with the church, who visited Rome in the 1830s, making this one of several churches internationally to claim to hold relics relating to Saint Valentine.
Recently though I learned of a statue in this church that tells a pretty interesting story itself, covering centuries in Dublin’s history. The story seems to be a mix of legend and historical fact like so many others in the city. The story relates to ‘Our Lady of Dublin’, a Marian statue carved of oak in the church believed to date to the fifteenth or early sixteenth century.
My interest in this statue was sparked by a newspaper article from the 1830s, published in the Dublin Literary Gazette. “There is now preserved in the Carmelite Church, in Whitefriar Street, Dublin, a very interesting ancient piece of sculpture”, the article noted. “It was originally a distinguished ornament in St. Mary’s Abbbey, at the northside of Dublin, where it was not less an object of religious reverence than of admiration for the beauty of its construction.” The article noted that “Its glory, however, was but of short duration. The storm of the reformation came – the noble religious structure to which it appertained was given to the Earl of Ormonde for stables for his train, and the statue was condemned, and, as it was supposed, consigned to the flames.”
The newspaper claimed that while one half was burnt, “the other half was carried by some devout or friendly hand to a neighbouring Inn yard, where with the face buried in the ground, and the hollow trunk appearing uppermost, it was appropriated, for concealment and safety, to the ignoble purpose of a hog-trough.”
It appears the statue returned to a church in the early years of the eighteenth century, when it was placed inside the Mary’s Lane Chapel, yet according to the 1830s source, it was no longer seen as “an object of admiration to any, except the curious antiquary”, and it claimed that parts of the statue were sold, for example an “ancient silver crown” upon Mary’s head. An Irish Independent article on the statue in the 1960s claimed that when the Jesuits, who maintained the Mary’s Lane Chapel, moved to a new church in Anne Street the statue was simply left behind. The legend of the statue has it that in the 1820s the statue was purchased from an “ordinary sale shop” on Capel Street by Father John Spratt, a story that was repeated in The Irish Press in 1947 when the statue went on display in the National Museum of Ireland, exhibited as an example of a Catholic statue to survive the Penal days in Ireland.This legend was often repeated in Dublin, for example in 1974 when the statue was rededicated in the presence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin and others:
In 1931 a letter writer to The Irish Times highlighted the statue, and rather bizarrely made an argument that a replica of this figure should take pride of place on the O’Connell Street Pillar that had been erected to Admiral Nelson in the early nineteenth entury. There was discussion at the time regarding the removal of the Pillar, but the writer asked:
Would not a replica of this figure be a suitable crown to that noble piece of architecture which all agree the Pillar itself is? The citizens of Dublin, visitors from all parts of the world, the young and hopeful, the old, the weary and heavy-laden, could not fail to find comfort and hope in the contemplation of a figure representing her chosen by God for his purposes towards mankind.
While the exact facts surrounding the statue are more than a little unclear, and the pig trough story is lacking in hard evicence, the fact it is a survivor of the reformation and dates back centuries makes it a fascinating and unique part of Dublin’s history worth taking the time to view regardless.
There’s an article on the statue in the 1942 issue of ‘The Capuchin Annual’ by Catriona MacLeod called ‘Our Lady of Dublin’, pp. 82-91, which might shed some more light on its origins.
Excellent. there are about 10 random issues downstairs, pray for luck.
Sorry,the first comment was too fast.Interesting story,not the only one.Perhaps the pope initiative will bring a reconciliation between catholics and protestans…after all we are all christians.
[…] Our Lady of Dublin, a Black Madonna da Irlanda / Foto: comeheretome.com […]
The statue is properly a ‘Black Madonna’ – one of two found in Ireland (many of which are located in the Languedoc region of the south west of France. One source attributes its carving to no less than Albrecht Durer. They are generally interpreted as representing Mary Magdalen as opposed to the Virgin Mary (the mother of Jesus).