The most striking feature, however, of this chancel was the arch opening on the nave, “which is perhaps the most magnificent specimen of its kind remaining in Ireland.” It is composed of no less than six semicircular, concentric, recessed arches of which the innermost is sixteen feet wide and fifteen feet high. The rectangular capitals are richly sculptured in a variety of interlaced traceries, and those surmounting the two jambs are adorned with curious grotesque heads with broad flat faces. The imposts too are richly sculptured in scrolls and other striking designs, and are carried along the face of the wall as tablets. The bases consist of a double plinth and torus moulding, but are otherwise unornamented as befits the solid and majestic character of the building. The arch mouldings display many varieties of ornament—the nebule, diamond, frette, and chevron—and show how the Celtic imagination loved to revel in a great variety of ornamental forms. All the ornamental parts of this peerless chancel arch are executed in red sandstone, which has withstood wonderfully well the wear and tear of time and moisture in that damp atmosphere.
Where did Turlough get the workmen whose teeming brains devised, and whose cunning hands executed this beautiful arch? It has been said that the workmen who built the grand Cistercian monasteries during the latter part of this twelfth century were imported from France and England. Well, be it so. But no one can deny that it was Celtic artists who built and adorned Cormac’s Chapel and Tuam Cathedral; and there has been nothing finer executed in any Cistercian monastery in Ireland or England either. These great monasteries were larger and grander if you will, but certainly not more artistic nor more beautiful.
The ruins of the abbey of Cong are still to be seen and speak for themselves. The ‘neck’ of land on which it was built between the two lakes, Lough Mask and Lough Corrib, gave its name to the abbey. It was rebuilt by the Augustinians under the patronage of Turlough O’Conor, in all probability between the years A.D. 1120 and 1130. The Cistercians about the same period, A.D. 1128, were introduced into England, but had not yet come to Ireland; so that Cong is the connecting link between the indigenous monasteries of the past that grew up with the growth of the Irish Church, and the houses of the foreign orders introduced during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Imar of Armagh formally adopted the Rule of St. Augustine, about the year A.D. 1126, and hence these ancient Irish monasteries came to be called Augustinian houses; but as a matter of fact they were in all respects as purely Celtic and as racy of the soil as the Irish race and the Irish tongue. The Cistercians who came to Mellifont about the year A.D. 1142, were really the first ‘foreign’ order that came to Ireland, and were followed about a century later by the Dominicans and Franciscans. The abbey of Cong was not designed, or executed, or tenanted by any foreigners. It was a purely Celtic house. It was designed most probably by some member of that talented family—the O’Duffys—that afterwards ruled over it for many generations. It was built and adorned under their superintendence by native workmen; and Turlough O’Conor and his unhappy son Roderick, both of whom, especially the latter, loved Cong much, seem to have contributed the greater part of the expense necessary for its erection.
It was built on a scale of great magnificence. The abbey church was 140 feet in length. The east window consisted of three long narrow lights, not lancet-headed, but semicircular, for the Romanesque had no lancets, and where they appear in the Romanesque they are always later insertions.
It has been alleged that the pointed door-arches of Cong show a departure from the Irish Romanesque and indicate foreign origin and a later date than the first quarter of the twelfth century. Even supposing that these arches are coeval with the monastery, a glance at Sir W. Wilde’s illustration will show that they are not lancet-headed like the pure Gothic, but rather indicate the first step of the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic, which was just beginning at this time to take place in Ireland. The most characteristic features of the existing group of ruins are to be found in the western façade, which appears to have opened on the cloister of the abbey. “It is 80 feet in length and contains a doorway, and two windows with circular arches; also two large and most elaborately ornamented lancet-headed doors, with undercut chevrons along the deep mouldings of the arches, that spring from clustered pillars, the floral capitals of which—all of different patterns—present us with one of the finest specimens of twelfth century stone-work in Ireland.”[408]
With this beautiful abbey are associated many interesting historic memories. It was to this lonely but sweet retreat that Ireland’s last High-king retired to die. He had drawn a sword that could not save his country and his race from the hated dominion of the stranger; he had seen his own children rise up in rebellion against him, and engage in the very face of their country’s enemies in fratricidal strife; he had seen his best-beloved son, O’Conor of Moenmoy, whose bold heart and strong arm were his country’s only hope, slain by “a party of his own people, and of his own tribe;” and now there was nothing left for him but to end an inglorious life by a pious and penitential death. He retired to Cong in A.D. 1183. After the death of his eldest and bravest son, he sought once more to regain his authority in Connaught. But he soon found that
“Authority forgets a dying king,
Laid widow’d of the power in his eye
That bow’d the will.”
He returned once more to his monastic retreat, and there in the year A.D. 1198, “he died amongst the Canons of Cong, after exemplary penance, victorious over the world and the devil. His body was conveyed to Clonmacnoise, and interred at the north side of the altar of the great church.”
In Metal-work the O’Duffys of Tuam and Cong have left us, at least, one memorial that will never perish. The Processional Cross of Cong, the Chalice of Ardagh, and the Tara Brooch, are regarded by all competent judges as the highest effort, each in its own way, of the Celtic art in metal-work. No one knows anything of the Tara Brooch except that it was found in the year 1850 on the sea shore near Drogheda. Neither does the Ardagh Chalice bear the name of the king or workman by whom it was made, nor ask a prayer for his soul’s welfare. We can, however, with tolerable certainty, trace its history; and we shall find that it is a product of the same school of art which produced the remarkable Cross of Cong, to which we now invite the reader’s attention.
It appears that this beautiful Cross of Cong was made originally for the Church of Tuam. It is very probable that some western prelate was present at the first General Council of Lateran, held in A.D. 1123, and that he brought home with him a relic of the true Cross, which, as we are informed in the Annals of Innisfallen, was enshrined in that year by Turlough O’Conor. “A portion of the true Cross came into Ireland and was enshrined at Roscommon by Turlough O’Conor.” The following inscriptions are found on the Cross itself, and corroborate the statement in the Annals of Innisfallen:—