And preached the Trinity.”

Without entering into the controversy concerning the origin of the Round Towers, we will take Cormac’s Chapel to be the most ancient Christian ruin on the Rock.

This stone-roofed church was built, as is generally supposed, by Cormac McCullenan, the famous king-bishop, who began to reign in the year 902. But Petrie is of opinion that we owe this chapel to Cormac MacCarthy, King of Munster, and that it is the Teampul Chormaic of whose solemn consecration by the archbishops and bishops of Munster, in presence of the priests, princes, and people, the

Annals of Innisfallen make mention in 1134.

However this may be, all agree that the chapel is one of the most curious and interesting specimens of early Christian architecture in Ireland. Like all the stone-roofed chapels of the primitive Irish Church, it is divided into nave and chancel, with a tall, square tower at their northern and southern juncture. Within the southern tower, which on the outside is ornamented with six projecting bands, there is a stone staircase leading to apartments above the chapel said to have been occupied by King Cormac. These rooms receive the light through windows which are circular on the outside, but square within, and were heated by hot air, conveyed into them through flues in the wall—the first instance known to us of the use of a method of warming houses generally thought to be of very recent invention. The doorways leading into the chapel are in its northern and southern walls, and are richly adorned with columns, capitals, mouldings, and sculptured figures. On the lintel of the northern entrance there is a group in basso-relievo representing a Centaur in the act of shooting a lion which is about to devour some smaller animal that is crouching at its feet. This is supposed to represent the contest between paganism and Christianity for the possession of Ireland during the repeated invasions of the Danes.

The cathedral stands between the Round Tower and Cormac’s Chapel, embracing them in such way that they all seem to be but parts of one magnificent ruin. This church, which consists of a choir, nave, and transepts, with a square tower in the centre, was

built by Donald O’Brien, King of Limerick, in the year 1169. Its greatest length from east to west is two hundred and ten feet, and the breadth of the transepts is a hundred and seventy feet. It is both a fortress and a church—true symbol of the perfect union of the national and the religious spirit in Ireland. The walls, which are of great thickness, are hollow, so as to afford a safe passage from one part of the building to another in case of danger. At the western end, instead of the great doorway usually found in churches, there is a massive square guard-tower of great height, resembling the fortified castles which are common throughout the kingdom.

This formerly contained a vaulted apartment having no exterior windows, and but one small entrance. Over this vault was the great room of state, which could be reached only by stairs within the walls, barely wide enough to admit one person. The roof was surmounted by battlements and a parapet. The monuments whose ruins crown the Rock of Cashel were all built before the Saxon had set foot in Ireland, and it is impossible to look upon them without admiration for the men who called them into existence. They certainly had little to learn, in architecture at least, from the rude Norman barons who, taking advantage of the internal feuds which distracted the people, overran and subjugated the country.

It was in the year 1101 that Murtogh O’Brien, King of Munster, convened a great assembly of the clergy and people of Ireland at Cashel, “and made such an offering as king never made before him—namely, Cashel of the Kings, which he bestowed on the devout, without

the intervention of a laic or an ecclesiastic, for the use of the religious of Ireland in general.” We have a letter of St. Anselm to Murtogh O’Brien, in which he praises him for his excellent administration of the kingdom. His successor, Cormac MacCarthy, by whom the chapel was built, was the intimate friend of St. Malachi.