Christ Church Cathedral, more formally The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (Irish: Ardeaglais Theampall Chríost), is the cathedral of the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough and the cathedral of the ecclesiastical province of the United Provinces of Dublin and Cashel in the (Anglican) Church of Ireland. It is situated in Dublin, Ireland, and is the elder of the capital city's two medieval cathedrals, the other being St Patrick's Cathedral.
The cathedral was founded in the early 11th century under the Viking king Sitric Silkenbeard. It was rebuilt in stone in the late 12th century under the Norman potentate Strongbow, and considerably enlarged in the early 13th century, using Somerset stones and craftsmen. A partial collapse in the 16th century left it in poor shape and the building was extensively renovated and rebuilt in the late 19th century, giving it the form it has today, including the tower, flying buttresses, and distinctive covered footbridge.
Overview and history
Overview
Christ Church is officially claimed as the seat (cathedra) of both the Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic archbishops of Dublin. In law, and in fact, it has been the cathedral of only the Church of Ireland's Archbishop of Dublin since the Irish Reformation. Though nominally claiming Christ Church as his cathedral, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin uses St Mary's in Marlborough Street in Dublin as his pro-cathedral (acting cathedral).
Christ Church Cathedral is located in the former heart of medieval Dublin, next to Wood Quay at the end of Lord Edward Street. However, a major dual carriageway building scheme around it separated it from the original medieval street pattern which once surrounded it, with its original architectural context (at the centre of a maze of small buildings and streets) lost due to road-building and the demolition of the older residential quarter at Wood Quay. As a result, the cathedral now appears dominant in isolation behind new civil offices along the quays, out of its original medieval context. The cathedral is used as the setting for filming from time to time.
Christ Church is the only one of the three cathedrals or acting cathedrals which can be seen clearly from the River Liffey.
First cathedral
The cathedral was founded probably sometime after 1028 when King Sitric Silkenbeard, the Hiberno-Norse king of Dublin made a pilgrimage to Rome. The first bishop of this new Dublin diocese was Dúnán or Donat, and the diocese was at that time a small island of land surrounded by the much larger Diocese of Glendalough, and was for a time answerable to Canterbury rather than to the Irish Church hierarchy. The church was built on the high ground overlooking the Viking settlement at Wood Quay and Sitric gave the "lands of Baldoyle, Raheny and Portrane for its maintenance." Of the four old Celtic Christian churches reputed to have existed around Dublin, only one, dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, lay within the walls of the Viking city, and so Christ Church was one of just two churches for the whole city.
The cathedral was originally staffed by secular clergy. The second Bishop of Dublin introduced the Benedictines. In 1163, Christ Church was converted to a priory of the Regular Order of Arrosian Canons (Reformed Augustinian Rule) by the second Archbishop of Dublin, later saint, Laurence O'Toole, who adhered to the rule himself; it was subsequently headed by an Augustinian prior, who ranked as the second ecclesiastical figure of the diocese, and not a dean, until re-establishment in 1541. This priory, the Priory of the Holy Trinity, became the wealthiest religious house in Ireland, holding over of property in County Dublin alone, most notable of which were the three home farms held at Grangegorman, Glasnevin and Clonken or Clonkene, now known as Deansgrange.
Norman period
Henry II attended the Christmas service at the cathedral in 1171. According to the cathedral guidebook, this was the first time Henry received Holy Communion following the murder of Thomas Becket by Henry's knights in Canterbury.
In the 1180s, Strongbow and other Norman magnates helped to fund a complete rebuilding of Christ Church, initially a wooden building, in stone, comprising the construction of a choir, choir aisles and transepts, the crypt and chapels to St. Edmund and St. Mary and St. Lô.
A chapel to St Laurence O'Toole was added in the 13th century and much of the extant nave was built in the 1230s. Its design was inspired by the architecture of the English western school of Gothic, and its wrought stones—of a Somersetshire oolite—were sculpted and laid by craftsmen from the same area.