Famous relic to return to Mayo

Famous relic to return


Edwin McGreal

ONE of the most renowned relics in Irish history is set to return to Mayo, The Mayo News can reveal. The Cross of Cong will come to the National Museum of Country Life in Turlough, Castlebar next year.
At a recent event in Turlough House Mr Pat Wallace, Director of the National Museums, revealed that the Cross of Cong would be brought to Turlough next year as part of the policy of bringing one Connacht relic per year to the Castlebar venue for a temporary exhibition.
Currently the Moylough Belt Shrine, from Sligo is on temporary display in Turlough.
The Cross of Cong dates back to the early 12th century. It was made around 1123 by order of High King of Ireland Turlough O’Connor, father Ruaidhrí O’Connor, the last king to rule Ireland before the Norman invasion, and placed in the Church of Tuam before being transferred to Cong Abbey from where it takes its name.
At one time the Cross was believed to contain a piece of the cross upon which Jesus Christ was crucified.
The Cross was last in Mayo towards the end of the 19th century when Fr Pat Lavelle, the then  Parish Priest of Cong, snatched the cross from the Royal Irish Academy after the cross had been sold there against the wishes of the people of the area and he returned it to Cong. It was later transferred to the National Museum in Dublin.
The shaft of the Cross is thirty inches high, the arms eighteen and three-quarter inches broad, and it is one quarter inches thick. It is of oak, covered with plates of copper. On the central plate of the front at the junction of the cross is a large crystal, through which what was supposed to be the true cross could be seen.
Eighteen jewels were placed at regular intervals, and of these thirteen still remain. Two out of the four beads which originally surrounded the central boss remain. The lower part of the shaft is the head of a grotesque animal, beneath which is the richly decorated ball containing the socket into which the pole was inserted by which the reliquary was borne aloft on processional occasions.