Sunday at Clonmacnoise (11/30/08)

There was frost on the fields, the berms of the road, and the north face of roofs we passed as we left Galway on Sunday morning. In the rural communities toward the center of the country, horses and cows gave off visible fogs of breath. By the time we reached Clonmacnoise, at the river Shannon, we stepped off the coach into a crystal clear blue-sky winter morning, quiet except for the kids' low conversation and the mooing of cows up the hill from where we waited for John to signal us into the site.

Truth be told, I am a travel geek who would choose monasteries, churches, museums and tours of historical sites over just about anything else. With Clonmacnoise, I hit the motherlode.

Imagine being St. Ciaran, who founded Clonmacnoise in the mid 6th century. He was interested in learning, and the route to an education was through the church. So as a young man he set off for the western islands and entered the monastic life, got himself educated, and then returned to central Ireland. He picked a spot not far from the river Shannon, accessible mainly along an esker, the gravel ridges that push up through the boggy lands and have formed, over time, the basis for most roads in the region. He created a place for learning and prayer that was not easily attacked by enemies. Smart monk.

Ciaran himself succumbed to one of the plagues before he reached 35. But Clonmacnoise survived all kind of raids and attacks by the usual suspects in Irish history--the tribal groups, the Vikings, the Normans (such disrespectful hooligans, all of them). Over the centuries, new chapels and schools were built at the site, the nobility of Europe sent their sons to be educated there, and a tradition of creating art as prayer was established. It became a pilgrimage destination and a place where kings and bishops and other Very Important Men visited while alive and were buried when they died. One famous grave today is that of King Rory, who died at the end of the 12th century. Of course, this being Ireland, the Brits swooped down in the mid 1500s and ruined the site. But it managed to survive burning towers and looted coffers and the usual slings and arrows, even into the Victorian age, when the graveyard was a popular picnic ground. (The Victorians were a strange lot.)

So anyway, we visited Clonmacnoise (without a picnic basket) on Sunday. It was another of those sublime experiences I am having in Ireland. I got to see the carved stone crosses--the original ones, moved indoors for preservation, as well as the copies outside. I saw the cathedral where King Rory (last name O'Connor, or am I making that up?) is buried and where the pope before the current one visited in, I think, the '80s. I climbed in and around the various stone chapels and outbuildings still standing, but without their wooden roofs. I read marvelous old and not-so-old tombstones in the frosty-grass graveyard overlooking the Shannon. It was just wonderful.

Jo and I tested the whispering door, designed so that priests could hear confessions of plague-ridden pilgrims outside the church rather than let them in where they'd infect everyone. Very cool architectural design element: One person whispers into the corner of the door frame and the sound is carried very clearly to the opposite side of the door frame. Even if I didn't have the plague, if I was a pilgrim who'd traveled long and far to get to Clonmacnoise, I'd opt for the whispering door feature at confession time.

One cool item in the museum display: a lucite box containing all the bones found during excavation that were used by the monks to practice their carving skills before they took to stone. Their carving on the crosses tells stories and is instructional as well as inspirational, so they'd want to get it right. Imagine carving bone and then stone as your life's work. I suppose that if you got to do it at Clonmacnoise, you'd welcome the opportunity.

Of course, mostly men inhabited Clonmacnoise. The nuns who showed up eventually had their chapel about a half-mile from the main cathedral and smaller church buildings. I'd like to know what kind of scut work they were assigned to do for the boys up the road.

But be that as it may, the monastic site is something to behold. We had the good fortune to be touring it alone on Sunday morning, without the distraction of touristy hoardes. The stillness in the cold air on the last day of November brought the mystical nature of the place into focus. I just loved Clonmacnoise. I'm including some pics so you can see why.