International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Vol. 9, No. 1, March 2005 ( C 2005) DOI: 10.1007/s10761-005-5671-z The I.H.S. Monogram as a Symbol of Catholic Resistance in Seventeenth-Century Ireland Colm J. Donnelly 1 It has been suggested that the presence of religious images and scenes in secular buildings of sixteenth-century date can be viewed as an expression of resistance by the native Irish to English colonial activity in the aftermath of the Munster Plantation (J. A. Delle, 1999, International Journal of Historical Archaeology 3: 11 35). Such images, however, may merely represent a continuation into the early modern period of a Medieval tradition of adorning secular houses with devotional images. If a religious symbol of native Catholic resistance to English colonization and Protestantism in Munster is to be sought then perhaps a more appropriate image would be the I.H.S. monogram a symbol associated with the Counter Reformation and the Jesuits. The paper presents an example of the monogram located within a tower house at Gortnetubbrid in County Limerick, Ireland. KEY WORDS: seventheenth-century Ireland; I.H.S. monogram; Catholicism; Protestantism. INTRODUCTION The Munster Plantation of the 1580s represented a major endeavor by the English Crown to increase state control over the southern province in Ireland. Following a failed rebellion by the Earl of Desmond, his land was confiscated, divided up, and distributed among new English Protestant undertakers, who were to populate their estates with English Protestant settlers. This process resulted in the division of the Munster landscape into a mosaic of estates owned by the New English, and the Catholic Old English and native Irish in a scheme that acted as a forerunner to the more successful Ulster Plantation of the early seventeenth century. James Delle (1999) has sought to identify evidence for collusion and resistance within the plantation process in Munster among the Old English and 1 Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork, School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland BT7 1NN; e-mail: c.j.donnelly@qub.ac.uk. 37 1092-7697/05/0300-0037/0 C 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.
38 Donnelly native Irish by recourse to an examination of the architecture of the period. In this investigation buildings such as Mallow Castle, County Cork, represent the new spatial order introduced by the incoming planters (the New English), while in the decades to follow, colluding Old English and Irish lords constructed houses to conform to or approximate the new spatial order (Delle, 1999, p. 25). Delle further suggests that the continued construction by the native Irish of the tower house a class of castle with its origins in the Late Medieval period using a traditional spatial grammar during the late sixteenth century can be read as a form of resistance against the English colonizers (Delle, 1999, pp. 30 31). To support this argument he draws the reader s attention to Ballynacarriga Castle, County Cork, as an example of a traditional Medieval tower house constructed or renovated in 1585, and with a series of religious scenes carved into the jambs of several of its upper-floor windows. A photograph included with Delle s article (Delle, 1999, p. 31; fig. 12) purports to be Ballynacarriga Castle, but it would seem in fact to be Conna Castle, also in County Cork, a building constructed in either 1554 (Healy, 1988, pp. 405 407) or 1560 (Power et al., 1994, pp. 226 and Plate 4C), and of traditional architectural style, but erected at least a generation prior to the Munster Plantation. A review of the architecture of Ballynacarriga Castle (Healy, 1988, pp. 227 229; Power et al., 1992, pp. 321 322 and Plate 6B) indicates that it is either a late tower house, probably indeed constructed around 1585, or an earlier tower house that was renovated around this time, with architectural elements of sixteenthcentury date added to its fabric. In either case, Ballynacarriga Castle is awkward as an example of a tower house where a traditional spatial grammar was being utilized, and as a consequence it cannot be convincingly viewed as an example of evidence for resistance by the native Irish to the English colonization of Munster. RELIGIOUS ICONS, RESISTANCE, AND THE I.H.S. MONOGRAM The presence of late sixteenth-century religious and iconographic images located on the third floor of the tower house at Ballynacarriga, however, does warrant consideration and might be viewed as evidence to support Delle s argument, but a degree of care must be exercised here. We need to be sure that what is being presented as evidence of resistance is not merely evidence for the continuation into the early modern era of a Medieval tradition of adorning secular houses with devotional images. The presence of religious drawing and carvings in this case the Crucification and the Blessed Virgin (Healy, 1988, p. 227; Power et al., 1992, pp. 321 322) on the masonry of buildings would appear to have been a common Medieval practice, and one that was not restricted to Ireland. For example, the exceptionally well-preserved, fourteenth-century wall paintings in the Great Chamber at Longthorpe Tower, Cambridgeshire, England, include a wide variety of religious images (Rouse, 1989:3 14). Morton (2004) has recently brought this hitherto neglected aspect of Medieval Ireland to academic attention
The I.H.S. Monogram as a Symbol of Catholic Resistance 39 and she reports that, despite poor levels of preservation, there are an estimated 65 sites where examples of wall paintings survive. This number hints that wall paintings were a common feature in Medieval buildings, with most belonging to the period between the early twelfth century and the fifteenth century, and a few examples being a little later (Morton, 2004,p. 346). While the majority of the wall paintings are to be found in ecclesiastical settings, secular examples have been found at a number of castles, including four tower houses (Morton, 2004, p. 315). The images used in these secular tower house environments include religious scenes, such as the passion scenes and St. Michael Weighing the Souls recorded at Ardamullivan Castle, County Galway, and the martyrdom of St. Sebastian at Ballyportry Castle, County Clare (Morton, 2004, pp. 342, 346). Given this, if a religious symbol of early modern resistance to English colonization and Protestantism in Munster is to be sought then perhaps a more appropriate emblem would be the I.H.S. monogram (or Jesus monogram) since this was a symbol of the Counter-Reformation associated with the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits. The symbol originated in a Medieval cult of the Holy Name of Jesus as a Latinized version of the Greek abbreviation I H (E O Y) E for J E (S O U) S. The letters have also been interpreted (with conscious intention of enriching the meaning) as Iesus Hominum Salvator for Jesus Savior of Mankind, and In Hac Salus, In This (Cross) Salvation (Bryce and Roberts, 1993, p. 369). Bryce and Roberts (1993, pp. 363 372, 1996, pp. 899 909) have discussed the presence of this evidently Roman Catholic image associated with secular buildings in northeast Scotland, notably those placed on the walls of castles and houses. The symbols in Scotland were dated to the mid-seventeenth century onwards, when the return of Catholic exiles in the latter part of that century caused a resurgence of religious imagery, with their latest example dated to the mid-eighteenth century. The I.H.S. monogram is also to be found in Ireland. In County Limerick which formed part of the confiscated Desmond estates four mid-seventeenthcentury carvings were recorded by Lenihan (1866). The earliest of the four examples dated to 1633 and was carved on a mantelpiece (or chimney-piece) in a house in Mary Street in Limerick City (Lenihan, 1866, p. 152, n. 1). The second example recorded the date 1638 on a limestone mantelpiece placed in the Desmond hall at Newcastle West. This chimney-piece originally came from a house in Kilmallock and was removed from there and set in Lacy s Castle in Ballingarry, before being removed to Newcastle West (Lenihan, 1866, p. 737). A chimneypiece in a house in Broad Street in the city s Irishtown had a monogram carved on it, accompanied with the date 1640 (Lenihan, 1866, p. 357, n. 4), while the last of the early seventheenth-century monograms dated to 1645 and was inserted in a wall of the old hospital in the city (Lenihan, 1866, p. 371). Gortnetubbrid Castle in the same county is a tower house whose architecture betrays the fact that it belongs to the last stages of the Late Medieval building tradition (Donnelly, 1999, pp. 31 33), and it was probably constructed in the late sixteenth century. As is the
40 Donnelly case for the majority of Irish tower houses, our knowledge of its early history is limited to a few terse references in the historical documentation (Westropp, 1906 1907, p. 236), but in the 1650s the castle was used as a barracks for Cromwellian troopers, while in the Williamite Wars of the late seventeenth century it was held by a Catholic Jacobite garrison (Spellissy and O Brien, 1989, p. 158). In the north wall at second floor level within the building there is a large mullioned and transomed window, the western jamb of which has a series of symbols incised into it, the central inscription of which seems to be that of an I.H.S. monogram (Fig. 1). The dating evidence from elsewhere in the county and from Scotland might suggest that the carving at Gortnetubbrid was added to the tower house s preexisting window jamb during the mid-seventeenth century or later. The carving, however, does not have the same finesse as the Scottish examples depicted in either of Bryce and Robert s articles (Robert, 1993, p. 369, fig. 4, 370, Fig. 5, 1996, p. 901, fig. 2) and it lacks the precise detail and clearcut arrangement of stylized imagery which is shown in the Scottish monograms. There are two possible explanations for this. First, the monogram may have been deliberately carved in a cryptic style to prevent its detection by non-catholic eyes. Second, it might be an early example of the use of the monogram, perhaps dating to the early seventeenth century, at a date when the later stylized format for the use of the symbols had yet to develop. What is of interest is the fact that the monogram did not fall prey to iconoclastic attentions, especially when it is considered that the tower house was used as a barrack for the New Model Army during the early 1650s (Westropp, 1906 1907, p. 236, 1907, p. 164). It is possible that the monogram at Gortnetubbrid was concealed from the view of the Cromwellian soldiers garrisoned at the tower house perhaps by some form of wooden casement and hence its survival, but Bryce and Roberts (1993, p. 370) have noted a late sixteenth-century Roman Catholic coffin slab at Cairnie Kirk in Strathbobie which was mutilated by Calvinists who, although they vented their fury on the coffin slab, did not destroy its central feature, a figure exhibiting its heart. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was popularized by the Jesuits in the late sixteenth century. Tombs of this kind were liable to suffer damage when the Calvinist party took to arms, although at Cairnie the iconoclasts cannot have recognized a central part of the symbolism as Catholic (Bryce and Roberts, 1993, p. 363). Another example is the crosslet or cruciform gunloop which they have identified at a number of Catholic houses and which they tentatively suggest as a further Post-Reformation symbol of Catholic resistance in Scotland. Unlike the I.H.S. monogram, however, the gunloop does not appear to have aroused any obvious hostility. This was a case of concealment over assertiveness for symbols are only provocative to those who understand their meaning (Bryce and Roberts, 1996, p. 908). It can also be suggested, however, that the symbol at Gortnetubbrid may have been carved when the castle housed a Catholic Jacobite garrison around 1690. Its resonance as a symbol of resistance would certainly be increased if it were to belong to this context, and the image could be viewed as a statement
The I.H.S. Monogram as a Symbol of Catholic Resistance 41 Fig. 1. The monogram incised on the western jamb of the window in the north wall at second floor level within Gortnetubbrid Castle, County Limerick.
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