Cross of Cong - History

History

According to Irish annals, supported by the inscriptions on the cross itself (which refer to known historical personages), the cross was made in County Roscommon. In the annals, the cross is sometimes called in the Irish language "an Bacall Buidhe", which translates as "the yellow staff" — a reference to its golden colour.

The cross was commissioned by King Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair.

In A.D. 1123, according to the Irish annals, a small piece of the purported True Cross arrived in Ireland from Rome and was enshrined at Roscommon. The cross then appears to have moved to Tuam. At an early date, probably in the mid-12th century, the cross was moved from Tuam to Cong Abbey, an abbey founded by the Augustinians on a much earlier Christian site.

In later centuries, the exact location of the cross in the Cong area is uncertain but it appears to be have been hidden by locals and ecclesiastics in their homes because of religious persecution against Catholics, which reached its peak in Ireland under the penal laws.

In 1680, Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh, the historian from County Galway, saw the cross (which he referred to as the "Abbot of Cong's Cross") and copied inscriptions from it. Edward Lhuyd of Wales, Ó Flaithbheartaigh's friend, recorded this fact in his "Archaeologia Britannica", published in 1707.

In the 19th century, George Petrie, the Irish antiquarian, was aware that Lhuyd's book mentioned the cross, though he partly misinterpreted the details. In 1822, Petrie had seen the cross himself when he passed through Cong on a tour he made of Connacht. Petrie told his friend, Professor James MacCullagh (of Trinity College, Dublin), about the cross and of its historical value. MacCullagh, using his own money, though not a rich man, afterwards purchased the cross from the Parish Priest of Cong — Fr. Michael Waldron. Fr. Waldron had succeeded Fr. Patrick Prendergast as Parish Priest of Cong, when Fr. Prendergast died in 1829, and discovered the cross amongst his belongings. Fr. Patrick Prendergast, an Augustinian, was also considered to be the last Abbot of Cong Abbey. Fr. Prendergast had discovered the cross hidden in an old oak chest kept in a house in the village, where it was said to have been kept since about the mid-17th century (the time of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland). Fr. Prendergast then kept the cross in his house, named 'Abbotstown', located on a farm in the townland of Ballymagibbon (or Ballymacgibbon), which is close to Cong. William Wilde, who was from this part of Ireland, had seen the cross in his childhood in Fr. Prendergast's possession and stated that at that time (the early 19th century) the cross was used at Cong chapel at the festivals of Christmas and Easter, when it was placed on the altar during mass. MacCullagh presented the cross in 1839 to the Royal Irish Academy, where it was for a long period one of its most treasured artefacts.

About 1890, the cross was transferred to the newly opened National Museum of Science and Art, Dublin, which was the predecessor of the National Museum of Ireland, and remained in the same building when the National Museum of Ireland was founded in 1925. Today, the cross remains in the National Museum of Ireland, although it was on display in the National Museum of Ireland - Country Life, Turlough Park, Castlebar, from 31 March 2010 for one year, while the Dublin museum was being renovated. This was the first time the cross had left Dublin since the 1830s.