Fonsie Mealy Auctioneers RARE BOOK & COLLECTORS SALE 6th & 7th, December 2022

108 IMPERFECTIONS NOT STATED Fonsie Mealy’s Est. 1934 An extremely fine Replica composed of wood, plaster of Paris, gilding and mixed media, c ommissioned around 1850 by Sir WilliamWilde and presented by him to the 3 rd Earl of Dunraven, this life-size replica of the Shrine of St. Manchan conveys well the magnificence of one of the greatest examples of twelfth-century metalwork to have survived in Ireland. Constructed of wood, Plaster of Paris with gilding and other media, the replica was displayed at Adare Manor for over a century and was included in the sale of the contents of Adare in 1982. The original medieval shrine is still preserved at the parish church at Boher in Co. Offaly, close to Lemanaghan, where, in the seventh century, St. Manchan founded his monastery. In the 1874 Journal of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, the Rev. James Graves gave a detailed account of the Shrine of St. Manchan. Dating from around 1130, it is the largest surviving medieval reliquary in Ireland, and with its combination of Hiberno- Romanesque and late Viking decoration, can be compared to the Cross of Cong. It is likely that both were commissioned by Turlough O’Connor, High King of Ireland, and made at the monastery at Clonmacnoise. In the Annals of the Four Masters, there is an entry for the year 1166: “The shrine of St. Manchan, of Maethail, was covered by Ruaidhri Ua Conchobhair, and an embroidering of gold was carried over it by him, in as good a style as a relic was ever covered in Ireland.” Ruaidhri, along with his father, was buried at Clonmacnoise. Making such an elaborate reliquary took time, and the fifty or so gilded figures would have been added in the years after it was first made. According to the Annals, Manchan died in 664 AD, and so it was almost five hundred years before his bones were placed in the reliquary. By the early nineteenth century, when first described scientifically by George Petrie, the reliquary, having suffered the vicissitudes of time, was in the care of the Mooney family, of the Doon in Co. Offaly. Petrie described it in his notebook at the time. “In form this venerable relic resembles that usually belonging to the ancient Ciborium [altar canopy], and generally represented at the top of the ancient stone crosses. The material is yew but covered over with brass work and with inlaying of ivory, and enamelling. On each of its two sides are crosses, formed in the centre and extremities by five large cups or paterae; beneath these were placed a range of figures in bass-relief formed of brass also, and separate from each other. These figures have been lost from one side altogether, but eleven still remain on the other. They are rude in design but beautiful in execution, like all the other parts of the work work, and their costume, which is the same in all, affords one of the most valuable existing examples of the dress of those early times. They have all the kilt, and cloak fastened on the breast with a large brooch. The head covered with a cap or baired, and the feet with brogues. . . “ Petrie was a close friend of the Earl of Dunraven, as was Margaret Stokes, who, In her Early Christian Art in Ireland describes the reliquary as being twenty-four inches long, fifteen inches wide and resembling the roof of a house or chapel. Today, it is largely as detailed by Petrie and Stokes, still retaining its four bronze feet, and with large rings at the corners. In medieval times, on the saint’s feast day of January 24th, the reliquary was carried in procession, held aloft by poles passed through these rings. Restored and conserved, the Shrine of St. Manchan is 610 “The Adare Manor, ”Replica of the Shrine of St. Manchan