{"id":11,"date":"2010-10-22T13:52:28","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T13:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=11"},"modified":"2015-09-26T13:51:07","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T13:51:07","slug":"history-priory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/history-priory\/","title":{"rendered":"History of the Priory"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tallagh-castle\"<\/a>The origins of the name Tallaght are lost in legend. It s said that the Partholonians, the earliest invaders of Ireland, who settled in the plain between the hills and the sea, were later wiped out by plague, and were buried in the district. Hence it became known as \u2018the plague-memorial of the people of Partholoin, or in Irish, \u2018T\u00e1mhleacht muintire Parthol\u00f3in\u2019, a name later anglicised as Tallaght.<\/p>\n

Tallaght first enters history in the third quarter of the eighth century with the foundation of its monastery by Saint Maelruan. Maelruan was the outstanding figure of the 8th-century reform movement in Celtic monasticism, and Tallaght was its most important centre.<\/p>\n

We have no life of the saint, who died in 792, but he seems to have made a deep impression on the Irish Church of his time. He was the outstanding figure in the 8th-century reform of Celtic monasticism, and Tallaght was its most important centre. We have valuable information about the life of the monastery in the Rule, Penitential and Customs of Tallaght. Other valuable documents from this foundation are the Martyrology of Aengus, the Martyrology of Tallaght and the Stowe Missal.
Three years after Maelruan\u2019s death, the Vikings sacked the monastery of Lambay, and from that day forward one great foundation after another was pillaged and burned. Tallaght\u2019s turn came in 811. Another monastery subsequently rose in its stead, but it was the end of the golden age of Gaelic monasticism.<\/p>\n

Tallaght survived as a rural bishopric down to 1152. The last mention of Saint Maelruan\u2019s monastery is in 1125, and in 1179 Saint Laurence O\u2019Toole, the last Irishman to be Archbishop of Dublin before the Reformation, received the grant of Tallaght, with all its possessions, to the See of Dublin, from Pope Alexander III during the Lateran Council.
After the Norman invasion, Tallaght, like the See to which it belonged, passed into the hands of Foreign prelates, and it was to suffer in many an Irish raid on the Pale. In 1310 the bailiffs of Tallaght obtained a royal charter to fortify their town with a wall, and fourteen years later Archbishop Alexander de Bykenore, who was also Justiciar (Viceroy) of Ireland, set about building a castle on the site of Maelruan\u2019s monastery. Henceforth Tallaght Castle, with the neighbouring castles at Tymon and Drimnagh, was to be an important link in the line of forts defending the Pale. <\/p>\n

From the middle of the 17th century the castle appears to have gone into ruin, and in 1729 Archbishop Hoadly decided to demolish all of the structure except one tower, and this tower still stands as part of the Priory. In place of the castle he built an archiepiscopal house.
The last of the archbishops to reside at Tallaght was Lord John Beresford, who found the house so dilapidated that he had an act of parliament passed in 1821, ridding the Sea of Dublin of the responsibility of maintaining a country seat. In the following year Archbishop Magee leased the property to Major Palmer, Inspector General of Irish Prisons, on condition that he demolish the house, lest it ever became a monastery. Palmer dismantled all but the mediaeval tower, and from the materials built himself a house where the retreat house now stands. The demesne then passed to Sir John Lentaigne, and he sold it to the Dominicans in 1856.<\/p>\n

The first Dominicans settled in Ireland in 1224, and soon the Order spread throughout the country to establish houses in all the principal towns and cities. Three times during the turbulent and troubled history of Ireland \u2013 in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries \u2013 the Dominicans in Ireland were uprooted, hounded, hanged, banished and imprisoned. By God\u2019s grace, however, the Order survived, and the founding of Tallaght was a milestone in its revival. Since the penal days the friars had to seek their training and education overseas, and one of the centres in which they had found refuge was the priory of Corpo Santo in Lisbon, which had been founded by Irish Dominicans in 1615. A portion of the Lisbon College was sold in 1856 and the proceeds of the sale were used to found Tallaght.<\/p>\n

The first friars lived in Major Palmer\u2019s house (now incorporated in the retreat house). They were Fathers Thomas Mullins, Thomas Rush and Thomas Burke, the renowned preacher. Their choir was in the ground-floor of the mediaeval tower. In May 1864 Fr Goodman, the Provincial, laid the foundation stone of the priory. Cardinal McCabe laid the foundation stone of the church in October 1882, and it was dedicated to \u2018The Immaculate Virgin Mary of the Rosary\u2019 by Archbishop Walsh in October 1886, as a memorial to Fr Tom Burke, who had died three years before, and lies buried in the cloister there. It was a fitting memorial to one whom his contemporaries had acclaimed as the greatest preacher in the English-speaking world, and whose zeal for full Dominican observance is still an inspiration. The wing connecting the church and tower was completed in 1903. Another wing and a library block were completed in 1958. The latter is now the headquarters of the Priory Institute and Distance Learning Programme (www.prioryinstitute.com). <\/p>\n

\"StMaelruainsTree\"<\/a>In time the 1882 church became too small for the fast increasing population, and in the early 1970s it was extended and adapted to the new liturgical reforms. Central Tallaght became a parish in September 1972, but soon had to set about building three more churches: St Dominic\u2019s (1975), St Aengus\u2019s (1975) and St Martin\u2019s (1976), each with its own resident Dominican team. Finally, St Mary\u2019s and its three daughter churches were divided into four parishes in 1985.<\/p>\n

In the foyer of the Retreat House is a painting by Turlough O\u2019Donnell (2007), depicting the renowned \u2018Maelruan\u2019s Tree\u2019 in the Priory garden. Walnut trees were introduced into Ireland in 1760, and Maelruan\u2019s must have been one of the earliest. It was struck by lightning in 1797 and split into several parts. Happily it survived, the various parts took root, and it still produces an annual crop of walnuts. To generations of Dominicans, and to our visitors, it is synonymous with Tallaght, surviving from another world and reaching out to the unknown future. Its long life-story puts us in mind of the ancient monastery that flourished here, and symbolises \u201cthe hope that is not deceptive.\u201d The story is by no means ended. Maelruan\u2019s Tree is an image of the immense development that is modern Tallaght. It is a story of hope, of resilience in the face of difficulties, of fecundity beyond reckoning. Tallaght is still a place where many – residents and visitors alike – follow the ancient monastic prescription, quaerere Deum: to seek God.<\/p>\n

(This text is taken from www.dominicans.ie, 2010)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The origins of the name Tallaght are lost in legend. It s said that the Partholonians, the earliest invaders of Ireland, who settled in the plain between the hills and the sea, were later wiped out by plague, and were buried in the district. Hence it became known as \u2018the plague-memorial of the people of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2865,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/2865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}