WE ARE accustomed to the uniform cold grey of the ruined churches and castles scattered throughout the Irish countryside. They have their own evocative beauty, but if we could undo the destruction caused by history we would find a warm world of colour in our architecture, with bright murals decorating many medieval walls, and stained glass filling elegant lancet windows. All church windows in Ireland up to the late 18th century were lost to wars, time, the Reformation and above all Cromwell.
St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, is a well-documented case. It was once the proud possessor of The Great Eastern Window, of exquisite 14th-century stained glass, so highly regarded that the papal nuncio, Cardinal Rinuccini, tried to buy it in 1640 for £700, which was then an enormous sum. Bishop Roth of Kilkenny refused to sell, but 10 years later Cromwell’s troops arrived and gave it their usual treatment – smash and burn.
Most of the 19th and 20th centuries were a boom time for church building, therefore also for stained glass, and for a few decades Irish artists such as Harry Clarke and Evie Hone ranked among the best in the world. Although today new churches have become almost as scarce as hen’s teeth, existing churches still commission new windows. For more than 30 years, the art of stained glass designer Patrick Muldowney has been enhancing churches and other buildings at home and abroad. The St Patrick pictured above is from the church of St Bridget, Rosenallis, Co Laois, for which Muldowney recently designed 24 large windows that have turned this dull barn-like space into a vibrant celebration of the Creation (with a nod to Matisse), the seasons, the sacraments and saints Bridget and Patrick. The farming community served by the church in this bucolic midlands parish must relish the familiar seasonal images of men and women ploughing, sowing, and reaping, and contented cows lying in rich summer pasture.
In this window, Muldowney has captured something of the essence of Patrick the man, as he reveals himself in that extraordinary and endearing document, his Confessio, written in his old age. Pádraig McCarthy’s translation, published last year by the Royal Irish Academy, begins: “My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down on by many”.
Instead of the usual image of a Roman Catholic bishop, Muldowney portrays St Patrick as an ordinary, unassuming bare-headed Irishman of his time, attired in typical clothes. His past as a shepherd is suggested by his isolation in the countryside where he stands alone with sheep as his entourage. A large cross, symbol of his missionary success, crowns Cruach Pádraig in the background. A distinctive feature of Muldowney’s style is the strong sense of swirling movement conveyed either by abstract patterns, or by natural phenomena such as the windblown clouds and the racing river in this landscape.
St Patrick had his share of troubles even after he escaped from Ireland and became a priest. His Confessioappears to have been written, at least partly, to refute noisy allegations abroad that the only reason he had stayed so long in Ireland was because he had committed a serious crime when he was young and was afraid to return to Britain: "I testify in truth... that I never had any other reason for returning to that nation from which I had earlier escaped, except the gospel and God's promises". However, he admits that much as he would now like to make a trip home and also to Gaul, he cannot: "I am bound in the Spirit, who assures me that if I were to do this, I would be held guilty".
He is clearly hurt that a friend to whom he had revealed his sin in confidence has made it public, but moving on, he maintains that the one unsolvable mystery of his life is why God has given him greatness in Ireland. He claims: “poverty and calamity are more my style than riches and enjoyment.” Clearly he came to the right country.
What emerges from St Patrick's Confessiois the flawed, honest, outspoken humanity of this man who seems to have been a sort of asylum-seeker as well as Ireland's iconic missionary bishop. His one other document, A Letter to Coroticus, is an angry, anguished appeal for the return of the thousands of Christians abducted from Ireland into slavery across the Channel. Muldowney's only other window of St Patrick shows him as a young slave boy on the hillside looking up to heaven where an angelic being is telling him how to escape. Without Divine assistance, he would have certainly ended his days as a destitute shepherd of sheep, not men. Ironically, this window is in the church at Mosney, Co Meath, beside the camp where hundreds of contemporary asylum-seekers languish for up to six years, the length of time Patrick was a slave.