Press Releases
Church of Ireland Notes from ‘The Irish Times’
Saturday 5 November 2011
Conference on Synod of Ráith Bressail
Next Friday a major conference to mark the 900th anniversary of the Synod of Ráith Bressail will begin and will continue until the following Sunday. The conference is held under the auspices of the School of History, UCC, and the County Tipperary Historical Society and will take place at University College Cork and St Patrick’s College, Thurles, Co Tipperary.
A stellar cast of speakers includes Professor Padraig O Riain (UCC) Professor Marie Therese Flanagan (QUB), Professor John Gillingham (LSE) and the Bishop of Cashel & Ossory, the Rt Revd Michael Burrows. The conference will be preceded by the launch of Professor O Riain’s A Dictionary of Irish Saints, published by Four Courts Press, which promises to be an invaluable work of reference.
The twelfth century was a period of profound change in Ireland. New ideals of political and ecclesiastical power were explored as part of the attempt to transform the Irish Church and society. This conference presents the latest research into these developments, and into the changing modes of artistic expression and patronage, concentrating on the synod of Ráith Bressail of AD 1111. Scholars will discuss these changes with special reference to the synod which utterly changed the structure of the centrally important institution of the Irish Church, changes that lasted almost a thousand years and so had an enormous impact on Irish culture, society and even identity.
‘Crisis and recovery: Church and society in twelfth–century Ireland’ marks the 900th anniversary of the synod of Ráith Bressail, and follows ‘Reform and renewal: Ireland and Europe in the twelfth century’, a conference held in 2001 to commemorate the nine–hundredth anniversary of the first synod of Cashel.
Tomorrow (Sunday) morning Passionist priest, author and broadcaster, Fr Brian D’Arcy, will speak in Trinity College Chapel as part of the Chaplaincy’s ‘Questioning Faith’ series of Sunday morning addresses in the context of the 10.45 am Choral Eucharist. At Evensong in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral the Bishop of Cork will preside at the installation of the Revd Rupert Moreton as Dean’s Vicar. Mr Moreton has been Anglican Chaplain in Helsinki since 1998.
The lunchtime piano recital in St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick next Wednesday will be given by Irina Dernova who will play works by the Russian Romantics including Rachmaninov, Skriabib and Tchaikovsky.
On Thursday the Archbishop of Dublin will bless an extension at Rathfarnham National School and on Friday he will participate in the inauguration of President Michael D. Higgins in Dublin Castle.
The programme for the forthcoming meeting of the Church of Ireland Historical Society has been announced. The meeting will be in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on Saturday 19 November beginning at 10.30. The speakers will be Professor Stephen Taylor (Reading University) on state prayers in the Church of Ireland before and after the Union, Dr Clara Cullen (UCD) on the RDS and popular scientific education in mid–Victorian Ireland, and Dr Margaret O hOgartaigh (who next year will be teaching in Harvard University) on the Church of Ireland and medical lives in early 20th century Ireland.
The meeting will also provide an opportunity for an open discussion on the forthcoming decade of commemorations when the events of 1912 to 1922 will be much to the fore. The Church of Ireland has yet to decide how or indeed if it will respond in an institutional sense although the Standing Committee has appointed a small group to consider this matter.
Further information may be had from the Revd Dr Adrian Empey at 01–4055056 or at [email protected].