In an exciting development, the RCB Library, in conjunction with the Dean and Chapter of St Patrick’s Cathedral, is collaborating with the ambitious VOICES Project which aims to recover the lived experiences, of ‘ordinary’, non–elite women in early modern Ireland – voices that were up to now largely ignored or underrepresented in Irish history. 

The five–year European Research Council project, led by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, School of Histories and Humanities, Trinity College Dublin, will offer a new narrative of early modern Ireland, placing women’s perspectives at the centre of Irish history. It will revolutionise our understanding of the history of women in early modern Ireland. It will also provide important insights into how history repeats itself over time and across geographies and how women’s experiences of social upheaval, civil war, extreme trauma and sexual violence have been politicised.

The RCB Library hosts relevant records for the period – not least the parish registers – but also the Early Modern records of St Patrick’s Cathedral which document significant social and economic developments in the city and county of Dublin, and beyond relevant for this period.

The VOICES team has recently welcomed Michael Flaherty, who completed an M.Phil in Early Modern History at TCD and has already utilised a wide variety of the sources available in the RCB Library. Liaising closely with Dr. Susan Hood (RCBL Librarian & Archivist) and the VOICES Project, Michael will research women in the records at the Library.

The project which runs from September 2026 to August 2027, will focus on the integration of recently catalogued records of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (RCBL C2.10), within the wider Cathedral archive. It will pay close attention to the collection of property and legal records of the Cathedral during the early modern period, particularly pertaining to lease holdings by women.

Launching the collaboration,  some of the VOICES team visited the Representative Church Body Library where Michael presented the array of valuable material available such as leases and rentals where women feature as tenants and occupants of property.

Further information about the visit is available on the voicesproject.ie website and through this link (click here)

RCB Library Publishes new guidelines for those in secretarial positions responsible for the minutes

Record keeping is important to ensure that the business of the Church can be properly managed and the history of the Church reliably told. In recent years there has been a tendency in many institutions to believe that record keeping is more efficient if done electronically which offers the possibility of ease of recovery, no physical storage and universal access. But this view is not shared by the RCB which has recently issued new guidelines on record keeping.

The RCB Library has produced a new leaflet entitled’ Making and Minding the Minutes’ as a response to concerns about the digital storage and circulation of minutes online. It is aimed at those in secretarial positions on parish and cathedral vestries, the boards of church institutions, as well as diocesan synods and councils, and advises that they need to print out, sign and date their minutes from meeting to meeting, and ultimately bind them in chronological order into a book.

Minutes are an important historical record of administrative business, and can help to date key events, presence of personnel and decision making. Storing master minutes digitally rather than in a hard–copy is not acceptable. It is a risk and has become a matter of concern in the RCB Library where gaps have been observed in minutes, where there should be runs of records. Instead, meeting secretaries must ensure that the master set of minutes is printed for the next meeting and signed and dated by whoever is chairing the meeting.

Library staff are pleased to advise on all aspects of this policy and recommend reputable book binders. For further information please email library@rcbcoi.org

All three library pamphlets are now available to view online here

Last month, as part of our Archive of the Month feature, we sought help identifying a painting of an unknown church depicted in a newly accessioned illuminated address  (MS1189). 

We are pleased to report that the mystery has now been solved. With help from the former Bishop of Cork, Rt Revd Paul Colton and a number of knowledgeable readers, the church has been identified as St Luke’s Church, Douglas, Cork.  

The image appears to have been painted in reverse by the artist John Gilbert in 1894, which complicated the identification. Now electronically reversed, it is now republished as it should look albeit with some artistic licence in the positioning of the west door. We extend our sincere thanks to everyone who helped us solve this miniature mystery.

Our former colleague Peter Cheney recently attended a prestigious book launch in Rome hosted by the Irish Manuscripts Commission of its latest publication, which as Peter reports is now available to consult or borrow at the RCB Library. We are grateful to Peter for attending and reporting the significance of this edition.

Rome launch for book revealing Tudor era records 

A new chapter of a labour of love and research going back over 130 years opened recently when the Calendar of Papal Letters relating to Great Britain and Ireland (Volume XXII) was recently launched by the British and Irish Embassies to the Holy See.  As the latest in series undertaken by the Irish Manuscripts Commission, it covers correspondence in 1522 and 1523, as recorded in the Vatican and Lateran registers, covering the brief reign of Pope Adrian VI.

The book can be consulted in the Representative Church Body Library which keeps a special interest in the period, in the approach to the time of the English Reformation.  British Ambassador Chris Trott noted that a copy had been presented to Pope Leo XIV at an audience earlier on the day of the launch (Wednesday, 20th May 2026).

The Commission’s Chairman, Professor John McCafferty, described the project as “a very important British–Irish collaboration” drawing on the archives of continental Europe (which became even more important after the loss of records in the 1922 fire in the Four Courts).  The editor of the Calendar, Professor Alan Macquarrie, noted that the Irish and Scottish entries are “rich in personal and place names.”  He gave “chief thanks” to the guest of honour – retired Vatican archivist Monsignor Charles Burns – who had “built so many bridges between Rome and Britain and Ireland over the years” and had welcomed scholars to Rome since the 1960s.

Adrian VI, from Utrecht, has been the only Dutch Pope to date and was the last non–Italian Pope before the election of John Paul II in 1979.  The letters are being published for the first time and include those relating to the appointments of bishops in Cork, Dublin, Durham, the Isle of Man, and St Andrews.

Calendar of Papal Letters, Vol. XXII, 1522–1523: Adrian VI, Vatican and Lateran Registers can be purchased from the Irish Manuscripts Commission (for €40.00) at www.irishmanuscripts.ie/publications 

This year is particularly poignant, as we celebrate 100 years of Delgany Day. Originally envisaged as a team building event for RCB staff by George Booker Butler, (Chief Officer and Secretary of the RCB from 1935 to 1949), Delgany Day must now be the oldest outing in Irish golf history!

In 2012, the RCB Library published it’s May Archive of the Month which explored the origin’s of Delgany Day, as well as the poignant story of George Butler’s youngest son Leslie, who was killed in action in Killafrana (now Kalafrana), Malta. Subsequently, in honour of Leslie Butler, each year the winning golfer is awarded the Leslie Butler Trophy. The original article can be read here!

Since the original article in 2012, we also have an update on Leslie Butler’s final resting place. 

The former RCB Press Officer Peter Cheney visited the war grave of Leslie Butler, who now rests in Cappucini Naval Cemetery, on a hill above Malta’s Grand Harbour, alongside Leading Aircraftman Arthur James Salter and Flt Sgt Charles Henry McKenzie Daniell. Commonwealth war graves in Malta, such as this, are generally marked with flat headstones due to the rocky ground.

Leslie Butler was serving as a wireless operator and air gunner from RAF Kalafrana, a seaplane base on the south coast of the island, and was 25 years old.Arthur Salter, from the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, served in 2934 Squadron with the RAF Regiment, protecting airfields from attack, and died on 31st October 1943 at the age of 31. His headstone is inscribed: ‘He fought the good fight he has finished his course. May he rest in peace.’Twenty–one year–old Charles Daniell had made the longest journey to the George Cross island, from Southport, Queensland, to serve with the Royal Australian Air Force. He died on 14th December 1943, in an accident at RAF Luqa.These three young men were among over 3,800 British service personnel who lost their lives on active service in Malta or on military operations carried out from the island in the Second World War.

These exhibitions are in tandem with the latest Archive of the Month presentation online which tells the story of the role of Dean Wilson (1871–1957) who was dean from 1935 until he retired in 1950, and the tradition of Nine Lessons and Carols at the Cathedral. Some of the service sheets, diaries and his music was located during a recent archival project to sort and list a large collection of loose papers within the cathedral collection. The full archive of the month is available here. Rosamond Stephen attended these services back and has one particularly colourful description. A selection of some of the beautifully–illustrated Christmas cards and messages she received during her life, and carefully curated in her collection completes the live exhibitions.

The staff from the RCB Library wishes you a Very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year! 

This is an opportunity for the Library to showcase its work within the RCB, with staff talking about their work and sharing some of their favourite items from the extensive collections of books and manuscripts held within the RCB Library and its archive, and their value for the outside world.

It was a particularly useful visit for RB staff who had not been at the Library before, and there was some animated discussion as well as a tour of the building which everyone enjoyed. The Library team appreciates the engagement, and  grateful to everyone who took the time to attend.

For its Christmas Special Stamps in 2024, Royal Mail issued stamps featuring some of the cathedrals of the UK, including St Patrick’s Cathedral Armagh. An original illustration of the building by British artist, Judy Joel, featured as the Second Class Large Letter Class stamp. Four other cathedrals completed the set being: Edinburgh; Liverpool; Bangor; and Westminster. The Armagh image features light shining out through the Cathedral’s stained–glass windows, along with young people carol singing and playing in the snow, capturing a traditional winter scene. At the time of the issue, the Dean of Armagh, the Very Reverend Shane Forster, was presented with an original first day issue of the stamp, in the context of the full set, including a franked envelope addressed to him by Royal Mail. Further background to the original story can be found here:

Earlier this year, at an event in Armagh Robinson Library, Dean Forster in turn kindly presented the commemorative pieces to the RCB Library so that there might be a permanent record of the stamp in the Church’s archival repository in Dublin.

The Library gratefully accepted this generous gift and we have now framed the set of stamps, together with the franked envelope and presentation literature. Recently the chair of the RCB Library and Archive Committee, Mr Oswyn Paulin, was visiting with us,  and he happily accepted it into the Library’s safe–keeping on behalf of the committee. The framed piece now has pride of place in the Library foyer, where visitors are most welcome to view it.

It sits alongside another significant first edition stamp. This is a framed copy of the first issue of the €1 ‘N’ rate stamp by An Post. The stamp was released in 2021 to mark the 150th anniversary of Disestablishment and features stained glass imagery from another cathedral, that of St Fin Barre, Cork, depicting the Sun, Moon and Stars. Further background about that story is available here. 

Both stamps are available to view in the Library where visitors are always welcome.

All of these rare books make up the Special Reserve Collection (prefixed ‘SR’ in the catalogue) which are housed in a dedicated strongroom within the stacks area. Having recently successfully completed post–graduate studies on rare books and special collections at Aberystwyth University, the Assistant Librarian, Helen Crawford Walsh has put together a beautifully–illustrated piece on the treasures and wonders in the RCB Library’s printed collection, including printed illustrations, woodcuts and wood engravings.

We hope this will be of particular interest to the wider Church as well as those who visit the Library for archival interests, and who may be surprised by the depth of our book holdings and understanding about the complex and skilled processes by which such resources were created. The full article can now be viewed here

The register is the third significant manuscript to be digitised and made available on the Library’s Medieval Manuscripts webpage, where viewers can literally turn the pages of the digitized surrogate as an e–book without handling the original or needing to travel to the RCB Library in Dublin.

Previous postings in the RCB Library’s Archive of the Month series include the 14th Century Red Book of Ossory, the original of which is currently on display in St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, as well as the Liber Niger Alani, another Dublin diocesan register associated with Archbishop John Alen and 300 years younger than the Crede Mihi. For the Medieval Manuscripts page on the Church of Ireland website, please see this link: www.churchofireland.org/about/rcb-library/medieval-manuscripts

The Crede Mihi manuscript contains the oldest extant collection of documents connected with the see of Dublin ranging in date from the early 1170s to the latter part of the 13th century. There are roughly 150 of them which collectively Sir John Gilbert, who edited a published edition of the original in 1897, described as “the most ancient register book of the archbishops of Dublin before the Reformation”. Since the Diocese of Glendalough was united with that of Dublin in 1216, it also includes material relating to that diocese.

The digital release of the manuscript is accompanied with expert analysis by a specialist of 12th–century Ireland, Marie Therese Flanagan, Professor Emerita of the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, at Queen’s University Belfast. She comments that “physically, Crede Mihi consists of 37 parchment leaves in a soft leather binding” and observes how a number of scribes were at work on the text: “The original scribe wrote the first two gatherings and most of the third … A different hand wrote folios 104r–105r while 105v is blank.”

Professor Flanagan adds: “The first hand recurs at the beginning of the fourth gathering, that is, folios 106r to the upper half of 108r which contains a group of undated and unattributed synodal statutes promulgated for the Diocese of Dublin; another hand wrote 108r–108v when the first hand took over again.”

Annotations in the hand of Archbishop Alen are also evident throughout the volume. Alen, as the first Archbishop of Dublin during the Reformation of King Henry VIII, was as Professor Flanagan observes an “assiduous investigator of the rights and privileges of his see” and anxious to keep an accurate account of it during his own episcopacy some 300 years later. The notes he made show how he used the Crede Mihi as a working document while Alen’s own register, the Liber Niger Alani mentioned above, includes significant references to the Crede Mihi.  The Liber Niger Alani is viewable online here: https://issuu.com/churchofireland/docs/alen

The volume commences with 22 papal privileges issued to the archbishops of Dublin and bishops of Glendalough between 1179 and 1264 by successive seven popes. Charters granted by Henry II and John, both as Lord of Ireland (1185–89) and as King of England (1199–1216), and Henry III follow, and there are several other contents including episcopal charters issued by Archbishop Laurence O’Toole (died 14th November 1180) by Malchus, Bishop of Glendalough (died 1186).

Speaking from the RCB Library, Dr Susan Hood, RCB Librarian and Archivist, said: “These and many other colourful contents of the Crede Mihi, which literally translates ‘believe me’ (John 4:21), are now possible to view in the digital version of the original as published by the RCB Library. The Library is most grateful to Professor Flanagan for her generous and scholarly input.”

Additionally, as a partner repository to the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, a direct link  between the RCB Library’s medieval sources and the rich digital repository of some 350,000 records (which are replacements for items lost in the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland in 1922) is provided through its portal on this link: https://virtualtreasury.ie/browse/Representative_Church_Body_Library_Dublin

Enquiries for the Press Office can be made through the contact details below or through the online contact form at the following link: www.churchofireland.org/contact

Church of Ireland Press Office

Tel: (028/048) 9082 8880
Duty mobile: +353 87 9484412