Beauty of Native Art: Croziers

Above: The Croziers of Innisfallen

Croziers, in great variety, survive to our own time. Their custody was hereditary in particular families and attended by privileges such as grants of land. One of the largest and most interesting still remaining to us belonged to the abbey of Durrow and is believed to be the crozier of Colm Cille. This crozier, which must have been a beautiful example of native art, was preserved in the MacGeoghegan family. It is over four feet in length,  and represents, with the head of the crozier of St. Blathmac, what survives, in the national collection, of the larger croziers. Examples of the smaller croziers are those of St. Berach and St. Dymphna, two sixth century saints, and of St. Tola of j^the monastery of Disert 0 Dea, of which only the head remains. Their keepers were respectively the O Hanleys of Roscommon, the O Luans of -M o n a g h a n, and the O Quinns of Clare. They are of about the same length—two feet, four inches or so—as the crozier of St. Murus of Fahan, Donegal. The most complete example now left is the crozier of Clonmacnoise. It measures over three feet and, like the high cross of Tuam, has " a representation of a mitred figure, holding a crozier of the scroll type." The crozier of Cormac Mac-Carthy of Cashel, of which the head was found in Cormac’s chapel, is an example of the scroll type. Other croziers, preserved in part, include " the missing crozier of St. Ciaran," the crozier of the O Bradys, found in Cavan,   and   the   crozier of St. Aodh mac Brie, now in Trinity College, Dublin.    A tau-shaped  or crutch-shaped crozier, composed  of bronze, inlaid with silver, and formerly preserved in the Kilkenny Museum, has panels like those of the Cross of Cong : tau-’ shaped crosses   of  stone   exist   on   Tory  Island  and  at Kilnaboy, Clare.