Founded 1252

When the Dominicans first came to Ireland in 1224, the country had been under Norman rule for fifty years. They made their first foundations where the Normans were most strongly entrenched: at Dublin and Drogheda in 1224, and then (before 1230) at Kilkenny, Waterford, Limerick and Cork. It made sense for them to head first for the cities, especially in a country where even small cities were few and far between: having come to preach, they settled where there were large numbers of people.

Ten years later, in 1235, the Normans decided to attempt the conquest of Connacht. The lord justice, Maurice Fitzgerald, led 500 mounted knights with their troops across the Shannon. By the standards of the time, it was a mighty host, to which the men of Connacht offered little or no resistance.Although there had never been a town in Sligo before, it was a point of strategic importance o the natural road between Ulster and Connacht, and Fitzgerald built a small castle there and laid out a town of one street, without so much as a proper wall to protect it.

This same ‘conquest of Connacht’ soon led in 1241 to the establishment of the great Dominican priory of Athenry, the first house of the Order in Connacht. In 1252 there followed two more foundations: at Strade, Co. Mayo, and in Sligo itself. In Sligo the chosen site was outside the town, and so it remained ‘near Sligo’ for centuries to come. For friars forbidden by their rule to et meat, it was a great advantage to be able to fish from the end of their own garden. The priory was dedicated to the ‘Holy Cross’.

It would be wrong to imagine these early friars as simply the ‘spiritual wing’ of the Norman conquest.Many of them spoke Norman-French and came from England or France as the Normans did. But there were Irish-born friars too, and Irish rulers who welcomed them like Felim O’Connor, king of Connacht, who founded a friary at Roscommon in 1253, just one year after the Dominicans settled in Sligo. A member of the same royal family, Maurice O’Connor, entered the Order and became bishop of Elphin in 1266.

Parts of the present ruin of Holy Cross, the north and south walls of the choir or sanctuary area, with the sacristy and part of the chapter-room, go back to the 13^th century.

Shortly before 1300 the Fitzgerald family left Sligo for good, retiring to their richer estates in Kildare and Munster. The political vacuum was filled by O’Conor Sligo and his overlord Richard de Burgo, the Red Earl, virtual ruler of Ulster and Connacht until his death in 1326. These Norman de Burgos very soon changed their name to Burke, adopted Irish speech and dress, and came to rule the whole of Connacht. The Red Earl, who built a fine castle at Ballymote in 1300, restored the smaller castle at Sligo in 1310.

Sligo was a sea-port, and suffered greatly in the Black Death (1347), because the bubonic plague was brought to Ireland by rats on board ships. This plague, which had come to Ireland before and was to return every ten or twenty years up to 1385, undermined the morale even of the religious Orders.They went into decline, not only in Ireland but throughout western Europe, not to recover for almost fifty years.