Founded 1243; reestablished 1861

Tralee Dominicans : survival and service

Fr Myles Nolan OP

In his definitive Discovering Kerry, T.J. Barrington adverts to what he calls ‘a most interesting antiquity in Tralee’: the ruins of a little church in Rath Cemetery. He comments: “It lost all claim to eminence when the Geraldines established the Dominicans in Tralee in 1243 and chose that priory as their burying place. Nonetheless, it survives even as a ruin when all traces of the Desmonds and their foundation have disappeared from Tralee.” Op. cit., pt. 3, n. 224.

The author is certainly correct about the almost complete disappearance of the original Holy Cross Priory. Writing around 1760, de Burgo, who wrote an authoritative history of Irish Dominican priories, describes his own inspection of the site: “Although the church and priory have been completely levelled, still on the site, or in streets nearby, there are still to be seen several burial stones…”; a few of which he then describes briefly. Some of these carved stones are now in the garden of the present Holy Cross Priory.

Although several sketches of long vanished Dominican priories in Ireland may be found in Speed’s Theatre of the Empire (1611), Tralee is not among them. Bt as late as 11946 it was claimed that fifteen arch-frames of the old Holy Cross cloisters were visible around Abbey St. Cf. Hayward R.: In the Kingdom of Kerry, pp. 264 sqq.; which contain a sketch of the arches then visible. Whether or not such ruins really were of the long-vanished Dominican Priory, all traces have since disappeared.

More than one observer has commented on the complete disappearance of the first Holy Cross; very few other Dominican foundations in Ireland have been so ruthlessly destroyed. One may surmise that the complete destruction was a deliberate attempt to blot out all memory of the Dominicans and their Geraldine protectors, as the reformation and the anglicisation of Ireland proceeded.

The link between the Geraldines and the Dominicans is clearly stated in one of the earliest accounts of the Dominican priories: “In county Kerry is a sea-port called Tralee, where a Dominican abbey was founded in 1243k, by John the son of Thomas Fitzgerald, both of whom are buried in the abbey church. From these have sprung the earls of Desmond….” O’Heyne, Irish Dominicans, Louvain, 1706.

Both the founding Fitzgerald and his son Maurice were killed in fighting the McCarthys; they were buried in the first Holy Cross. Full references are found in de Burgo and also in Coleman, A.: The Ancient Dominican Foundations in Ireland, Dundalk, 1902, op. cit., p. 65.

It is a measure of the paucity of records concerning Holy Cross, that de Burgo devotes so much space rather to the Geraldines. But ‘the records of this abbey are very scant’. Coleman, op. cit., p 65.

As in many Norman religious foundations, there may have, initially, been some tension between the first Dominican arrivals in Tralee and the Irish, who later sought admittance. All the more so, since the precise juridical position of Dominicans in Ireland, and the degree of independence which they enjoyed, is difficult to disentangle. (For a popular precis of such problems, cf. Pochin-mould, D.: The Irish Dominicans, pp. 18 sqq.). However, tension eased with the gradual assimilation of the Desmonds by the Irish. One of the de jure Earls of Desmond, John, died a Dominican in this abbey, a short time before the Christmas of 1536, and was buried there. Cf. Coleman, op. cit., p. 65.