| St
Patrick's Cathedral |
The
history of St. Patrick’s Cathedral is as expansive and rich
as its vaulted ceiling which resonates with the names of those
associated with it. The Cathedral was originally built around
1225, adjacent to a well believed to have been used by St. Patrick
in the 5th century to baptise
pagan converts to Christianity. The Cathedral was brought under
the control of the Church of Ireland following the Reformation
in England and became the principle place of worship for Irish
Protestants in Dublin through the 16th,17th and 18th centuries. The building eventually fell into disrepair
and collapse until it was restored by the Guinness family in
the 19th Century.
(see http://www.stpatrickscathedral.ie/Default.htm)
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most celebrated of all the deans of St. Patrick’s was undoubtedly
Jonathan Swift, who has left a lasting legacy to the world in
literature and contemporary satire. The ancient stonework of
the Cathedral whispers with a name equally as important to some
but largely forgotten to a larger world: that of Loftus. This
is a short testimonial to some of those buried in a family
vault at St. Patrick’s which has all but been effaced
from memory but remains still in the minds of those who wish
to know more. This brief honorarium does not seek to vilify
or vindicate the lives of those interred in the vault, merely
to remember them. Some have much written about them or even
by them, others are as obscure and tenuous as our grip on events
of lives long past. Each, however, deserves to be remembered.
In 1688, at the age of 20, Swift in his first public satire
(albeit through an intermediary) allegedly mocked one of his
former teachers and mentors at Trinity College as “….a
mighty doctor of Civil Law, but a Polygamist, toothless but
a Polyglot; so full of learning that the characters of every
language are clearly inscribed in the lines of his face. It
is in vain, therefore, O reverend
doctor, that the envious mutter, saying that now, worn down
by old age, you do not understand the eastern tongues - for
your countenance is truly the index of your mind. Again and
again let him be hailed, our grandiloquent elder, whom the Muse
has given the round mouth of speech….” The
object of his derision and grudging admiration was Dr. Dudley
Loftus, who was interred seven years later in the Loftus family
vault, one year after Swift himself
had entered the Church of Ireland. But as you will see, if
you read on, it was not only eccentric characters like Dudley
who are part of the fabric of St. Patrick’s but the survival
of the Cathedral itself as a place of worship is owed in part
to the Loftus family……. |
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