Saint Edmund, the English king and martyr who almost replaced Saint Patrick as the patron saint of Ireland

Saint Edmund depicted in a window in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Patrick’s Day always falls in Lent, and this year it coincides with the Fifth Sunday in Lent, which used to be known in the Church Calendar as Passion Sunday, marking the beginning of the two-week period of Passiontide before Easter Day.

To mark Saint Patrick’s Day this year, the latest edition of the new Dominican journal Conversations, edited by Bernard Treacy, has published a paper by me, asking: ‘Did St Patrick Bring Christianity to Ireland?’

Throughout Lent this year, in my prayer diary on my blog each morning, I am looking at the life and influence of an early, pre-Reformation English saint or martyr commemorated in the Church of England in the calendar of Common Worship.

This morning, I was reflecting on Saint Edmund, the ninth century king, who was martyred in 869 or 870 and who is commemorated Common Worship on 20 November. As I was researching his life and story, I came across the fascinating claim that Saint Edmund almost supplanted Saint Patrick as the patron saint of Ireland in the 14th century.

Perhaps, after England’s defeat of Ireland at Twickenham yesterday, I dare not suggest that Saint Patrick was probably what we would today call an Englishman. Of course, that is a form of an anchronism, as the Angles had not yet arrived in former Roman Britain by the time of Saint Patric. But the story of another English saint, Saint Edmund, and how he almost replaced Saint Patrick as the patron of Ireland, has been told recently by Dr Francis Young in his book Athassel Priory and the Cult of St Edmund in Medieval Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020), and in a feature that year in History Ireland, ‘St Edmund: Patron Saint of Ireland?’

Saint Edmund was the Anglo-Saxon king of East Anglia when he was shot through with arrows and finally beheaded by Viking invaders. His shrine at Beodricesworth, the Suffolk town that later became Bury St Edmunds, was an important centre of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages. By the end of the 11th century, Saint Edmund was seen throughout Europe as the patron saint of England and his shrine church at Bury St Edmunds was of the largest Romanesque churches ever built. He became the patron saint of pandemics as well as kings, and he remained the patron saint of England until he was supplanted by Saint George.

At an early stage, Saint Edmund also became a popular saint in Ireland. A hoard of coins minted by 10th-century Vikings in memory of Saint Edmund within a century of his death, was found in Co Offaly in the 19th century. It seems Saint Edmund was also popular in Norse Dublin by the early 11th century, and he is named in the 12th century Irish text, the Félire Húi Gormán or Martyrology of Gorman.

Following the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169-1170, a chapel was dedicated to Saint Edmund in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. Francis Young wonders whether devotion to Saint Edmund was been brought back to Ireland by knights who fought under the banner of Saint Edmund to save the abbey of Bury St Edmunds in 1173. Or, he suggests, there is the possibility that the chapel was partly funded by English merchants from East Anglia, as merchants from Chester had paid for Saint Werburgh’s Church in Dublin.

Saint Edmund depicted in a window in Saint Mary’s Church in Whitby, Yorkshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Francis Young is a writer historian who was born in Bury St Edmunds. He studied Philosophy at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Classics at the University of Wales, Lampeter, before receiving his doctorate in History from Cambridge University. He points out that the early leading Anglo-Normans in Ireland included William de Burgh (died 1206), who took his name from the village of Burgh-next-Aylsham in Norfolk, and who was ancestor of the powerful Burke or Bourke family. Young argues that William de Burgh’s devotion to Saint Edmund is explained by his origins in East Anglia. William founded two significant churches dedicated to Saint Edmund – one at Ardoyne, Co Carlow, and the other at Athassel Priory, near Golden, Co Tipperary.

Athassel Priory became the largest mediaeval priory in Ireland and for 300 years it was the centre of the veneration of Saint Edmund in Ireland for the next 300 years. Saint Edmund’s status as the patron of England gave Athassel a special status for the English of Ireland.

At the beginning of the reign of Richard II (1377-1399), a monk of Bury St Edmunds claimed that Athassel Priory held a miraculous image of Saint Edmund. The story claimed that immediately before the death of the head of the Burke family of Clanwilliam, the image of Saint Edmund would hurl the spear it was holding onto the pavement of the choir. The monk named Saint Edmund as the patron saint of Ireland, describing him as ‘the protector and defender of that whole land.’

The claim that Saint Edmund was the patron saint of Ireland could easily be dismissed as the ramblings of an English monk, Young writes. But, he points, nine years later, when Richard II gave the title ‘Duke of Ireland’ to Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, in 1386, he also gave him the right to quarter his coat of arms with the arms of Saint Edmund (three gold crowns on a blue background) – for as long as he remained Lord of Ireland.

The three crowns of Saint Edmund were used as an emblem of English royalty from as early as 1276, and, from 1460, the three crowns of Saint Edmund appeared on coins minted in Dublin in the name of the king. However, Saint Edmund’s significance in England had been declining steadily from the mid-14th century, and by the 15th century Saint George was well established as the patron saint of the Order of the Garter and of England’s military.

Under the Tudors, Saint George became the sole patron of England and Saint Edmund lost his popular appeal. When Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland in 1542, the three crowns of Saint Edmund disappeared from Irish coins, replaced by the harp. By then, it appears, the original meaning of the three crowns was forgotten, and Henry VIII’s officials thought they represented the triple tiara of the pope and the papacy’s long-standing claim to Ireland as a papal fief.

Young sees lingering traces of the mediaeval importance of the cult of Saint Edmund in the flag of Munster, with three gold crowns on a blue background. The flag is first recorded in the 17th century, but Young tries to link it with the Butler family, Earls of Ormond, who had replaced the Burkes as patrons of Athassel Priory in the early 16th century.

He sees a further trace of the once-prominent cult of Saint Edmund in Ireland in the persistence of the name Edmund and its Irish equivalent Éamon, popular in Ireland since the 14th century. Éamon was one of the few male names of English origin to gain widespread popularity in Gaelic Ireland in the Middle Ages. The earliest individuals to bear the name in Ireland were members of the Burke or Bourke and Butler families, successive patrons of Athassel Priory. The earliest Gaelic Irish families to adopt Éamon as a forename were the septs of Ó Broin (O’Byrne) and Ó Cinnéide (O’Kennedy), clients of the Butlers of Ormond.

The name Edmund or Edmond is first found in the Comerford family, thanks perhaps to close connections with the Butlers of Ormond, in the person of Edmund Comerford from Co Kilkenny, who died in 1509. He was educated at Oxford, and was Rector of Saint Mary’s, Callan, Prior of Saint John’s, Kilkenny, a canon and then Dean of Saint Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, and Bishop of Ferns (1505-1509). Although Hore, Leslie, Foster and Gillespie incorrectly give his name as ‘Edward,’ although he is named Edmund in Cotton, Carrigan and Crockford’s, and is called both Edmond and Edmund by Grattan-Flood.

Edmund’s brother, Richard Comerford, was the direct ancestor of the Comerford families of Ballybur and Bunclody, and the name Edmund continued to be passed down in the Comerford family through Edmund Comerford (1722-1788), until my father’s generation: the eldest brother he never knew was Edmond Joseph Comerford (1900-1905).

Saint Edmund’s connection with Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, continues. A stained glass window by Clayton and Bell in the Baptistry depicting Saint Edmund was presented by the architect George Edmund Street (1824-1881) in memory of his second wife Jessie (1843-1876). They were married on 11 January 1876, but she contracted typhoid fever during their honeymoon in Rome and died on 6 March 1876, eight weeks after their wedding.

However, Saint Edmund’s brief time as patron saint of Ireland in the late Middle Ages was long forgotten until Francis Young published his research in recent years.

Further Reading:

Anthony Bale (ed), St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint (York Medieval Press, 2009).
Francis Young, Edmund: in search of England’s lost king (London: IB Taurus, 2018).
Francis Young, Athassel Priory and the cult of St Edmund in medieval Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020).
Francis Young, ‘St Edmund: patron saint of Ireland?’, History Ireland (July/August 2020), Vol 28 No 4.

The Chapel of Saint Edmund in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Last edited: 14 March 2024

The Sephardic family roots and heritage of John Desmond Bernal, Limerick scientist

John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) … one of the most interesting and important Irish-born scientists of the last century

by Patrick Comerford

Introducing JD Bernal[1]

John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) was one of the most interesting and important Irish-born scientists of the twentieth century. JD Bernal was born near Nenagh, Co Tipperary, on 10 May 1901, and died in London on 15 September 1971. But he had strong family roots in nineteenth century Limerick and many members of his immediate family are buried near the south porch of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick. The Bernal family grave is in a quiet corner of the cathedral churchyard, facing the south porch and door, and many of us also know or are familiar with the Bernal Institute on the campus of the University of Limerick.

John Desmond Bernal, crystallographer, molecular physicist, social scientist, committed Communist, campaigner for world peace, and friend of Pablo Picasso, was the eldest child of Samuel George Bernal (1864-1919) of Brookwatson, near Nenagh, and his wife, Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Miller, who had married the previous year. Samuel George Bernal’s father, JD Bernal’s grandfather, was John Bernal (1819-1898) of Albert Lodge, Laurel Hill, Limerick.[2]

The Bernal grave in the churchyard at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

Many people thought Bernal was a member of the family of the prominent Victorian politician, Ralph Bernal Osborne (1808-1882), of Newtown Anner House, Co Tipperary, who was a Liberal MP for a number of English constituencies (1841-1868) before becoming MP for Waterford (1870-1874).[3] But, in fact, John Bernal of Limerick was born Jacob de Isaac Haim Genese. His ancestors had been Sephardic Jews who lived in Venice from at least the mid-seventeenth century, and before that they had lived in the Ancona area of southern Italy for many generations. The family moved through Amsterdam to London, and Jacob arrived in Ireland in the 1840s from London.

When Jacob de Isaac Haim Genese settled in Ireland, he changed his name to John Bernal and joined the Church of Ireland. He married Catherine Maria Carroll in Dublin in 1841, and she brought up their children as Roman Catholics.[4]

Their son, Samuel George Bernal, was born in Limerick on 22 May 1864. At the age of 20, he ran away from Limerick to Australia in 1884, and there he worked on a sheep farm. When his father died in 1898, he returned to live in Ireland and at first stayed with his sister, Margaret Riggs-Miller, at Tullaheady, just outside Nenagh, Co Tipperary.

Brookwatson near Nenagh, Co Tipperary, the childhood home of the scientist John Desmond Bernal (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

Later that year, he bought the farm in Brookwatson on the Portumna road outside Nenagh, and built the present house. On a visit to continental Europe, he met his future wife, Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Miller (1869-1951), in Belgium. Bessie was an energetic, educated and much-travelled woman, the daughter of an Irish-born Presbyterian minister from Co Antrim, the Revd William Young Miller of Illinois. She became a Roman Catholic before they married on 9 January 1900. They were the parents of five children, three sons and two daughters, including John Desmond Bernal, who was the eldest child, and Kevin O’Carroll Diaz Bernal (1903-1996), who continued to run the family farm.

There was less than a two-year age gap between the brothers John Desmond and Kevin, and as boys they were very close for many years. At first, they both went to the local convent school, but they later went to the Church of Ireland national school in Nenagh. However, the young John Desmond Bernal was a devout Catholic throughout his school days.[5]

In 1910, Samuel Bernal decided to send his two eldest sons to school in Lancashire, first to Hodder Place, the Jesuit preparatory school, and then Stonyhurst, the leading Jesuit-run public school in England. At Stonyhurst, John would recall, he worked his way through the school library each Sunday after Mass. After a short time at Bedford, he went on to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1919 for an undergraduate degree in Natural Science. There he developed a strong interest in the developing science of X-ray crystallography. At Cambridge too he became an active Marxist, beginning a lifelong commitment to Communism.[6]

The Bernal Institute at the University of Limerick (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

From Cambridge, Bernal joined WH Bragg in his research at the Royal Institution (RI) in 1923. In 1927, he became the first lecturer in structural crystallography at Cambridge, and he was appointed the assistant director of the Cavendish Laboratory in 1934. However, he was refused fellowships at Emmanuel College and Christ’s College and tenure by Ernest Rutherford, who is said to have disliked him.[7]

Bernal remained at Cambridge until 1937, when he became Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and head of the newly established department of crystallography. His research included the first X-ray diffraction pattern of a protein and ground-breaking work on the structure of viruses and proteins that lead to the foundation of molecular biology. This development fundamentally changed the focus of biochemical research and the understanding of biological activity as it made it possible to examine the 3-D chemical structure of the component species.[8]

At Birkbeck, he founded the Biomolecular Research Laboratory in 1948, and it later became the internationally renowned Crystallography Department. As Professor of Physics at Birkbeck College, London, and later as Professor of Crystallography, he presided over a centre of excellence that was celebrated worldwide. Bernal would identify new fields to explore but then leave them to trusted colleagues. He wrote several books, published 224 scientific papers and almost 400 articles, lectured regularly on scientific and political topics worldwide and was involved in the foundation of UNESCO. During World War II, Bernal worked on operational research, contributing to the planning of the D-day landings and the US honoured him with the Medal of Freedom in 1945. Later, he was interested in rebuilding Britain and initiated research into the structure and properties of metal hydroxides and the silicate components of cements.[9]

Bernal had a reputation as a selfless supporter of young scientists, and his peers referred to him affectionately as ‘Sage’. Two of his former students, Dorothy Hodgkin and Max Perutz, received Nobel prizes for pioneering work in protein crystallography for the first structural determination of vitamin B12 and haemoglobin, respectively. Perutz is known as ‘the godfather of molecular biology,’ and one of his students, Francis Crick, received the Nobel Prize for unravelling the structure of DNA with James Watson. It is remarkable, therefore, that Bernal never received a Nobel Prize, although two or three of his students did. Conventional wisdom has it that he spread himself too wide and was too involved in other matters to achieve this ultimate accolade.[10]

Bernal was driven by a belief that science and technology would improve the living standards of humanity if properly focused and he was a campaigner for peace and demilitarisation in the years after World War II. Although he had supported the Allied war effort and was involved in planning the Normandy landings, he was often ostracised in the West, with both the US and France refusing him visas in later years. Over half a century, he met many world leaders including Nehru, Khrushchev, Mao and Ho Chi Minh. He was the first president of the Cambridge Scientists Anti-War Group, president of the World Peace Council and drafted the constitution for the World Federation of Scientific Workers.[11]

A story is told of Bernal’s meeting with Pablo Picasso in 1950. Picasso had come to England to attend a peace conference that Bernal was instrumental in organising. When the British government refused visas to the delegates from Eastern Europe, the conference was cancelled and some of those present retired to Bernal’s flat in London for a ‘peace party’. That evening, Picasso painted a mural on the wall of the flat in Torrington Square. The house was demolished later, but the mural survived and is now on display in London as part of the Wellcome Collection, and is known as ‘Bernal’s Picasso’.[12]

Bernal became disillusioned with the Soviet Union after the invasion of Hungary in 1956, but he never renounced his socialist or communist beliefs. He was to remain a thorn in the side of Western governments until the end of his days.

He married Alice Eileen Sprague in 1922, a day after receiving his BA at Cambridge. They had two sons, Mike (1926-2016) and Egan (born 1930). He was also the father of two children with the artist Margaret Gardiner (1904-2005) and a daughter with the writer Margaret Heinemann (1913-1992). John Desmond Bernal suffered a stroke in the summer of 1963, followed by a second stroke in September 1965. He retired in 1968 and died on 15 September 1971. His legacy was the development of crystallography as a central tool across the sciences. The Bernal Institute at the University of Limerick is named after JD Bernal, who remains one of the most influential and interesting Irish-born scientists of the twentieth century.[13]

John Bernal ran his business from No 9 Thomas Street, Limerick (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

Tracing the Bernal family

John Desmond Bernal’s grandfather, John Bernal (1819-1898), was a Limerick auctioneer and a city councillor. He was a member of the city council for over a quarter of a century as a councillor for the Dock Ward. He had auction rooms in George Street and later at 9 Thomas Street in Limerick. When he died on 17 September 1898, he was living at Albert Lodge in Laurel Hill.[14]

As his funeral moved from his home at Laurel Hill to Saint Mary’s Cathedral along George (now O’Connell) Street, all the city businesses remained shut as a mark of respect. The Mayor of Limerick, Michael Cusack (1834-1907), attended in full regalia, along with the mace and sword bearers and all the members of the City Council. Canon James Fitzgerald Gregg (1820-1907), who officiated at the funeral, was later Dean of Limerick (1899-1905).[15]

At least three generations of the Bernal family are buried with John Bernal in the churchyard at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, as well as his wife Catherine Maria Carroll, who had died over 17 years earlier in 1881. They had been married in Dublin in 1841, and they had a large family of eleven children – eight daughters and three sons.

In her biographical notice of Bernal, the Nobel chemist Dorothy Hodgkin provides considerable detail about the Bernal family, tracing the earliest records back to Spanish accounts of a family of Sephardic Jews. She begins with a Bernal who was an apothecary who travelled with Columbus on his third voyage to America in 1502.[16] Abraham Nuñez Bernal was burned alive in Cordoba by the Spanish Inquisition in 1654. His brother is supposed to have fled first to Holland and then to England.[17]

The women’s balcony above the entrance to the synagogue in Córdoba … Abraham Nuñez Bernal was burned alive by the Spanish Inquisition in Córdoba in 1654 (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

A descendant of this family includes Ralph Bernal (1783-1854), a prominent Whig politician, and his son, also Ralph Bernal MP, who married a wealthy Irish heiress, Catherine Isabella Osborne (1819-1880), daughter of Sir Arthur Osborne, and became Ralph Bernal-Osborne (1808-1882). A Liberal MP, he lived at Newton Anner, near Clonmel, Co Tipperary, and they were the grandparents of Osborne Beauclerk, 12th Duke of St Albans.[18] These connections may have given the Bernal name a note of political and aristocratic distinction around Co Limerick and Co Tipperary, and they help to explain why JD Bernal and his family emphasised their descent from the Bernal family. But the original name of JD Bernal’s grandfather, John Bernal, was Jacob de Isaac Haim Genese.

Although the Genese or Bernal family is virtually forgotten in Limerick today, they are one of the many interesting Sephardi families on these islands. The family first came to London from the Jewish Ghetto in Venice in 1749, and for long have been members of Bevis Marks Synagogue, which opened in 1701, making it the oldest working synagogue on these islands.[19]

The Scuola Italiana or Italian synagogue in the heart of the Ghetto in Venice … the Genese family were members of this synagogue (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

A genealogical excursus

In her biographical notice, Dorothy Hodgkin claims JD Bernal was descended from a Bernal who was an apothecary who travelled with Columbus on his third voyage to America in 1502. Abraham Nuñez Bernal was burned alive in Cordoba by the Spanish Inquisition in 1654. His brother is supposed to have fled first to Holland and then to England.[20]

However, I have been able to trace JD Bernal back in the direct male line in a genealogical tree that shows nine generations, from father to son, from Shmuel Genese, who was living in the Ghetto in Venice in the late seventeenth century. Their synagogue membership in Venice shows the Genese family were of Italian Jewish (Italkim) origin rather than a family of Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition in Italy.

We have to go back to Bernal’s great-great grandmother, Esther de Abraham Bernal, who married Samuel de Isaac Genese in the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London. The family in Limerick can be traced through parish records, mainly in Saint Michael’s Church, and through gravestones, including the family graves at the South Porch in Saint Mary’s Cathedral. But tracing the family before it came to Ireland was more difficult. Louis Hyman, says JD Bernal’s ancestors first settled in Waterford, rather than Limerick, and makes no connection with the Genese family, who had businesses in Limerick and Dublin.

So, how did I come across this fascinating family of ancient Jews, with a long lineage, and who moved from Ancona, to Venice, to Amsterdam, to London, to Dublin and to Limerick? They are a family that marries into some of the most eminent Sephardic families of Europe, with names like Lopes, Mendoza, Isaacs, Castro, Tubi, Nunes Martinez, Crespo and Levy.

Admittedly, I came across the family almost by accident. I was interested in two brothers, Henry (Harry) William John Comerford (1874-1958) and Albert (Bert) Alfred George Comerford (1879-1973), who had married two sisters, Rosina Sarah Sipple (1881-1958) and Agnes Violet Sipple (1884-1965). In my genealogical research on the Comerford family, these two brothers almost slipped under the radar. They were involved in stage, theatre, show business and early films at the beginning of the last century, but they used stage names, Harry Ford and Bert Brantford, which disguised their family origins.

Eventually, as I traced their families, I realised that Rosina and Agnes, the two sisters who married these two brothers, were Jewish by birth through their mothers. Although their grandparents were from the heart of the Jewish East End in nineteenth century London, they were descended from a long line of Sephardic families, associated for many generations with the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London.

At some stage in tracing this branch of the family through the East End, Amsterdam and Seville, I also came across the story of Daniel Mendoza (1764-1836), once one of the best-known and most celebrated boxers in sporting history on these islands. One hunch led to another, as is so often the case in genealogical research, and within weeks of visiting the Jewish quarter in Seville, I ended up tracing a very long-tailed family with links to Jewish communities throughout Europe.

To summarise the connections: the brothers Harry and Bert Comerford married two sisters, Rosina and Agnes Sipple, who were fourth cousins of Samuel George Bernal of Limerick, father of John Desmond Bernal, and fourth cousins too of Peg Marks (1892-1962), the mother of the actor Peter Sellers (1925-1980).

Inside the Scuola Spagnola in Venice, founded around 1580 by Spanish and Portuguese speaking Jews (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

Some conclusions

John Desmond Bernal was one of the most distinguished Irish-born scientists, and had deep family roots in Limerick, where his father Samuel George Bernal (1864-1919) was born, and where his grandfather was a member of the city council.

The story of the Genese family, with their Jewish roots, and their subsequent membership of the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Limerick, offers interesting insights into the religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds of people in Limerick that need to be celebrated more consciously in a time when the place of immigrants is questioned and when definitions of Irish identity are in danger of becoming more narrow.

Genealogists should never trust what is too easily regarded as ‘accepted wisdom’. We must always question what is handed on as family story, look for evidence, trust only primary sources, and be willing to look for what other people may hide or forget. The results are rewarding because, in the long run, we find we have the most interesting family connections that make us part of diversity and pluralism not only in Ireland, but throughout Europe.

For too long, telling the story of Limerick’s Jewish community has been overshadowed by what has been called the ‘Limerick Pogrom’.[21] It is a story that must not be forgotten, but, as Des Ryan has pointed out, it is not the only, or overarching story in the history of Limerick Jews. Bernal’s ancestors are an example of the variety of Jewish life in Limerick.

Another example includes Henry Jaffé, who left Limerick in 1904 and was the grandfather of the journalist and popular historian Simon Sebag Montefiore and his brother, the writer and historian Hugh Sebag Montefiore. But their great-great-grandparents, Benjamin and Rachel Jaffe remained in Limerick and were living in Catherine Street in 1911, along with their great-grandparents, Marcus and Leah Jaffe. Or there is Limerick’s last resident rabbi, Simon Gewurtz (1887-1944) from Bratislava, who links the story of Limerick’s Jews with the stories of the Holocaust.

Like other cities in Europe, from Seville, Cordoba and Porto to London, Prague, Bratislava and Krakow, I believe Limerick would be enriched by having a Jewish walking trail, and the story of the Bernal family would be an important part of that route.

The Ponte de Ghetto Vecchio leads into the Campo de Ghetto Nuovo in Venice (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

Appendix
The Genese and Bernal family tree

The Genese family in Venice were silk merchants, upholsterers and house furnishers, and were living in the Ghetto Nuovo in Venice from the mid-1600s. A family tradition once proposed that the Genese family were Sephardic refugees who fled to Italy from the Inquisition in Portugal and took their name from Genoa. However, it is now generally accepted by Jewish genealogists that the family had lived in the Italian peninsula for many centuries before they first appear in Venice in the 1640s.

It is now thought the name is derived from the town of San Ginesio, about 60 km south-west of Ancona, where there was a Jewish community with a continuous presence for 2,000 years. The family were members of the Scuola Italiana in Venice, rather than the Spagnola Synagogue. This would indicate clearly that they were descended not from refugees from Spain or Portugal in the late fifteenth century or later but had Italkim (Italian-rite) origins.

Shemuel Ginesi (ca 1650-1703) and his wife, Benvenida (ca 1645-1707), lived in the Ghetto in Venice and were buried in the Jewish Cemetery in the Lido. Their son, Emanuel or Mandolino Ginesi, was a community official in Venice in the first half of the 1700s. His son, David Genese, was living in the Ghetto Nuovo in Venice in September 1739.

David Genese was the father of Isaco or Isaac Genese (Gienese, Ginesi or Guinese), who arrived in London from Italy about 1749, perhaps having first moved to Amsterdam, where there was a large Sephardi community, descended from Spanish, Portuguese and Italian families. This move to London coincides with a time when Italian Jewish families – including the D’Israelis, the Anconas and the Sanguinettis – were arriving in larger numbers and changing the make-up of the Bevis Marks community. Until 1715, the members of the synagogue were almost wholly Spanish refugees or Amsterdam-Spanish migrants, and then from 1715 to 1739 overwhelmingly refugees from Portugal.

A year later, in 1750, Isaac Genese and Sarah de Isaac Lopez were married in the Spanish and Portuguese or Bevis Marks Synagogue in London. They were the parents of six children:

1 a daughter (died in infancy, 1757).
2 Rachel Sarah (died December 1817).
3 David Genese, who married his first cousin Benevenida de Abraham Mendoza, a sister of Daniel Mendoza (1764-1836), the celebrated boxer of the Georgian era. David died in 1784, and has no known descendants.
4 Siporah, who married David de Moses Nabaro.
5 Samuel Genese (born 1767) who married Rebecca de Emmanuel Capua in 1790, and they were the parents of eleven children, of whom four died in childhood.
6 Samson de Isaac Genese (born 1769), who married Esther de Abraham Bernal in 1791, a member of a well-known Sephardic family of Spanish descent.

The youngest son, Samson de Isaac Genese (born 1769), married Esther de Abraham Bernal, which is how the Bernal name was introduced to the family. Samson and Esther were the parents of seven children:

1 Isaac Haim Genese (1793-1858), married Esther Jacobs and later moved to Ireland.
2 Rachel (died young).
3 Abraham de Samson Genese (died unmarried, 1859).
4 Samson Genese (junior), married Hannah Simons; they have many living descendants.
5 Samuel Genese (1805-1888), married Rachel Levy (1821-1871); they have many living descendants.
6 Simha.
7 David de Samson Genese (1807-1874), has many living descendants; his son, Joseph de David Genese (born 1851), had eleven children, the youngest born in 1886.

The eldest son, Isaac Haim Genese (1793-1858), married Esther Isaacs in London in 1817. They were the parents of five children, including:

1 Jacob de Isaac Haim Genese, later known as John Bernal (1819-1898).
2 Samuel Genese (born 1820). In 1846, he took over running a snuff and tobacco shop at 34 Grafton Street, Dublin. He married and had at least three children, a son Samson Genese and two daughters, including a daughter Hannah. The two daughters were still running the shop in Grafton Street in 1885. He married Margaret Kelly in Saint Mary’s Church (Church of Ireland), Donnybrook, Dublin, in 1847.
3 Abraham (Bobby) Genese, who died in Limerick in 1847.
4 Rachel Genese (ca 1832-1902); her nephew Samuel Bernal was present at her death at Ormond Quay, Dublin, in 1902.

Isaac Genese was widowed when he moved from London to Ireland with his five surviving children around 1840, and lived in Dublin.[22] He set up an auctioneer’s business and later ran a bookshop and tobacconists. Sometime before 1848, Isaac Genese married his second wife in Dublin, and they had at least two further children:

1 Robert Genese (born 1848).
2 Caroline Genese (1850-1901), who married … Murtagh, and they have descendants.

Isaac Genese’s eldest son, Jacob de Isaac Haim Genese (1819-1898), was born on 29 April 1819. He changed his name to John Bernal, and with his brother Abraham (Bobby) Genese he moved to Limerick in the 1840s. Here they set up a business as auctioneers in Thomas Street and lived in Sexton Street.[23]

When Bobby Genese died in 1847, he was first buried by his brother in a Christian cemetery. But the Jewish community was upset, his body was exhumed, and he was brought to Dublin for burial in the Jewish Cemetery in Ballybough.[24]

Jacob Genese or John Bernal joined the Church of Ireland, and he married Catherine Maria Carroll in Dublin in 1841. They lived at Albert Lodge on Laurel Hill Avenue, Limerick, and he became a successful auctioneer, businessman and active politician in Victorian Limerick as John Bernal. Catherine Bernal, who raised their children as Roman Catholics, died in Limerick on 26 February 1881. Both Maria and John are buried in the churchyard at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, in a raised area beside the south porch.[25]

They were the parents of twelve children, three sons and nine daughters:[26]

1 Catharine (1845-post 1875), married Dr Jeremiah O’Donovan in Dublin, on 24 February 1873.
2 Esther (1846-1875), died in Limerick, aged 29.
3 Dr Robert Arthur Bernal (1850-1876), of Albert Lodge, Laurel Hill Avenue, Limerick, and the Royal Navy. He married Catherine Elizabeth Donnelly (1856-1920) on 18 September 1875, in Dublin. He died 5 October 1876. They were the parents of a daughter, Catherine Elizabeth Mary Frances (Assherson), who was born in Dublin on 14 March 1877. The widowed Catherine (Donnelly) later married: (1) Charles Patrick Magee and (2) Eustatius Louis Emile Brand. She died in Cape Town in 1920.
4 John Theodore Bernal (born 1851).
5 Mary Gertrude (1851-1925), married William Patrick Ryan (1851- ) and they had a large family.
6 Grace (1855-1871), died aged 16.
7 Margaret Josephine (1856-1930) married Thomas John Ryan, later Thomas John Riggs-Miller, of Tyone House, Nenagh, in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, in 1877.
8 Clara Elizabeth (born ca 1863), married Thomas Greenwood in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, in 1884.
9 Samuel George Bernal (1864-1919).
10 Aimee Rachel (1866-1937), born Albert Lodge, Limerick, 10 July 1866. She died 11 November 1937. She married Robert Ward in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, in 1889 and they had a large family.
11 Frances Esther, died 17 March 1894, and buried at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick.
12 Emily, married Albert Pfaff in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, in 1889; she died on 28 July 1912.

Albert Lodge was later sold by the Walker family and to the Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ nuns) or Laurel Hill Nuns and became known as Maryville.[27]

Meanwhile, the third son and seventh child in this family, Samuel George Bernal (1864-1919), who was born in Limerick on 22 May 1864, bought a farm in Brookwatson in 1898 and built the family house. On 9 January 1900, he married Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Miller (1869-1951), daughter of the Revd William Young Miller of Illinois, an Irish-born Presbyterian minister. She became a Roman Catholic before they married in 1900. Samuel Bernal died in Nenagh on 18 September 1919.[28]

Samuel and Bessie Bernal were the parents of five children, three sons and two daughters:

1 John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971), born Nenagh 10 May 1910, died in London 15 September 1971.
2 Kevin O’Carroll Diaz Bernal (1903-1996), born Nenagh 22 January 1903, married Margaret Mary Sinnott (1913-1995) and died 17 January 1996.
3 Catherine Elizabeth Geraldine (1906- ), born Nenagh.
4 Fiona Laetitia Evangeline (1908-1908), died at the age of nine weeks.
5 Godfrey Francis Johnston Bernal (1910-2005), born Nenagh, married Ellen Marie Rose McCarthy, died January 2005.

Bevis Marks Synagogue … the principal Sephardic synagogue in London (Photograph Patrick Comerford)

Endnotes

1. My research on John Desmond Bernal was first presented at lunchtime lectures in the Hunt Museum, Limerick, on 11 February 2020, and in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, on 18 May 2021 (https://youtu.be/kx0OIY2J4oU)
2. Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, ‘John Desmond Bernal, 10 May 1901 – 15 September 1971,’ Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (London: Royal Society, 1980, vol 26, issue 26, pp 16-84), pp 17-18.
3. See Louis Hyman, The Jews of Ireland: From Earliest Times to the Year 1910 (Shannon, 1973), p 86.
4. Hodgkin, pp 17-18.
5. Hodgkin, p 21.
6. Hodgkin, p 21-24.
7. Hodgkin, p 25-36; Andrew Brown, JD Bernal – The Sage of Science (Oxford, 2005), pp 90, 146, 187.
8. Hodgkin, pp 36-52.
9. Hodgkin, pp 52-59.
10. See Hodgkin, p 59-60.
11. Hodgkin, pp 60-72.
12. Hodgkin, p 61.
13. Hodgkin, p 72.
14. Hodgkin, p 18.
15. Funeral report, Limerick Chronicle, 22 September 1898; Hodgkin, p 18.
16. Hodgkin, p 17.
17. Jewish Encyclopaedia (1906), vol 3, p 87; Hodgkin, p 17.
18. Hodgkin, p 17.
19. I have constructed this family tree relying on Bevis Marks Records, Vols 1-6 of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Congregation, London (ed Miriam Rodrigues Pereira); and publicly available family trees on ancestry.com; see also: Peter Brunning, ‘Bevis Marks records’, https://www.cantab.net/users/peter.brunning/melhado/bm.html (visited 1 June 2023).
20. Jewish Encyclopaedia (1906), vol 3, p 87.
21. See Des Ryan, ‘Jewish Limerick from 1790 to 1903’, The Old Limerick Journal, Winter edition 2014, pp 44-51; Hyman, pp 210-217.
22. Hyman, p 103, 210.
23. See https://limerickslife.com/constabulary/ (visited 1 June 2023).
24. Hyman, p 103, 210.
25. Gravestones, Saint Mary’s Cathedral; see http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/parker%20rebecca%20sdn.pdf.
26. I have constructed this family tree, relying mainly on parish records in Saint Michael’s Parish, Limerick, the Pro-Cathedral, Dublin; the burial records and gravestones in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick; and publicly available family trees on ancestry.com.
27. See https://limerickslife.com/constabulary/ (visited 1 June 2023).
28. Hodgkin, p 18.

(The Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford was Precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes (Church of Ireland) until 2022. He has been an adjunct assistant professor in Trinity College Dublin, a lecturer in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times. He now lives in retirement in Milton Keynes.

This paper is published in ‘The Old Limerick Journal’, ed Tom Donovan (Limerick: Limerick Museum, ISBN: 9781916294394, 72 pp), No 58, Winter 2023, pp 60-66

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (139) 14 October 2023

Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary … designed by JJ McCarthy, with a High Altar and reredos by John Hardman of Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and tomorrow is the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIX, 15 October 2023).

My priorities later today may well be the Rugby World Cup quarter final between Ireland and South Africa. But, before today begins, I am taking some time early this morning for prayer and reflection.

The Church recently celebrated Saint Michael and All Angels last month (29 September). So my reflections each morning for the past three weeks have continued the Michaelmas theme in this way:

1, A reflection on a church named after Saint Michael or his depiction in Church Art;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary … designed by JJ McCarthy and added to by Ashlin and Coleman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary:

Saint Michael’s Church on Saint Michael’s Street in Tipperary is an impressive building designed by the celebrated church architect, James Joseph McCarthy (1817-1882), built in 1855-1861 by Doolins of Dublin, and added to half a century later by Ashlin and Coleman.

The church spire is visible from every road approaching the town, and there is fine craftsmanship throughout the church, representing the best of church architecture and decoration in the traditions introduced to Ireland by AWN Pugin.

The size, style and composition of the church is an illustration of the sense of the power of the Roman Catholic Church at the time.

The church was designed by JJ McCarthy in the Early English style for the Parish Priest of Tipperary, Father James Howley, and was built by Doolins of Dublin at an estimated cost of £7,000.

McCarthy claimed Pugin’s mantle and his great works include the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles, Co Tipperary, the Church of Our Lady, Ballingarry, Co Limerick, Saint Macartan’s Cathedral, Monaghan, Saint Mary’s Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, SS Peter and Paul Church, Kilmallock, Co Limerick, the Capuchin Church, Church Street, Dublin, and the College Chapel, Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co Kildare.

The church was consecrated in November 1861. Its spire is visible from every approach road. Fine craftsmanship is seen throughout the building, in the quality of the stonework and stone carving, and the detailing of the various elevations.

The reredos by John Hardman & Co of Birmingham is an impressive artistic achievement, and the interior is also enhanced by the stone carving at the organ gallery and the attractive glazed screen.

This cruciform-plan, gable-fronted church includes a five-bay nave with side aisles, three-bay transepts, a two-bay chancel, a three-bay projecting porch, a mortuary chapel added ca 1915, a three-stage bell tower with a spire, a lean-to porch on the north side and a sacristy at the north-east.

The broached octagonal spire on the tower has metal cross finial and trefoil and pointed vent-lights with louvres. There are carved limestone crenellations and spires at the octagonal engaged columns on the porch. There are necked dressed limestone walls, limestone dressings, and buttresses at the corners of the church, at the lower two stages of the tower and between the windows of the side aisles. There is a plinth course and moulded string courses at the porch.

A carved limestone statue of Saint Michael the Archangel stands in a gabled niche at the front of the bell tower. Throughout the church there are pointed-arch window openings throughout the church, including a five-light window at the west front, a trefoil-headed five-light east window, three-light windows in the gables of the transepts, two-light windows in the side aisles and the front of the tower, and single-light windows in other parts of the church, with hood mouldings on the windows at the front.

The porch has paired pointed-arch windows with hood-mouldings and engaged colonnettes, and a hexafoil window over the central entrance door, with a moulded limestone surround.

John Hardman & Co of Birmingham, who worked on many of Pugin’s churches, designed the High Altar with an ornate carved marble reredos in 1860. The reredos is an impressive artistic achievement, At the time, the altar was said to be ‘the largest and most elaborate erected in the United Kingdom since the Reformation.’

There are side altars, with figure sculptures, an ornate carved marble pointed segmental arcade at organ gallery with trefoil arcading details on the parapet and polished granite columns.

The boarded timber ceiling and braced truss roof are supported on cut stone corbels in the nave walls. Other details inside the church include pitch pine confessionals and pews, and the timber and stucco Stations of the Cross.

Ashlin and Coleman made a number of additions in 1914, including a new front porch and mortuary chapel commissioned by Canon Arthur Ryan, parish priest of Tipperary in 1903-1922. The mosaic work on the sanctuary walls and floor was completed by Ludwig Oppenheimer in 1915.

Canon Ryan was a staunch supporter of John Redmond and encouraged Irish involvement in World War I in support of achieving Irish Home Rule.

During the Christmas season in 1916, Canon Ryan travelled throughout the Western Front in Flanders, visiting and ministering to regiments of the 16th Irish Division on the battlefields.

His niece Philomena was the wife of Major John Carlon Markes of the Leinster Regiment, who was killed in action at the Battle of the Somme on 19 July 1916, aged 36. Major Markes is commemorated in the stained glass World War I Memorial Window in the side Chapel of Adoration, to the right of the High Altar.

A window in a side chapel depicts Saint Luke, the patron saint of physicians, and is dedicated to the memory of Dr John F O’Halloran, who died in 1969.

A window depicting Saint Luke the physician is dedicated to the memory of a local doctor, John F O’Halloran (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 27-28 (NRSVA):

27 While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ 28 But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’

The sanctuary in Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer (Saturday 14 October 2023):

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘After the Storm.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (14 October 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

We pray for all those supporting the relief and rebuilding in areas affected by natural disasters. May people see the light of your love from those who seek to help those in dire need.

Inside Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary … there is fine craftsmanship throughout the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind
and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

We praise and thank you, O Christ, for this sacred feast:
for here we receive you,
here the memory of your passion is renewed,
here our minds are filled with grace,
and here a pledge of future glory is given,
when we shall feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.

Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary … the High Altar and reredos were designed by John Hardman & Co (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Looking west in Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The gallery and organ in Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Irish-born writer who never moved to Athens to become Queen of Greece

‘It’s dark and it’s wet in Stony Stratford tonight’ … a reminder of why Rosina Doyle Wheeler never became the Queen of Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

In last week’s rain storms and cold dark nights, I posted a photograph last week of Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford. It caught the atmosphere of how winter has closed in on this town.

But a subsequent exchange on Facebook with an American member of the Comerford family served to remind me of the story of a Victorian Irish writer, heiress and feminist who, with another twist in the chain of events, might have become the Queen of Greece over a century and a half ago.

In my caption for that photograph on Wednesday evening, I said ‘It’s dark and it’s wet in Stony Stratford tonight.’

Peter Comerford, a lawyer in Rhode Island, was quick with his response: ‘A dark and stormy night, eh? Based on everything of yours I’ve read, I wouldn’t have put you in contention for a Bulwer Lytton.’

I told him: ‘I tried to avoid quoting him, but perhaps I fell into the trap of paraphrasing him. He declined the Crown of Greece; I’m no monarchist, but I’d find it difficult to decline an invitation to being paid to live out my days in Greece.’

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), 1st Baron Lytton, was an English writer and politician. Bulwer-Lytton’s works sold and paid him well, and as well as fiction, plays and poetry he wrote a three-volume history of Athens. He coined famous phrases such as ‘the great unwashed’, the ‘pursuit of the almighty dollar’, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’, ‘dweller on the threshold’, and the opening phrase ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’

Bulwer-Lytton’s plays and great sprawling novels are now largely forgotten, but in his day he was more widely read than Charles Dickens or Sir Walter Scott. He is long gone out of fashion, and his writing style has resulted in the creation of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, held each year since 1982 to seek the ‘opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels.’

But, in his day, Bulwer-Lytton was also a prominent politician. He was a Whig MP in 1831-1841 and returned as to Parliament as a Conservative MP in 1851-1866, and he was the Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1858-1859.

It is said he was offered the Crown of Greece in 1862 after King Otto abdicated. But he declined, and in 1863 the Greek National Assembly elected 17-year-old Prince William of Denmark as King of the Hellenes with the name of King George I. Instead, Bulwer-Lytton became a peer in 1866 with the title of Baron Lytton of Knebworth.

Had Bulwer-Lytton become King of Greece in 1862, would his Irish-born wife have become Queen?

‘The first mistake I made was being born at all’ … Rosina Bulwer Lytton (1802-1882) was born Rosina Doyle Wheeler in Ballywire House, on the borders of Co Limerick Co Tipperary

Rosina Bulwer Lytton (1802-1882) was an Irish writer and the author of 14 novels, a volume of essays and a volume of letters. She was born Rosina Doyle Wheeler on 4 November 1802 at Ballywire House, on the borders of Co Limerick Co Tipperary, close to Galbally and Limerick Junction. She was youngest of two surviving daughters of Francis Massy Wheeler (1776-1820), a landowner in Co Limerick and Co Tipperary, and the feminist philosopher Anna Doyle.

Her father was 19 and her mother was only 15 or 16 when they married. Francis Massy Wheeler was descended from two prominent land-owning families in Co Limerick, and a grandson of Hugh Massy, 1st Baron Massy; Anna Doyle, who was a women’s rights advocate, was the daughter of Canon Nicholas Milley Doyle, the Church of Ireland Rector of Newcastle, Co Tipperary, and the niece of Sir John Milley Doyle (1781-1856), who led British and Portuguese forces in the Peninsular War and the ‘War of the Two Brothers.’

Rosina was a beautiful but troubled writer, and today she would probably be diagnosed as bi-polar. ‘The first mistake I made was being born at all,’ Rosina once wrote. Her father had hoped for a son to inherit his family estates, but the surviving children from Anna’s six pregnancies were both girls: Rosina and her elder sister Henrietta.

Rosina’s early years in Ireland appear to have been unhappy, largely owing to her parents’ incompatibility, her father’s alcoholism, and her own indifference to her mother’s intellectual pursuits. Her parents separated in 1812, and Rosina, Henrietta and their mother moved to Guernsey to live with her great-uncle General Sir John Doyle, then Governor of Guernsey.

Rosina was educated in Guernsey by a governess and a series of masters and was brought to London after Sir John Doyle resigned. She then attended a fashionable boarding school in Kensington, and was educated in part by Frances Arabella Rowden, whose other pupils included the writers Lady Caroline Ponsonby, later Lady Caroline Lamb, and Anna Maria Fielding (Mrs SC Hall).

She later spent some time with her mother in Caen, Normandy, and with family members in Ireland, before returning to London to live with her uncle at Somerset Street.

Lively, impetuous, and attractive, Rosina became a familiar figure at London’s bohemian literary gatherings, along with her friends Lady Caroline Lamb and Laetitia Landon, and her future husband, then known simply as Edward Bulwer, who once had an affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Byron’s former mistress.

Rosina and Edward first met in December 1825. They were engaged after a brief courtship, but any marriage was opposed sternly his mother, who withdrew his allowance, forcing him to work for a living. They finally married in Saint James’s, London, on 29 August 1827, and they became the parents of two children, Emily (born 1828) and Edward Robert (born 1831).

Edward Bulwer-Lytton married Rosina Doyle Wheeler in 1827

Rosina enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle and her role as a society hostess. But she was quickly disillusioned and their marriage was marred by his political campaigns, his violent temper and his infidelities.

He was first elected to Parliament in 1831. Their relationship deteriorated rapidly during a visit to Italy in 1833. By their return in early 1834 the marriage was over, and they were legally separated in April 1836.

She went back to Ireland with her Emily and Robert, but when she returned to England she lost control of the children in 1838. She did not see Emily again until shortly before she died tragically in 1848, and saw Robert again only at the time of her own death in 1882.

Edward was given the title of baronet in 1838 and, although they were separated, Rosina used the title Lady Lytton and spelled her married surname without the hyphen used by her husband.

In her novel, Cheveley, or the Man of Honour (1839), Rosina bitterly caricatured her estranged husband. This is her first novel, and the protagonist, an aggressive, bullying philanderer, is a thinly disguised portrait of her husband. Facing the first in a series of legal disputes, Rosina went to live Paris.

She was unable to live within her allowance of £400 a year, and supplemented her income through further writing. Despite Edward’s efforts to block her publication, she produced a string of novels, including The budget of the Bubble family (1840), Bianca Capello (1842), Miriam Sedley (1851), Behind the scenes (1854), and Very successful (1856).

After returning to Britain in 1847, she lived at first in London and later in Llangollen in Wales (1853) and then in Taunton, Somerset (1855).

Increasingly frustrated by her financial difficulties, she travelled to Hereford in June 1858, and on the day of her husband’s election as an MP and indignantly denounced him at a public meeting. The scene was later recalled in sarcastic verse by her son Robert:

Who came to Hertford in a chaise
And uttered anything but praise
About the author of my days?
My Mother.

Edward’s immediate response was to have Rosina declared insane and detained under restraint in an asylum in Brentford. She was released three weeks later, due to a public outcry.

The Old Royal Palace facing onto Syntagma Square in Athens now houses the Hellenic Parliament … Edward Bulwer-Lytton was offered the throne of Greece in 1862 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Three years later, an unabashed and unashamed Edward was offered the throne of Greece after King Otho had been ousted in a coup in 1862. The Cork-born general, Sir Richard Church (1784-1873), had played a key role in an earlier attempted coup in 1843, presenting the king with an ultimatum demanding reforms or his abdication. But Otho continued to reign as a despot, and a popular revolt finally forced him to abdicate in 1862, when the throne was offered to Edward.

Had Edward ever accepted the invitation to become King of Greece, and had his marriage never broken up, would his estranged wife instead have become the Irish-born Queen of Greece?

Instead, Edward was made a peer in 1866 with the title Lord Lytton of Knebworth, and Rosina continued to denounce and attack him until he died in January 1873.

She wrote of her harsh experiences at Edward’s hands in A Blighted Life (1880). Although the book appeared after his death, it caused a rift with her son and she tried to disassociate herself from it. She spent her later years were spent as a recluse in Upper Sydenham, and she died there on 12 March 1882. Her husband had been buried in Westminster Abbey, in 1873, but she was buried in an unmarked grave.

Rosina and Edward were the parents of two children: Emily Elizabeth (1828-1848), who died in tragic circumstances, and (Edward) Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton (1831-1891), 1st Earl of Lytton, who was the first Viceroy of India (1876-1880). Robert too was a politician and poet, and wrote under the pseudonym Owen Meredith. While he was Viceroy of India, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. He was also the father-in-law of the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.

As a young British diplomat, Robert Bulwer-Lytton spent a brief time in Athens in 1864, two years after it is said his father had been offered the Crown of Greece in 1862. Lytton was transferred to the Greek court to advise the teenage Danish Prince William who had recently become King George I. I wonder while he was there did he ever think that he might once have become the Crown Prince of Greece.

As for his literary legacy, Edward Bulwer-Lytton is still remembered for the opening words of his novel Paul Clifford (1830): ‘It was a dark and stormy night …’ Elmore Leonard once advised writers, ‘Never open a book with weather.’ Lytton ‘s opening words help to explain why he is not widely read any more.

His legacy is found, instead, in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, an annual competition sponsored by San Jose State University in California to find a deliberately bad opening line for a new novel. Past winners have included Sue Fondrie in 2011: ‘Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.’

And yes, now that you ask, it’s dark and windy but it’s not wet in Stony Stratford tonight.

The grave in Athens of the Cork-born general Sir Richard Church (1784-1873) … he played key roles in the attempts to force the abdication of King Otho (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

With the Saints through Christmas (14): 8 January 2022, Saint Albert of Cashel

The Rock of Cashel … was there an eighth century Saint Albert who was Bishop of Cashel? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The season of Epiphany continues, and I have some final details for tomorrow’s Sunday services to attend to later this morning.

But before this day gets busy, I am taking some time early this morning for prayer, reflection and reading.

I have been continuing my Prayer Diary on my blog each morning, reflecting in these ways:

1, Reflections on a saint remembered in the calendars of the Church during Christmas;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

This morning, I am reflecting on Saint Albert of Cashel, an eighth century saint and Patron of Cashel in Co Tipperary.

Saint Albert is said in tradition to have been an Englishman who worked in Ireland and then in Bavaria. Albert went to Jerusalem and died in Regensburg on his return journey.

He was an evangelist working mainly around the city of Cashel, and may have been a bishop there.

In a legendary 12th century biography he is called natione Anglus, conversatione Angelicus – ‘by nationality an Angle, in manners an angel.’ He continued his work as an evangelist in Bavaria with Saint Erhard of Regensburg and is reported to have suffered from arthritis in his back and hips.

He made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, with Saint Erhard of Regensburg but died in 800 AD at Regensburg on the return journey.

Saint Albert’s grave is in Niedermünster in Regensburg. In the mid-12th century, a life was written at the Benedictine monastery of Schotten in Regensburg at Regensburg.

He was canonised on 19 June 1902 by Pope Leo XIII.

However, his existence has been questioned by some scholar. Others question his role as Bishop of Cashel, pointing out that the diocese did not exist until 1118, and the majority of buildings on the Rock of Cashel date only from the 12th century. The Irish Abbot of Regensburg, Dirmicius of Regensburg, sent two of his carpenters to help build Cormac’s Chapel on the Rock of Cashel in the mid-12th century, and the twin towers on either side of the junction of its nave and chancel are strongly suggestive of their Germanic influence. Others ask whether he has been confused with Saint Ailbe of Emly.

The Cathedral, Tower and Saint Patrick’s Cross on the Rock of Cashel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 6: 34-44 (NRSVA):

34 As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. 35 When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; 36 send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ 37 But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ 38 And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’ 39 Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. 41 Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. 42 And all ate and were filled; 43 and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44 Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

The prayer in the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) invites us to pray this morning (8 January 2022):

We pray for the World Council of Churches, which seeks to build partnerships across churches, countries and continents.

Yesterday: Saint John the Baptist

Tomorrow: The Black Nazarene, ‘Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno’

King Cormac Mac Carthaigh began building Cormac’s Chapel in 1127, and it was consecrated in 1134 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Praying in Ordinary Time 2021: 175, Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff

Llandaff Cathedral is the cathedral of the Church in Wales (Anglican) diocese that includes Cardiff and most of Glamorgan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Each morning in the time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

My theme on this prayer diary this week has been cathedrals, churches and chapels in Wales. As part of my reflections and this prayer diary this morning, this theme concludes today (20 November 2021) with photographs from Llandaff Cathedral.

Inside Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Llandaff Cathedral is dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and three Welsh saints: Dubricius, Teilo and Oudoceus. It is one of two cathedrals in Cardiff, the other being the Roman Catholic Cardiff Metropolitan Cathedral in the city centre.

The present cathedral was built in the 12th century on the site of an earlier Celtic church. Welsh tradition says the first church here was founded during the time of Lucius, the legendary King of the Britons and the first Christian convert in Britain. This tradition attributes the foundation of the church to Saint Dyfan and Saint Fagan.

Other legends include the re-establishment of a Christian community at Llandaff by Saint Dyfrig (Dubricius) , who is regarded as the first Bishop of Llandaff, and his successor Saint Teilo. The legends say Saint Dyfrig was made Archbishop by Saint Germanus of Auxerre while he travelled through Britain to oppose the Pelagian heresy, and links both saints with King Arthur.

The Normans occupied Glamorgan early in the Norman conquest, and appointed Urban as their first bishop in 1107. He began building the cathedral in 1120 and moved the remains of Saint Dyfrig from Bardsey. After the death of Bishop Urban, it is believed the work was completed in the last years of Bishop Nicholas ap Gwrgant, who died in 1183. The cathedral was dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, Dubricius, Teilo and Oudoceus.

Bishop Henry de Abergavenny organised the chapter of Llandaff Cathedral ca 1214. He appointed 14 prebends, eight priests, four deacons and two sub-deacons.

The west front of the cathedral dates from 1220 and includes a statue of St Teilo. The cathedral was dedicated again in 1266.

The Lady Chapel was built by Bishop William de Braose (1266-1287), and the two bays of the north choir aisle were rebuilt.

The cathedral was damaged severely in 1400 during the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr, and in 1575 Bishop Blethyn said he believed the cathedral was possibly damaged beyond repair. Most of the other damage was repaired, most notably by Bishop Marshall, whose reredos partly survives.

The north-west tower was added by Jasper Tudor and is named after him. He became the Lord of Cardiff after his nephew became King Henry VII of England.

Late medieval tombs include that of Sir David Mathew of Llandaff (1400-1484), who saved the life of King Edward IV at the Battle of Towton in 1461 during the War of the Roses.

Other notable tombs in the cathedral include Saint Dubricius, a 6th-century saint who evangelised Ergyng (now Archenfield) and much of south-east Wales; Meurig ap Tewdrig, King of Gwent, Teilo, a 6th-century Welsh priest, church founder and saint; and many Bishops of Llandaff, from the 7th century Oudoceus to the 19th century Alfred Ollivant, who was bishop in 1849-1882.

During the English Civil War, the cathedral was overrun by Parliamentarian troops, who seized and burned the books in the cathedral library. A Puritan named Milles set up a tavern in the cathedral, used part of it as a stable, turned the choir area into a pen for calves and used the font as a trough for pigs.

The south-west tower suffered major storm damage in 1703 and by 1720, was in a state of collapse. The damage to the cathedral was so extensive that the church considered moving f the see to Cardiff in 1717. Further storm damage from 1720 to 1723 brought down parts of the roof and by 1723 worship services confined to the Lady Chapel.

Thirty years after the cathedral roof collapsed, the chapter asked the architect John Wood the Elder, to prepare estimates and plans to restore the cathedral. However, no changes were made to the west front until Wyatt and Prichard began working in 1841.

The Bishop of Lichfield began to live in Llandaff in the 19th century the for the first time in centuries – no bishops had lived in Llandaff for almost 300 years. In 1836, another unsuccessful attempt was made to transfer the see – to Bristol. Instead, the office of Dean of Llandaff was restored in 1843 after 700 years, and the new Dean, William Bruce Knight, was instrumental in much-needed restorations.

The cathedral reopened on 16 April 1857, and the restoration work continued. The tower was rebuilt, a spire was added in 1843-1869. A triptych by Dante Gabriel Rossetti was designed for a reredos, Ford Madox Brown designed a new stained glass window, ‘The Shipwreck of Saint Paul,’ and Edward Burne-Jones designed the porcelain panels, ‘Six Days of Creation,’ in Saint Dyfrig’s Chapel.

The cathedral was severely damaged in January 1941 during the Cardiff Blitz of World War II. A parachute mine blew the roof off the nave, south aisle and chapter house. Of British cathedrals, only Coventry Cathedral was damaged more, during the Coventry Blitz on 14 November 1941.

The stonework that remains from the mediaeval period is primarily Somerset Dundry stone, though local blue lias constitutes most of the stonework carried out in the post-Reformation period.

The work done on the church since World War II is primarily concrete and Pennant sandstone, and the roofs, of Welsh slate and lead, were added during the post-war rebuilding.

The cathedral received Grade I building status in 1952. Major restoration work was carried out under the architect George Pace of York, and was completed in 1958. Sir Jacob Epstein created the figure of Christ in Majesty, which is raised above the nave on a concrete arch designed by George Pace.

The organ was damaged in a severe lightning strike in February 2007, and a fundraising campaign raised £1.5 million for a new organ.

For many years, the cathedral had the traditional Anglican choir of boys and men, and more recently a girls’ choir, with the only dedicated choir school in the Church in Wales.

A memorial to one of the many pretenders to the Mathew and Landaff titles in Llandaff Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

There are three 15th and 16th century Mathew family effigies in Llandaff Cathedral, and the Mathew family of Thomastown, Co Tipperary, claimed descent from a branch of the Matthew family of Radyr in Glamorgan.

George Mathew sold his estate at Radyr in the mid-17th and moved to Co Tipperary. He became the owner of Thomastown Castle, near Thurles, when he married Elizabeth Poyntz (1587-1673), Lady Thurles, widow of Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles. It was a marriage that brought George Mathew into a powerful and influential family circle, and he was the stepfather of James Butler (1610-1688), 1st Duke of Ormond.

Francis Mathew (1738-1806) of Annefield, Thomastown and Thurles, Co Tipperary, became a peer in 1783 with the title of Baron Landaff, of Thomastown, in Co Tipperary. In 1793, he received the higher title of Viscount Landaff, and in 1797 he was made Earl Landaff. He had been MP for Tipperary in the Irish House of Commons (1768-1783) and High Sheriff of Tipperary.

The Earls Landaff used the invented courtesy title Viscount Mathew for the heir apparent. Despite their territorial designations, the misspelling of Llandaff as Landaff, and the fact that the titles were in the Irish Peerage, the titles all referred to Llandaff in Glamorgan now spelt Llandaff. After the Act of Union, Lord Landaff was elected as one of the 28 Irish peers to the British House of Lords.

His eldest son, Francis James Mathew (1768-1833), became 2nd Earl Landaff. He had been known by the courtesy title of Viscount Mathew and was MP for Tipperary in the Irish House of Commons (1790-1792), Callan (1796) and again for Tipperary (1796-1801). He opposed the Act of Union, supported Catholic Emancipation, and was seen as ‘a personal enemy of George IV’ when he gave evidence in favour of Queen Charlotte regarding her conduct at the Court of Naples during her famous trial.

Lord Landaff had no children, and when he died in Dublin on 12 March 1833, aged 65. His next brother, Lieut-Gen Montague James Mathew (1773-1819), had died 14 years earlier, and their youngest brother, George Toby Skeffington Mathew, died in 1832. So, when the second earl died, the family titles became extinct.

In time, however, a number of pretenders came forward, claiming they were the rightful holders of the title Earl Landaff. The most outrageous of these pretenders was Arnold Harris Mathew (1852-1919), self-styled de jure 4th Earl Landaff, also self-styled Count Povoleri di Vicenza.

Mathew was also the founder and first bishop of the self-styled Old Roman Catholic Western Orthodox Church in Great Britain, an Old Catholic Church. His episcopal consecration was declared null and void by the Union of Utrecht’s International Old Catholic Bishops’ Conference. In addition, he was excommunicated by Pope Pius X for illicitly consecrating two priests as bishops which led a London jury to find that ‘the words were true in substance and in fact’ that he was a ‘pseudo-bishop.’

He claimed his father, Major Arnold Henry Ochterlony Mathew, who died in 1894, was the third Earl Landaff, and the son of Major Arnold Nesbit Mathew, of the Indian Army. According to these claims, this Major Arnold Mathew was, in turn, the eldest son of the 1st Earl Landaff, born in Paris five months after his parents married.

This claim was later shown to be based on invented and fictitious information. Arnold Nesbit Mathew originally used the name Matthews, as did his son. He was, in fact, the son of William Richard Matthews and his wife Anne, of Down Ampney in Gloucestershire. Incidentally, Down Ampney was also the home village of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), who composed the tune ‘Down Ampney’ for the hymn ‘Come down, O love divine’

Arnold Harris Mathew put forward his claim to the Garter Principal King of Arms for the title of 4th Earl Landaff of Thomastown, Co Tipperary, in 1890, and placed his creative pedigree on the official record at the College of Arms.

John H Matthews, Cardiff archivist, said in 1898 that the number of claimants to the dormant or extinct earldom was ‘legion.’ In his opinion, Arnold Henry Mathew’s pedigree was ‘too extra-ordinary to commend itself to an impartial mind.’

Mathew’s aristocratic pretensions, like his life as a ‘wandering bishop,’ were fantasies that continue to resurface in the claims of fantasists and pretenders in many walks of life.

When he died on 19 December 1919, the claims to the Mathew title did not come to an end. As recently as 1987, a mural memorial was erected in Llandaff Cathedral, claiming it was: ‘In memory of Thomas James Mathew son and heir of Francis James Mathew second Earl of Landaff born in London 1798 died in Cape Town 1862.’ The memorial includes a full display of the coat of arms of the Mathew family of Co Tipperary as Earls Landaff, and the misspelling of Llandaff as Landaff.

Sir Jacob Epstein’s figure, ‘Christ in Majesty,’ is raised above the nave on a concrete arch designed by George Pace (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 20: 27-40 (NRSVA):

27 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28 and asked him a question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30 then the second 31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.’

34 Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37 And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’ 39 Then some of the scribes answered, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well.’ 40 For they no longer dared to ask him another question.

In the Lady Chapel in Llandaff Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (20 November 2021, World Children’s Day) invites us to pray:

We pray for children around the world, growing up in a world defined by pandemics, climate change and injustice. May we listen to their needs and heed their advice.

Edward Burne-Jones designed the porcelain panels, ‘Six Days of Creation,’ in Saint Dyfrig’s Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The City Cross at Llandaff Cathedral may date from the 13th century; it was restored and the cross-head was turned through 90 degrees in 1897 as a part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

An ancient Celtic Cross in Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)