Muiredach's 5.5-metre cross in Monasterboice is regarded as the finest high cross in Ireland. A copy is kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London but the original still stands, uncovered, on its original site.
That site today is a neat and quiet graveyard but for centuries it was the centre of a bustling monastery with a round tower, residential cells, churches, library and domestic facilities. It was one of the great monasteries of Ireland.
The High Crosses for which it is famous were commissioned by Abbot Muiredach Mac Domhnaill (died 923) but the monastery had been founded by Buithe (Monasterboice means ‘Buithe’s Monastery’). He had died four hundred years earlier, in 521.
The story of Buithe is as complex as that of any early Irish personage but it seems he was born nearby at a time when the Christian message was first becoming known in Ireland. He was baptised as a youth but had to go abroad to study further as there were no centres of learning in the country yet. Who were his spiritual teachers?
On returning home he founded a number of centres, the one at Monasterboice being the most significant.
What motivated him? The answer can be found in the crosses. Though designed over four hundred years after Buithe they display what continued to inspire the community
The cross’s surface is divided into panels depicting basic Christian scenes from the Old Testament and New.
However the top panel on its north side shows two men meeting in the desert and the east side shows them again, sharing bread. They are Egyptians, Antony the Hermit and Paul of Thebes. Their images can also be found on most of the other great stone crosses in Ireland indicating their major significance and influence.
Today those ‘Desert Fathers’ might be called ‘spiritual champions’, those who put aside everything for a time to develop their human potential. That challenge probably appealed to the heroic spirit of the Irish and the high crosses were a reminder of those who set the standard. The domed shaped ‘cells’ of the followers of the Desert Fathers were soon to be found all over Ireland, surviving in place names beginning with ‘Kil-‘ (‘Cell of’).
Monasterboice faded after the Cistercian Abbey at Mellifont was built in 1142. It was the beginning of the ‘modernisation’ of the Irish Church when the ‘spiritual practice’ model replaced the earlier ‘spiritual seeking’, and solid stone structures replaced the simple cells. However the High Crosses of Monasterboice remain a reminder of how it all began.
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