Cross-inscribed stone, Sceilg Mhichíl, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-inscribed stone, Sceilg Mhichíl, Co. Kerry

Skellig Michael draws most of its attention upward, towards the corbelled beehive huts and oratories clinging to the rock nearly 230 metres above the Atlantic.

Far less visited, and easy to overlook entirely, is a small carved cross tucked inside a natural cave on the south-western side of a hollow known as Christ's Valley. It is a modest thing physically, measuring just 24 centimetres high and 19 centimetres wide, cut into the smooth vertical face of a south-facing rock. Above it, the letters INRI have been scratched into the stone, the traditional Latin abbreviation for Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, the inscription said to have been placed above the cross at the crucifixion. The combination of the carved cross and that small act of annotation gives the piece an intimacy that the great stone crosses of the monastic enclosure above do not quite replicate.

Sceilg Mhichíl, a steep pyramidal island off the coast of County Kerry, was home to a community of early Christian monks who settled there, likely from around the sixth or seventh century, and maintained a presence for several hundred years. The monastery they built, with its dry-stone cells and terraced paths, is the feature for which the island is now internationally known. Christ's Valley, the natural depression where this cave sits, takes its name from that same devotional world. Whether the cross in the cave was carved by a monk seeking a place for private prayer, or by a later pilgrim making the arduous journey to the island, is not recorded. What can be said is that the Latin cross form, a simple cross with arms of roughly equal length, was a standard devotional carving type used throughout the early medieval period in Ireland, appearing on stone slabs, cave walls, and cliff faces at religious sites across the country.

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