Graveslab, Callan, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Callan, Co. Kilkenny

Part of a sixteenth-century graveslab in St Mary's Church, Callan, has spent centuries being walked over.

The lower portion of the limestone slab was repurposed at some point as the threshold of the north doorway of the nave, meaning that generations of people entering the church have crossed directly over what was once a memorial. The rest of the slab lies flat on the nave floor nearby, broken in two places, its surface decoration worn to near-invisibility.

The slab commemorates Richard Merry, described in its Latin inscription as a notary, who died on 27 December 1584. The inscription runs in Black Letter script, a style of lettering common in medieval and early modern stonework, along the border of the slab beginning at the upper right corner and continuing along the top and sides. When the historian Carrigan transcribed it in 1905, he rendered the Latin as: "Here lies the distinguished man Richard Merry formerly notary, who happily exchanged life for death Dec. 27th, 1584." The phrasing "exchanged life for death" is a conventional inversion common in Catholic memorial inscriptions of the period, framing death as a passage into a better existence rather than a loss. The centrepiece of the decoration is a large IHS monogram, a Christogram derived from the Greek spelling of Jesus, with a cross pattée, a cross whose arms flare outward at the ends, set through the bar of the H. The slab itself is substantial, originally over two metres in length and nearly a metre wide, with a chamfered edge along its border. The break that divides it occurs roughly 84 centimetres from the base, and a further fragment is missing from one of the lower corners.

The faintness of the decoration today is worth bearing in mind when approaching the slab. What survives is readable more as form than as sharp carving, and the inscription requires patience and good light to follow. The threshold section, set into the north doorway, is easy to miss unless you know to look for it underfoot.

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