Memorial stone, Dublin South City, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
Memorials
Set into the nave floor of St Audeon's, Dublin's oldest surviving medieval parish church, is a limestone slab that most visitors walk straight past.
It commemorates a man named Bartholmewe Conra, who died in 1619, and it repays a moment's attention. Carved in false relief, a technique in which the background is cut away to leave the design standing proud rather than incised into the surface, the stone carries a small but carefully composed set of symbols: the IHS monogram, a heart enclosing three nails, and a coat of arms divided per pale, meaning the shield is split vertically into two equal halves, each carrying its own heraldic field.
The symbolism on the stone is worth unpacking. IHS is a Christogram derived from the Greek rendering of the name of Jesus, widely used in Catholic devotional contexts from the medieval period onward and popularised in particular by the Jesuit order from the sixteenth century. The heart pierced by or enclosing nails is an instrument-of-the-Passion motif, evoking the suffering of the Crucifixion, and its appearance here in 1619 places the stone squarely in a period of Counter-Reformation piety in Ireland, when such imagery carried considerable theological weight. The divided coat of arms suggests Conra was a man of some social standing, though the specific identity of his family arms is not recorded in the available notes.
St Audoen's stands on Cornmarket, just inside the old city walls near the Lamb Alley section of the medieval fortifications, and the church itself is in the care of the Office of Public Works. The floor slabs of the nave, of which the Conra stone is one, are easy to miss in low light, so it is worth giving your eyes a moment to adjust when you enter. The stone was recorded and compiled by Geraldine Stout as part of the National Monuments survey record, catalogued under reference DU018-020075. Access to the medieval nave is generally possible during the site's opening hours, and the church also connects to the adjacent St Audoen's Park, where a section of the thirteenth-century city walls survives.