RAHAN MONASTIC SITE - Offaly County Council

APPENDICESby the Irish masons even in a later phase of the style. The base-blocks of the piers, as in many otherexamples, project very little. Worked upon them are the curious, bulbous bases of the colonettes,with small, angular upper members. Between the bases the space is filled with a low-relief carvingof much stylized foliage (cf. Capitals at St. Caimin’s church, Iniscealtra, infra). The capitals, someof which have suffered defacement, are, like the base-blocks, deep, square, frieze-like and of veryslight projection. They, also, exhibit features found again and again in later Irish work; human facesor masks carved at the angles and united by enrichment of various kinds. The motive in this case isthe palmette, with a suggestion of the Greek anthemion or honeysuckle. The relief of the carving ofboth masks and palmette is low, in the latter hardly more than etching. Above the capitals is the onebold feature, an abacus of several inches projection. On the face this abacus is square above a rowof very small pearls or pellets in false relief, and the chamfered lower face is decorated with bold,bud-like bosses. The Rahan archway has been assigned to a very early date, the seventh or eighthcentury, on the grounds of the classicism of the palmette motive and the curious bulbous form of thecolonette bases. Something very like this last, accompanied by shallow engaged shafts, appears inthe chapel of the Palace of Ani in Armenia, and datable, it is said, to the early seventh century at thelatest. Since Armenian clerics dwelt for a time not very far away from Rahan in the seventh or eighthcentury, the importation of these motives is attributed directly to them and to that period. 67Other writers on the Romanesque period find the arguments advanced for this early dating of the church to beuntenable, and the eighth century date is generally not accepted. The chancel arch at Rahan may be an early(and perhaps even one of the earliest) examples of decorated Romanesque chancel arches in Ireland. A date ofconstruction of around 1100-1120 has been put forward for the chancel arch 68 however more recent claims, basedon comparisons with the nearby Nun’s Church at Clonmacnoise, have suggested a later date during the latter halfof the twelfth century. 69 The lack of carvings on the chancel archway was to accommodate a wooden rood screenwhich would have sat into the recessed arches (pers. comm. Dr Rachel Moss). The carvings on the circular windowand on the west doorway of the smaller church bear close affinities to those on the chancel arch and west doorwayof the Nuns’ chapel at Clonmacnoise. As suggested by Leask, it appears that the chancel arch may predate thewest doorway and circular window — the latter two features dating from c. 1160.Leask stated that the:Plan of Rahan presents features unique among Irish churches. It originally had two small chambersflanking the chancel to north and south, and entered from it through two small, round headeddoorways with inclined jambs. Arches and jambs are of excellent workmanship. These little rooms maybe the porticus known in the Eastern Church as the Diaconicon and Prothesis; the first for use of theclergy as a sacristy, and the second to receive the offerings of the faithful. They were also featuresof churches of the fifth and sixth centuries in Syria and North Africa and, though not representedin Italy at that period or later, they appear, curiously, in some English churches built in the seventhcentury. Except for the Rahan examples these features are unknown or, perhaps, have not survivedin Ireland. An argument against the use, specifically, for the purposes the names imply is that atRahan the entrance to the prothesis is from the chancel instead of from the nave, as it should be andas it appears in the English and foreign examples which have been laid bare by excavation. 70Figure 36. Architecturaldrawings of nave andchancel church by HaroldLeask (1938).78