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O'Dea Crozier

O'Dea Crozier
O'Dea Crozier

Seven-and-a-half feet in height and weighing about ten pounds, the O'Dea Crozier is made of silver for the most part, ornamented along the shaft with crowns and chaste work. Within the crook in the open part is a silver figure of the Blessed Virgin seated with a dove suspended over her head. Also to be seen are the figure of the Angel Gabriel in a kneeling attitude and the figure of a lily growing out of a ewer. The crook is supported by a pelican with outstretched wings feeding her young. Below the curve are the enamelled figures of Saints Brigid, Barbara, Catherine, Margaret, and two others who bear no distinctive emblems, all under canopies. Below these are the figures of the Blessed Trinity, Saints Peter and Paul, Saint Patrick, an unknown bishop, and the Blessed Virgin, under rich canopies. Round the base is a wreath of enamelling containing the name and title of the bishop: "Me fieri fecit Corneli, O’Deaygh Epus Limiricens, Anno Dom MCCCCXVIII consecracionis sue anno XVIII" [Cornelius O’Dea, Bishop of Limerick, caused me to be made AD 1418, and in the eighteenth year of his consecration].

O'Dea Crozier
O'Dea Crozier

These relics have been carefully preserved, and are greatly admired by lovers of the fine arts, as they are splendid specimens of what Irish artists were able to turn out in the fifteenth century. They have been exhibited at the Dublin Exhibition of 1862, and at the Congress of the Archaeological Society, England, the same year. They have been worn on solemn occasions by the recent Bishops Butler and O’Dwyer.

Currently the mitre and crozier are on display in Limerick’s Hunt Museum.

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