The Visual Representation of the Crown of Thorns Motif in Irish Stained Glass: A Symbol of Universal Suffering for the Catholic Revival in France and Ireland in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

The fire that broke out on 15 April 2019 in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris was devastating for the French nation, as the cathedral had long been regarded as a symbol of French religious and cultural patrimony, described by the Washington Post as “the spiritual heart of France”. The heroic rescue of the relic of the crown of thorns by the chaplain of the Paris Fire Department, Père Jean-Marc Fournier, offered some consolation in a night of national trauma. World attention was focused on the relic, its history, and what its loss would signify to the people of France, and to the world. This paper will examine the importance of the relic to the people of France, and its enduring legacy as a symbol of universal suffering. It will demonstrate how the motif of the crown of thorns, as attested to in three of the canonical gospels, has acted as a powerful source of inspiration for the proponents of the French Catholic Revival of the early twentieth century. It will also examine the appearance of the motif in the earliest stained-glass windows produced for Loughrea Cathedral, Co. Galway at the beginning of the twentieth century, during a period of extensive building of churches and cathedrals following Catholic Emancipation in Ireland in 1829. Finally, it will reveal the largely undocumented link between the French Catholic Revival (le renouveau Catholique) and the sacrificial politics of early-twentieth-century Ireland.