Founded 1224

The walls and gates of Drogheda, which enclosed the city until about 1800, are still impressive even though St Lawrence’s Gate is the only substantial portion that remains. If the many other gates and linking walls were equally massive and imposing, old Drogheda must have been a handsome city in its day. Yet when the Dominicans first arrived in 1224 these walls had not yet been built.

Only rough palisades or earthworks protected the small Anglo-Norman colony which had occupied the ancient settlement a generation before. Hugh de Lacy, one of the first Norman invaders, built two castles on the southern or Meath side of the Boyne at Drogheda. The city itself straddled the strategic bridge from which it took its name, and the Dominicans chose a site on the northern rim of the town where the Magdalen tower or steeple stills cuts the skyline.

We know little about the first Dominicans of Drogheda. Their foundation was underwritten by Luke Netterville, Anglo-Norman archbishop of Armagh, who is said to have been buried in their church in 1227. The friars themselves came from or through England and spoke Norman-French, but they soon blended with both the Anglo-Norman and Irish communities. The new priory was dedicated to St Mary Magdalen. Having been the first to bear the distinctive Christian proclamation that Christ is risen from the dead, she

is seen as the first Christian preacher, and accordingly she is the patroness of the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans. The Magdalen tower as is stands today cannot have belonged to the first Dominican church. It was built later when the friars were better established. The whole complex of church and priory survived practically intact until about 1770 when all but the tower was taken away.The tower is higher than any other Dominican tower in Ireland, rising from the highest point of the town, graceful in design, resting only on a slender arch.

Drogheda was a Norman stronghold of the Pale, a river-port conveniently facing England, a small but crowded city of merchants and tradesmen. There was occasional fear of attack from the ever-stronger “Irish” outside, but far greater and much more constant danger within, from plague or fire – the hazards of city life in those times. The role of the Dominicans in that society was to offer a mobile group of preachers, better prepared for their task than the usual run of mediaeval priests, and not tied down (like the Cistercians and other monks) within the walls of their own convents. Their churches were designed to hold as many as possible, but they also preached in the parish churches of the countryside.

The many Dominican houses in Ireland – and there were eventually about 35 before they were all suppressed – were kept tightly under English control and were ruled by an English superior for centuries. In the normal course of events they would have constituted a Province of the Order, responsible only to Rome, as soon as they had a reasonable number of priories. The English Provincials kept control by means of a compromise: from at least as early as 1256 the Irish houses constituted a vicariate ruled by a vicar of the English Provincial. This Irish vicariate held chapters or meetings of its own, three of which took place at Drogheda: in 1290, 1303 and 1347.