Founded 1224

There are now nineteen bridges over the river Liffey, but when the Dominicans arrived in Dublin in 1224 there was only one. The city, on its long steep hill to the south, sprawled in untidy confusion around Christ church. St Mary’s Abbey and the small Danish settlement of Oxmanstown had the northern bank to themselves. The houses, with few exceptions, were of wood, and fire a constant hazard. Paving and sanitation were unknown, while livestock, as it did up the 18^th century, roamed everywhere. Plague struck the city every ten or twenty years.

The friars of the new Dominican Order – it had been only eight years in existence – were fortunate in gaining possession of a small chapel only four years old. They retained the title of the chapel, St Saviour, as they have to this day – seven centuries and ten chapels later. It stood on the north side of the solitary bridge, at the point where Church Street now runs onto the river. Three acres of ground beside the chapel stretched downstream towards the Cistercian abbey over the site of the present four Courts. Work began at once on a more suitable church, one large enough to hold the people they intended to attract, and this was opened in 1238. Meanwhile the more routine work of the friars in the city had begun. They preached regularly for the Cistercians and others. Like other early houses of the Order they conducted a small seminary to train aspirants for the priesthood, from which each year twelve scholars graduated, and which may in part have explained the eager welcome the archbishop had given them.

Their church, although repaired in 1285, fell victim in 1304 to one of Dublin’s periodic conflagrations. The work of church-building began again, this time with the generous assistances of John Deceer, the first Provost of Dublin. But the new church stood for only eight years. On the approach of Robert Bruce, the Scottish rebel, with his army, the citizens taking fright, destroyed every building on the north side that could possibly have been turned to advantage by the enemy. The stones of the new Dominican church were removed to build the gate “going up St Audoen’s arch”, the Winetavern Gate, and strengthening the wall along the river. Bruce, in the event, thought better than to fight, and a new St Saviour’s arose. This church survived until its deliberate demolition after 1540.

Two unsuccessful attempts were made to establish a university in Dublin, in 1310 and in 1475. On the first attempt four professors were appointed, and of these two were Dominicans. All four mendicant Orders were associated with the second venture, and the plans envisaged the inclusion of the already existing Dominican school as a constituent college of the university. This venture however lasted only ten years.

No trace remains of the original St Saviour’s or of its two mediaeval successors; no sketch or drawing has survived. The priory buildings were taken over in 1539 under Henry VIII for use at first as courts of law, and then as a hostel for lawyers under the title of “King’s Inns”. The lawyers retained a chapel within the former priory for their private use. In later years, apart from its brief restoration to the friars in the time of James, II, the priory was used in turn as a barracks, a theatre, a publishing centre (whose products were stamped “in the Cloisters”) and, in 1786 the present Four Courts building was erected on the site. Shortly after the building of the present St Saviour’s a small sandstone cross just three feet high, inscribed with the date 1222 in Roman numerals, was unearthed during excavations for an extension to the Four Courts. Underground chambers are considered to have formed part of the ancient priory. The original seal of the priory was also found, and is now preserved the Royal Irish Academy.

Henry VIII’s systematic spoliation of religious houses moved out fan-wise from Dublin across the country, effective only where it could be enforced by English law, achieving full success only on the fall of Ulster in the opening years of the 17^th century. As the arm of the law advanced, the friars fell back towards Connacht and Ulster, the Dominicans making a last stand in Sligo and Athenry, growing ever fewer until only twenty friars remained of a Province which had once numbered above a thousand. The return of official Catholicism in the person of Queen Mary was too brief for more than a few optimistic attempts at revival in Munster. Then under Elizabeth the slaughter began.