A supposed fragment of the True Cross was brought to Ireland by the
Plantagenet Queen
Isabella of Angoulême, around
1233. She was the widow of
King John and bestowed the relic on the original Cistercian Monastery in Thurles founded in
1169 by King
Donal O'Brien of
Thomond, which she then rebuilt. With time, Holy Cross Abbey and the sacred relic of the True Cross became a place of medieval
pilgrimage, and with the
Protestant Reformation, also a rallying-point for victims of
religious persecution. As a symbol and inspiration of the
Catholic Church in Ireland, resistance, and allegedly of the struggle for
Irish independence, it drew a complaint by
Sir Henry Sidney,
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to
Queen Elizabeth I in
1567. Furthermore, one of the most celebrated of the 24 officially recognized
Irish Catholic Martyrs, Blessed
Dermot O'Hurley, the fugitive Roman Catholic
Archbishop of Cashel, went on pilgrimage to Holy Cross Abbey in September
1583, shortly before his arrest by the
priest hunters and
1584 execution by hanging outside the city walls of Dublin. The
Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland records a
1601 pilgrimage to Holy Cross Abbey by
Irish clan chief Hugh Roe O'Donnell,
Lord of
Tyrconnell. True to his clan's
coat of arms and the
Constantinian motto of the
House of O'Donnell (
In Hoc Signo Vinces) and, in anticipation of the coming
Battle of Kinsale, O'Donnell venerated the relic of the True Cross at Holy Cross Abbey on
St. Andrew's Day,
30 November 1601. By that period, the Abbey had become a rallying point for resistance to the
religious persecution of the
Catholic Church in Ireland and for the rising of the
Irish clans as part of the ongoing
Nine Years War. From there, O'Donnell sent an expedition to
Ardfert, to win a quick victory and successfully recover the territory of his ally,
Thomas Fitzmaurice, 18th Baron Kerry, who had lost it and his 9-year-old son to
Sir Charles Wilmot. It was to be O'Donnell's last victory before the defeat at Kinsale. The Holy Rood was last exposed for public veneration in
1632 and following the
Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Holy Cross Abbey fell into ruins. Local people used the roofless ruins as a burial place after
1740. It became a scheduled
national monument in
1880, with orders that the ruins were, "
to be preserved and not used as a place of worship". Special legislation in the
Dáil for the founding's 500th anniversary, 21 January
1969, enabled Holy Cross Abbey to be restored as a place of Catholic worship, exceptionally for a national monument. The Sacristan of
St. Peter's Basilica in the
Vatican provided an authenticated relic of the Holy Cross, and the emblem of the
Jerusalem Cross, or
Crusader Cross, has been restored for the Abbey. Two crosses were stolen, including the cross containing the relics of the true cross, in a robbery on the Abbey on 11 October 2011. A portable
angle grinder, hammer, and
screwdriver were used by the masked raiders to remove the relics. In January 2012, it was announced that the relics had been recovered by
An Garda Siochana, relatively undamaged, and returned to the Abbey. ==Gallery==