SPEECH BY PRESIDENT McALEESE FOR THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF A SPECIAL TERCENTENARY EXHIBITION
SPEECH BY PRESIDENT McALEESE FOR THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF A SPECIAL TERCENTENARY EXHIBITION OF TREASURES
Is mór an onóir agus pléisiúir dom bheith anseo libh inniú agus ba mhaith liom mo bhíochas a chur in iúl díbh as an chaoin-chuireadh agus as fáilte fiorchaoin.
It is a great pleasure to join you today in this wonderful Library, hidden away in the heart of old Dublin – its scholarly silence, its reverence for books quite a contrast to the backdrop of a noisy, busy city, its ambience, its history making of it one of Ireland’s most enchanting and distinctive landmarks. I would to thank Muriel McCarthy for inviting me to open The Golden Fleece Exhibition in this the tercentenary of Archbishop Marsh's Library.
We have Archbishop Marsh to thank for this, Dublin’s first public library. His commitment to the library grew not out of admiration for the saintliness and scholarship that he found here but rather out of frustration at their absence. His early diary entries are less than complimentary. He asserted he was “finding this place very troublesome” and he referred grimly to the “ill education that the young scholars have before they come to the College, whereby they are both rude and ignorant.” Perhaps it was his despair at the philistinism of the students which drove Marsh to seek the refuge of the library. Indeed for much of his Provostship he was absorbed by reorganizing the existing College library and organizing sermons and lectures in the Irish language.
Marsh was never happy that the library in Trinity was only available to the students and staff, but it was only twenty years later, when he became Archbishop of Dublin, that he had the opportunity to build the first public library in Ireland. He announced that it was to be open “to all graduates and gentlemen, who shall have free access to the said library on the days and hours before determined, provided they behave themselves well and give place and pay due respect to their betters”.
The collection of work that we are celebrating here today is ‘The Golden Fleece’ – the most important collection in this Library. Although Marsh intended leaving his own printed books to his institution, he needed more books to furnish the library, and set about looking for more. He discovered that the library of Edward Stillingfleet, the late Bishop of Worcester, was up for sale. Bishop Stillingfleet was a brilliant and prolific writer and book collector, as well as being renowned for his preachings. Marsh succeeded in acquiring what was considered at the time to be the finest private library in England and brought it to Ireland in 1705. This extraordinary collection of bibles and works on law, theology, history, the classics, religious controversy and travel is a magnificent example of a seventeenth century scholars' library. The two other major contributors to the Library were Dr. Elias Bouhereau, a Huguenot refugee who became the first librarian here, and John Stearne, Bishop of Clogher, who bequeathed his books to Marsh's in 1745.
In addition to these four collections there are about three hundred manuscripts in the Library, the most important of which is a volume of the Lives of the Irish Saints, dating from about 1400, and written in Latin. The eclectic nature of the Library, reflecting as it does the preoccupations and passions of four different men is precisely what gives Marsh’s its very particularity, its own special intimacy.
The passion for books, the respect for learning and the generosity which lie at the heart of this the first public library in Ireland are things to savour and to admire. Marsh’s dedication to his dream left him almost penniless. He built and furnished this magnificent building entirely out of his own funds and on several occasions over the last three centuries the Library became almost derelict. In 1860 it would have closed but for the intervention of Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness and his family. In recent years Marsh’s has been sustained thanks to the financial assistance and support received from the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, the Office of Public Works, and the Ireland Funds. It has also of course benefited greatly from the loving care of Muriel and her staff.
This anniversary exhibition draws us back from the world of the PC, the CD, the DVD, the dot com library to the world of bindings and hand presses, of library smells, of textures, of climbing up ladders to reach a book, of taking time to find a reference. In this world things take time and the time taken is not begrudged or rushed because time spent over books is time well spent. The timelessness of such works as are found here is recalled in the words of John Milton –
“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life”.
Here, in the quiet environs of Archbishop Marsh's great library, the visitor and the scholar is invited to go on a unique journey into words and thoughts, into the past, yes, but a past which helps us understand more coherently this present we partly inherited and partly crafted. Part of that past involves a deep love of books and a facility with words that comes from that love. We have been fortunate not just to have had great writers but to have had committed guardians of the sources like Archbishop Marsh. And we are fortunate that three hundred years later there are still those for whom this place is a sacred stewardship and who are as committed to sharing its treasures as Marsh himself was.
An enormous amount of work has gone into developing and constructing this special tercentenary exhibition. It is a marvellous way of outreaching to a new audience and at the same time affirming Marsh’s many admirers. I congratulate the staff of the Library for the hard work and dedication which has created a new point of access to this rare and unusual library. I know each visitor will find a welcome here as I did when I first crossed its threshold many years ago and saw for the first time what a remarkable and relatively unremarked treasure it housed. Part of that treasure is and remains the welcome. It gives me great pleasure to declare this exhibition officially open.
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir.