Buttevant Franciscan Friary

The Buttevant Franciscan Friary is a 13th-century Franciscan Friary is situated in the middle of the town of Buttevant, County Cork, Ireland.

According to the tradition of the Observant Franciscans the proto-friary of the Irish Province of the Order, dedicated to St. Nicholas, was founded at Youghal by Maurice Fitz Gerald in 1224. The Irish Province of the Franciscans was formally erected at the general chapter of Assisi in 1230. The same chapter also appointed Richard of Ingworth as first minister provincial who appears to have taken up residence in Youghal. It was probably from this house that an important early friary, dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket, was established at Buttevant. It was to be the only Franciscan house in North Cork. The Annals of the Four Masters record that it was founded and endowed in 1251 by David Óg de Barry. The townland of Lagfrancis was assigned as the glebe for its mensa.

By 1324 Buttevant friary consisted of a community of Irish and Anglo-Norman friars and was sufficiently important to maintain its own studium, or house of studies. Racial tensions, however, troubled the community. In 1327 the commission established by Pope John XXII in 1317 to investigate the Irish Province of the Order determined the transfer of the Gaelic lector from Buttevant to one of its Gaelic friaries. In 1325, the general chapter of the Order, held at Lyons, was informed that the obedience of the friary of St. Thomas at Buttevant had been transferred to the recently erected custody of Cork, thereby taking the house out of Irish control and subjecting it to that of the Anglo-Norman custody of Cork. [1]

The Rotulus Pipae Cloynensis notes that by indenure, made on 9 May 1402 in the vestibule of the Friars Minor of Buttevant, Sir John de Barry, Knight, Lord of Olethan and Muscrydonygan, agreed with Gerald, Lord Bishop of Cloyne, "that henceforth he [would] not put, either by himself or by another in his name, bonys, conwys, guydagia or pedagia upon his [the Bishop's] castle and lordship of Kilmaclenine and the tenants staying and dwelling in the same". Reference here to the vestibule of the friary is an indication that the law courts, as in all of medieval Europe, operated at the door of the friary church, which is likely to have been painted red – as is still the case, for example, with the "Rothertor" of the Cathedral in Paderborn. In the medieval burgage of Buttevant, the friary porch was the place to make legal agreements, renew or grant leases on Lady Day and Michelmas, swear fealty, do homage and contract marriage in the form described, for instance, in Johann Burchard's account of the nuptials of Don Joffré Borgia and Donna Sancia of Aragon before the door of the chapel royal in the Castel Nuovo in Naples on 11 May 1494. The Rotulus Pipae Cloynensis makes clear that the same legal functions happened at the front door of the parish church of St. Briget.

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