Tomb - effigial

The National Monuments Service's description

This is a slab (dims 2.17m x 1.11m at top, 1.17m at bottom; H 11cm) at the SE angle of the chancel with the head at the E and the inscription is in gothic lettering. This is the Tuite – Cusack tomb. (FitzGerald 1911, 406-07, No. V; Moore 1970, 25, No. 3; Hunt 1974, 209, No. 193)

It is described by FitzGerald as: a very large, badly fractured slab, on which is sculptured in low relief the figure oaf a bishop, the mitred head of whom rests under an ornamental canopy.... In his right hand the bishop holds a square object (? a book), and a crozier (head outwards) in his left. An angel supports his head on the right side.
At the right side of the bishop are two or three ogee-headed niches, one over the other, each containing a human figure (? Saints).
The lower portion of the slab… is so weather-worn and injured that little can be distinguished on it. Raised black-letter inscriptions run along the edge of the slab. Those portions of it in the upper half of the slab, where it is better preserved, show that it ran in one line along the top, in two parallel lines on the left side of the bishop, and in one line on his right side.
The inscriptions that remain…. are very fragmentary, and as they also appear to commence in the genitive case, the beginnings of them must have been on the lower end of the slab, now quite indecipherable, probably commencing with “Hic jacent corpora,” of “Orate pro animabus”; unless this is another case of an “Obitus”?
With contractions lengthened the readings probably are:
1 RICARDI TUYT QUONDAM DOMINI KILLEN, ET PLURIUM FILIORUM FILIARUMQUE EIUS QUONDAM ……
2 ET JOHANNE TUYT UXORIS SUE QUONDAM DE KILLEN, ET SIMONIS CUSAK, MILITIS, FILII DOMINE….
3 OBIIT FRATER GALFRIDUS CUSAK, QUONDAM EPISCOPUS MIDENSIS….
Killeen passed in the fourteenth century, by marriage with a Cusack heiress, into the possession of Sir Richard Tuite of Sonnagh, and then through his daughter and heiress, Joan, into the possession of another branch of the Cusack family – Sir Walter of Gerardstown, who had a brother Sir Simon, sons of a John Cusack of Gerardstown.
When it was that Geoffrey Cusack was Bishop of Meath appears to be unknown. Sir James Ware’s “Bishops of Ireland” has a note that he died in 1200; and Cotton’s “Fasti” places his death in 1300. Of the two the latter is the more likely. [Geoffry Cusack was bishop of Meath in 1253-4. See this web-page accessed on 11, March, 2015: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_of_Meath ]
Judging by what is left of the inscriptions, this slab seems to be commemorative of several members of the Tuite and Cusack families.

Date of upload: 18 March, 2015

References

Moore, B.F.E. 1970 Tombs in St Mary's ruined church, Killeen. Ríocht na Mídhe, 4, 4, 24-9.

FitzGerald, Lord W. 1911 Killeen Church Ruins. Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead in Ireland, 8, 2, 401-.18

Hunt, J. 1974 Irish medieval figure sculpture 1200-1600, 2 vols. Dublin. Irish University Press.