St Nicholas' Collegiate Church

1484: a college and a warden

In the same year that Galway received its royal charter and its first mayor, Archbishop Donatus Ó Muireadhaigh of Tuam raised the church to collegiate status by letters of 28 September 1484, and Pope Innocent VIII confirmed it by bull on 8 September 1485. The city and some parishes around it were cut out of the archdiocese, and its priests became a College of Vicars under a warden, a title found nowhere else in the Irish church. The warden was the spiritual head of the city, wore the mitre and carried the crosier of a bishop without a bishop's power to ordain, and stood for election every August before the mayor and corporation, along with eight vicars choral. The city marked the five hundredth anniversary of both events in 1984.

Mayors, genealogies and Columbus

For many years the triennial elections of the mayor and corporation were held inside the church, with a franchise limited to the men of the fourteen families known as the Tribes. In 1650 Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh produced here the Leabhar na nGenealach, the great book of Irish genealogy. Local legend has Christopher Columbus worshipping in the church when he visited Galway in 1477, a story the city has never been in a hurry to check.

The church today

The church has been in the news more than once. In September 2002 its rector, Patrick Towers, conducted what was reported as the first public blessing of a same-sex couple in an Irish church, an Avowing Friendship service; the Bishop of Tuam, Richard Henderson, forbade any repeat and Towers agreed. Between April and December 2005 the Catholic congregation of St Augustine's used the church for Mass while their own was refurbished, and gave it a processional cross in thanks. Romanian and Russian Orthodox congregations and the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church worship here regularly.

Archdeacon Gary Hastings succeeded Towers as rector in July 2009; he is a traditional flute player who has recorded with the Chieftains and wrote a study of the Lambeg and fife traditions of Ulster. The church stands a minute from Shop Street, with the Saturday market against its walls; the model pins it and the streets around it.