about

Nano Nagle, Lady of the Lantern (1718-1784)

Honora (Nano) Nagle was born in 1718 into a well-known, aristocratic Catholic family in the Blackwater valley. She was the oldest of seven children, five girls and two boys, born to Garrett Nagle and his wife, Ann Matthews. The original Nagle home was on the site of what is now the central stone building in the Ballygriffin complex of heritage, ecological and retreat facilities. In the decades before Nano’s birth the Nagles were owners of vast tracts of land. At one time they were owners of four hundred acres of farmland and apple orchards. A tree-clad mountain across the river is still known as Nagle Mountain.

Little is known of Nano’s childhood and early education. She seems to have been a vivacious child who caused her mother to deprive her of some rewards for good behaviour, while her father insisted, “Our Nano will be a saint yet!” Restrained under the prevailing Penal Laws, Catholic families were denied the right to have their children educated, unless in schools where the ethos was Protestant. They were also forbidden to send their children abroad for education. According to early biographers, Nano’s early education was provided by her parents at home, probably with the assistance of travelling tutors. There is a tradition that she may have attended a nearby hedge-school in the ruins of Monanimy Castle, once a stronghold of a branch of the Nagle family. Her famous cousin, Edmund Burke, who lived for a time in the area, was educated at a hedge-school there, run by a Mr O’Halloran. Irish was the language of that school.

As was the custom for wealthy Catholic families in Ireland at the time, Nano was sent abroad to complete her education. It is recorded that she travelled, accompanied by her uncle, to France, where she had many relatives. For years the location of her school in France was a guarded secret. It is now known that Nano was educated from age ten to age sixteen in the Benedictine convent at Ypres, a town which today is in Flanders, but in Nano’s time it was in French territory. So many members of the Benedictine community in Ypres were Irish that it was known as The Irish Abbey at Ypres. On leaving Ypres at age sixteen, Nano moved to Paris, probably to join her relatives in the Jacobite court of Saint Germaine-en-Laye. It is known that she was ‘presented’ (recognised and welcomed among the royalty) in the court of Louis XV. Nano tells us in her letters that she enjoyed the glamorous life of Paris so much that she thought that she could never live without it. An incident from those glory days is well-documented. Returning one morning from an all-night party, she was struck by the sight of ‘wretched-looking people huddled at a church doorway’ awaiting morning Mass. It caused her to consider her own use of time. The twelve years she spent in royal circles in Paris are largely clouded in mystery. Was she involved in charity-work? Was she offered the hand of some royal gentleman in marriage? We simply do not know. What we do know is that Nano never married.

She returned to Dublin ‘at the request of relatives’ in 1746, soon after the death of her father. She resided for some years in a house on Bachelor’s Quay with her mother and sister, Anne. Here Nano was confronted with the extreme poverty and destitution of the dwellers in Dublin’s inner city. Her mother and sister were both involved in works of charity. An incident involving a roll of silk material had a lasting effect on Nano and, by her own admission, prompted her ‘to give her life to God in the service of the poor’. That roll of precious silk material had been brought from Paris by Nano, intending it to be made into a pretty dress. She was shocked to learn that her sister, Anne, had given it away to provide funds to feed a poor family.

On the death of her mother in 1748, followed by that of her sister, Anne, shortly afterwards, a distressed Nano left Dublin to join her brother, David, in Ballygriffin. While there she encountered among the tenants on Nagle property a measure of squalor, ignorance and superstition which horrified her. She was resolved to help but she could not see a way. Eventually, she decided to return to a convent in France (probably in Ypres where she had been in school), hoping that she could help by a life of prayer. Her short time there turned out to be a time of testing. She was haunted by the cries of those neglected ones she left behind. She consulted a Jesuit priest who advised her to follow the voice that was calling her back to Ireland. Her first biographer, Dr Coppinger, tells us that “she replied, she argued, she remonstrated” but eventually she went.

Back in Cork, living in Cove Street, guest of her brother Joseph and his wife, Frances, she waited some time before beginning what she calls ‘a work of God’. Sometime in the early 1750s she rented a little mud cabin and instructed her maid to secretly gather thirty of the most neglected children in the area. She received that group of children with joy into the little cabin-school and began with a prayer. So began the inspired project which was to continue in Cork for more than thirty years. Quickly the word spread about Nano’s secret schools where fees were not required, where children learned to read and write and cipher, where they learned about their faith and heritage, where they were introduced to trades and skills that equipped them for the world of work. By the mid1750s Nano had seven schools in Cork, five for girls and two for boys. At her own expense she employed teachers in these schools, eventually relying on funds from her uncle Joseph’s estate. Nano visited the schools daily and took responsibility for religious instruction and preparation for the sacraments. She visited homes and hovels in the city each evening, bringing healing and hope to the sick and dying. The annalist tells us that “there was not a garret in Cork that she did not know”. She dared to walk the dark and dangerous streets and quays at night and became known as The Lady with the Lantern. Her missionary work extended to those who chose or were forced to take the emigrant ship bound for the West Indies, where the Nagles had many interests, including sugar plantations. She equipped and encouraged these young migrants to become teachers of the faith. She built a home for old and destitute ladies and arranged a worthy burial plot for them in St Finbarr’s cemetery. Her dream to build a refuge for girls and women trapped in prostitution was cut short by her death from tuberculosis in 1784 at the age of sixty-five.

Nano lived her entire life under the shadow of the Penal Laws. She is known and respected as a social reformer, as pioneer in the field of education, especially the education of girls, as bearer of hope to the poor and oppressed, as designer of a novel type of consecrated life in Ireland, as a woman whose vision was, as she says, not confined to one object. One may rightly ask: What drove her? It is not far-fetched to say that she was Spirit-led. She is known to have spent three hours each morning in prayer in St Finbarr’s chapel, and ‘as many hours in the evening’ in her humble dwelling. Nano was, above all else, a woman of the gospel. She was declared Venerable by Pope Francis in 2013.