In A small medieval church in Dublin, voices soared through the little parish church. A group of eight singers sang a hymn from the 14th century, Song of the Annunciation, followed by a piece of music from the late 17th century. "The watchful angel of the Lord/Encamps around the just/To guard and to deliver them/That do him fear and trust," they sang.
There was a comforting sense of peace within the echoing walls. Everyone wanted to look back to the distant past. No one was ready to look forward, yet.
The choral singing in St Audoen's Church, Cornmarket, marked the launch of a book, Irish Preaching 700-1700. It was the right place to be on such an evening. Outside the city was eerily quiet on a horrible Tuesday evening as stunned people tried to come to terms with the American tragedy.
"This collection of essays takes the long view - the millennium 700 to 1700," said Terrance McCaughey, former TCD Irish senior lecturer, who launched the book, told the gathering. "Whatever other rhetoric was practised and whatever other artform was cultivated, preaching went on and on both before 700 and after 1700."
He marvelled at "the incredible variety of the material handled in this ground-breaking book. Here is material in Latin, in Irish and in English". Most important, he said, is "to bear in mind the essentially oral character of preaching".
"It's looking at a crucial moment in Irish history from a new perspective. We are looking at society from the vantage-point of the preacher," said Alan Fletcher of UCD, who is one of the book's two editors.
"It's sermons in their historical context," said co-editor Raymond Gillespie of NUI Maynooth. The book, which is published by Four Courts Press, is an attempt "to try and understand the world of the past . . .We are trying to understand how the man in the pew understood the things that were being said to him".
Colmβn ╙ Clabaigh, a monk from Glenstal Abbey, who has written a chapter in the book on the Franciscan contribution to preaching in Ireland, was there. The Glenstal Book of Prayer, which is now in its third print run, is already sold out, he said.