Chapel

St. Patrick’s Cathedral

The Chapel of the Order is the Chapel of St. Stephen or Dunsany Chapel in St. Patrick’s Cathedral Dublin. The association between the Order and St. Stephen is appropriate as we know from Dublin Corporation Records that there was a leper hospital in the vicinity of the Chapel from about the year 1230. The Hospital of St. Stephen had been established by the people of Dublin under the patronage of the Mayor and City Council. It is no surprise then that in 1270 when the Cathedral was built by Archbishop Comyn a chapel was dedicated to St. Stephen.

By the time the Hospital of St. Stephen was suppressed by King Henry VIII in 1542 it was comprised of “a church and three castles” and the “poor lazars” were by then in the care of some kind of religious fraternity. Although Masters continued to be appointed to the Hospital by 1682 it had ceased as a refuge for lepers and the building were derelict.

While normally too small for investitures, Knights and Dames of the Order of St. Lazarus usually gather in the St. Stephen’s Chapel to process from there to the main altar of the Cathedral. The Chapel was decorated through the generosity of Lord and Lady Dunsany who in 1962 established the Order of St. Lazarus in Ireland.