OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Category: Irish Saints

  • Ivrea and 'A Bishop of McCarthy's Royal Name'

    To mark the feast day of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy, below is an 1897 article on Ivrea, the Italian town whose people took this fifteenth-century Irish bishop to their hearts and reintroduced him to his own countrymen. It’s poignant to read how the Bishop of Ivrea in ‘black ’47’, the worst year of the Great Hunger, not only sent money for famine relief but documents relating to the humble Irish pilgrim who had died in Ivrea in 1492. A post on the translation of the relics of Blessed Thaddeus, which also took place in 1897, can be read at the blog here:

    IVREA.

    THE present writer — who is not the writer of the following paper but only of these few introductory words — claims the credit of having been the first to sing in English the praises of the Blessed Thaddeus whose connection with Ivrea procures for that Italian town the distinction of being now commemorated in an Irish Magazine. It happened thus. In 1847, the Bishop of Ivrea, in northern Italy, sent Dr. Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, forty pounds for the famine-stricken people of Ireland; and he also took the opportunity of enclosing documents about an Irish pilgrim who had died at Ivrea in 1492, and was revered there from that day till now as a saint and worker of miracles. These documents were given to the learned President of Maynooth, Dr. Laurence Renehan. Among them was a copy of an epitaph written in Gothic characters on parchment. About the year 1854, or 1855, Dr. Renehan gave this to one of the students of the diocese of Dromore, to be translated metrically, as it was written in Latin hexameters. The translation lay among the old President’s papers, till they came, after his death, into the care of Dr. Daniel MacCarthy, afterwards Bishop of Kerry. In the first volume (1864) of The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, page 377, Dr. MacCarthy published in his account of Blessed Thaddeus MacCarthy, the following lines which the Editor of this Magazine claims as his own across an interval of more than twice twenty golden years.

    ‘Neath marble tombs in this the Virgin’s shrine
    The bones of many a saint in peace recline.
    Thaddeus here. From Erin’s shore he came,
    A Bishop, of McCarthy’s royal name;
    At whose behest were wondrous cures oft made.
    Still Latium, Genoa, invoke his aid
    Dying, he mourned that not on Irish soil,
    Where sped his youth, should close his earthly toil;
    Nor Cloyne, nor Kerry, but Ivrea owns
    (For God so willed) the saintly Bishop’s bones.
    ‘Tis meet that they, in marble shrine encased.
    Should be within the great cathedral placed.
    Like Christ, whose tomb was for another made,
    He in Eusebius’ cenotaph is laid.

    Soon sacred prodigies his power attest,
    And all the earth proclaims him pious, blest.
    ye who hither come, our saint assail
    With prayers and votive gifts; nor, traveller, fail
    To greet with reverence the holy dead.
    Since Christ was born a thousand years had fled,
    Four hundred then and ninety-two beside
    Had passed away, when St. Thaddeus died.

    A city, which tradition points out as the place where our national apostle, St. Patrick, was raised to episcopal rank, as a prelude to his evangelisation of Ireland, and which for over four hundred years has been the faithful guardian of the remains of that strangely persecuted Irish Bishop, now known to the Catholic world as the Blessed Thaddeus, whose beatification Ivrea celebrated last September in so memorable a manner — this city of Ivrea deserves fuller notice than has been accorded to it in the Irish press. But beyond this special interest for Irish readers, its history is in itself sufficiently curious.

    It was known to Pliny, Ptolemy, and Cicero, as Eporedia, and in various public records down to the year 1200, as Iporegia, Iporiensis, Civitas, and Eporeja. This subalpine town, now named Ivrea, was originally a Roman Colony, founded during the sixth Consulship of Caius Marius, 664 years after the foundation of Rome, and about a hundred years before the birth of Christ. Lying as it does, upon the left bank of the river Dora Balta, the Romans founded it as an outpost to confine the aboriginal Salassians in the valleys to which they had driven them back.

    From a colony Ivrea rose to be a municipality with its full staff of decurions, ediles, questors, and other Roman officials. On the break-up of the Roman Empire it shared the same fate as the rest of Italy, and passed through the hands of many masters until A.D. 572, when the Lombardians made it a ducal seat, which it continued to be until 773, when it became subject to Charlemagne who placed a Marquess to rule over it. Several of the Marquesses of Ivrea held kingly rank elsewhere. After the death of the Marquess Arduin, the city was for a time governed by its bishop: from whom it passed under the yoke of the Emperors of Germany. These held it till 1248, when they made it over to Thomas II., third son of Thomas I., Count of Savoy, whose successors acquired further rights over it in 1313.

    Ivrea was not yet done with its changes of government. In 1543 it was occupied by the Spaniards, who built in it a castle for its defence. In 1554 came the French; but five years later it was restored to Duke Emmanuel Philibert. In 1641 it fell, for the second time, into the hands of the French, who, after abandoning it for a while, again got hold of it in 1704. In 1796 they captured it for the last time ; and from May, 1800, Ivrea was the capital of a French department, till the fall of Napoleon in 1814. Since that time it has remained an appanage of the House of Savoy.

    Ivrea was once a city of fifty thousand inhabitants, but through wars and pestilence its population has dwindled to ten thousand. It is healthy, and possesses attractive surroundings — castles and convents, vine-clad hills, valleys, and exquisite lakes.

    Long established as an Episcopal See, Ivrea has its cathedral and other churches, two seminaries, besides flourishing schools and orphanages, with institutions for the poor and sick. The Cathedral was once a pagan temple and circular in form, as was generally the case with pagan temples dedicated to the sun. About A.D. 350 it was purged of paganism and consecrated to the service of the true God under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin assumed into heaven, whence it became known as St. Mary’s Ivrea. In course of time much of the building was demolished and its form altered. Of the older portion nothing remains but the two campanili, some tombstones, and a fresco on a pillar of the choir. The church was enlarged in 1854.

    In this Cathedral were deposited the remains of the now beatified Thaddeus MacCarthy, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne; and it also possesses the bodies of several other saints and martyrs. In the garden behind are portions of the ancient cloister, dating from the days when the members of the chapter lived together and formed one community, as was the rule till about A.D, 1240.

    Near the Cathedral stands the fifteenth century Church of the Confraternity of St. Nicholas of Tolentino, the interior of which is richly ornamented. Behind its high altar of marble is the choir, containing thirty stalls of carved wood representing scenes in the life of St. Nicholas. It contains also a beautiful old painting of the Madonna and Child, with St. Nicholas the Bishop, and St. Nicholas of Tolentino at each side.

    In another part of the city is a beautiful church-tower, known as St. Stephen’s, which is all that remains of the Benedictine Abbey of that name founded at Ivrea by the Bishop in 1041. This abbey flourished till the fifteenth century, but in the next century it was partially demolished, and in 1757 all except this tower was taken down. Some manuscripts that had belonged to this abbey are preserved in the Cathedral Archives.

    This church-tower would appear from its materials to have been built out of the ruins of the old Boman amphitheatre of Ivrea. Amongst other Roman remains is the one-arch bridge across the Dora, which was almost totally destroyed by the French in 1706, during a siege which did immense damage to the churches and other buildings of the town. The bridge was restored by Victor Amadeus, King of Sicily, in 1716, and still further improved a century later by King Charles Felix, in 1830. There are also various urns of baked clay dating from the third century before Christ, and a beautiful marble Sarcophagus, erected in the time of Augustus to receive the remains of Caius Valerius Atticus who died at Ivrea.

    Prominent amongst the mediaeval monuments, is the castle of the Four Towers, which was built in 1368, in the highest part of the city. In 1676, one of the towers containing eight hundred barrels of gunpowder, was struck by lightning and destroyed, a hundred and seventy persons perishing under the ruins. The castle of the Four Towers is now used as a prison.

    The chief of the modem public monuments is one raised in memory of General Perrone de San Martino, a native of Ivrea, who lost his life on the battlefield of Novaro in 1849.

    In the times when stage-coaches and railways were as yet undreamt of, Ivrea stood on what was then the highway between Italy and France; and to this circumstance it owed much of its former importance. It owed to it also the distinction of having been visited at dates widely apart by great military commanders like Hannibal, Charlemagne, and the First Napoleon. This fact also accounts for St. Patrick passing through Ivrea, as is said, in the year 431, and St. Malachy of Armagh, the friend of St. Bernard, in 1139. This moreover made it the scene of the lonely but glorious death of the Blessed Thaddeus in 1492, while making his way homeward on foot as a poor and unknown pilgrim.

    Nothing now remains of the Hospice of the Twenty-one Pilgrims in which he died. It was erected in the year 1005 at the suggestion of St. Bernard of Mentone, and stood on the spot now called the Cassinali di S. Antonio on the old Aosta road outside the city. It derives its name from the fact that members of the Solerio family endowed it with funds for the support of twenty-one passing pilgrims. It was destroyed during the Franco-Spanish war in 1644; but the church, then rebuilt, is still standing.

    That Ivrea has not ceased to venerate the remains of the Blessed Thaddeus was proved by the sacred festivities of last September, in which the Bishops of Cork, of Cloyne, and of Ross took part in response to a pressing invitation, as the successors of their saintly countrymen. One of these prelates, Dr. Fitzgerald of Ross, has since been taken from us suddenly by death.

    A foremost part in these solemnities was taken by Canon Saroglia, the learned and pious Vicar-General of the diocese, on whom chiefly had devolved the laborious researches which prepared the way for the beatification of Thaddeus, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne. From his writings, especially his Album of Ivrea, the present paper has with his kind permission been compiled. He is now engaged upon a large work devoted to the religious history of Ivrea, to be published under the title of “Eporedia Sacra.”

    James Coleman.

    The Irish Monthly, Vol. 25, No. 285 (Mar., 1897), pp. 146-150.

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  • Saint Maol Eóin, October 20

     

    A blog reader asked me recently about a saint Maol Eóin (Maeleoin, Mael Eoin) with a feast day on October 20. The martyrologies are the only source of information I could find about him and they provide some tantalizing clues, although the calendar entries are somewhat confusing. The Martyrology of Oengus ends its entry for the day with: 

    the fair sun at that mountain, 
    of those splendid Children of Eogan

    but the late twelfth-century Martyrology of Gorman hails:

    Mael Eoin of the beauty,
    with splendid Aedán
    A scholiast note records that Mael Eoin was:

    a bishop and an anchorite.

    The seventeenth-century Martyrology of Donegal in its entries for October 20 leads with:

    Maeleoin, Bishop and Anchorite,

    I found these calendar entries difficult to decipher. The name of Maol Eóin does not appear on the Martyrology of Tallaght, but could he be one of the unnamed ‘Children of Eogan’ i.e. a descendant of Eoghan, (perhaps a reference to the founder ancestor of the Eóganachta) recorded in the Martyrology of Oengus?  Saint Marianus O’Gorman not only names Saint Maol Eóin but appears to link him with the equally obscure Aedán. It is to the later, anonymous scholiast on the Martyrology of Gorman that we owe the information that Saint Maol Eóin was a bishop and anchorite, but where and when he held these offices we don’t know. A wide variety of ecclesiastical offices are described in the Irish annals and it is not uncommon for a bishop to be described as the holder of an additional title. Nuadu, for example, a ninth-century Bishop of Armagh, was also described as bishop and anchorite, something I discussed in an earlier post here.

    Canon O’Hanlon references the later calendars in his brief account of Saint Maol Eóin in Volume X of his Lives of the Irish Saints:

    ARTICLE V. ST. MAELEOIN, BISHOP AND ANCHORITE. 

    At this date, Marianus O’Gorman has inserted in his Martyrology the feast of Mael Eoin “of the beauty,” and the scholiast states he was a bishop and an anchorite. To what particular See he be longed has not transpired, neither can we find the period when he flourished. The name of Maeleoin, Bishop and Anchorite, occurs also in the Martyrology of Donegal, at the 20th of October. The Bollandists repeat these notices, at this day.

     Thus, sadly, it seems that Saint Maol Eóin is one of the many Irish saints shrouded in obscurity, with only the Martyrology of Gorman offering any clue as to his identity.

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  • The Blessed Mughron O'Morgair, October 5

    October 5 is the commemoration of a man dubbed The Blessed Mughron O’Morgair (Mugh Róin, Mungron) by Canon O’Hanlon in the incomplete Volume X of his Lives of the Irish Saints. O’Morgair is a name I associate with Maolmhaodhog O’Morgair, better known as Saint Malachy of Armagh, Ireland’s first officially canonized saint. Canon O’Hanlon explains that Mughron is Saint Malachy’s father, although some earlier writers were reluctant to accept this degree of kinship, perhaps due to his association with a monastic establishment. Modern research, however, has shown that not every holder of a monastic office was a monk who had taken vows. All that seems to be known of the Blessed Mughron, thanks to the handsome notices of his obit in the Irish annals, is that he was a leading scholar of the school of Armagh. Under the year 1102, the Annals of Ulster record: 

    Mughron Ua Morghair, arch lector of Ard-Macha and of all the west of Europe, felicitously finished his life (namely, in Mungarit) before many witnesses, on [Sunday] the 3rd of the Nones [5th] of October.

     and the translator offers this comment on the place of his death: 

    In Mungarit. — From this it can be inferred that he had gone on pilgrimage to the monastery of Mungret (Co. Limerick), to prepare for death.

    Rev. B. MacCarthy, ed. and trans., Annals of Ulster, (Dublin, 1893) fn 6, p70.

    The Annals of the Four Masters concurs: 

    Mughron Ua Morgair, chief lector of Ard-Macha, and of all the west of Europe, died on the third of the Nones of October, at Mungairit, in Munster.

    Lector is one of the translations used for the Irish term fer léiginn, literally ‘man of reading’, an office recorded in the annals from the ninth through to the twelfth centuries. Thus I think we may infer that Mughron O’Morgair had a reputation as an important scholar.

    Canon O’Hanlon has this to say of him in his third article of the day at October 5:

    ARTICLE III.—THE BLESSED MUNGRON OR MUGRON O’MORGAIR, PROFESSOR AT ARMAGH. [Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries.]

    This saint flourished, about the close of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century. By St. Bernard, he is said to have been of illustrious descent, and to have possessed considerable power and influence. We have not any authentic particulars, referring to the year of his birth, nor to the race from which he sprung. However, it is probable he was born before or about the middle of the eleventh century. Instead of O’Morgair, as the Chronicum Scotorum and Four Masters write his name, the Annals of Ulster and Innisfallen have O’Mungair. In the opinion of the Rev. Dr. Lanigan the parentes of St. Bernard do not mean father and mother, but, according to the acceptation quite usual in the middle ages, relatives or kinsfolk, such as parens in French and parenti in Italian. Mungron O’Morgair would seem to have been only a layman, as he had been married. He was father of two remarkable saints, namely, Malachy O’Morgair, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, and Christian O’Morgair, afterwards Bishop of Clogher. As the former of these sons had been born at Armagh, in 1094 or 1095, it is probable, the father was then and for some years afterwards, an inhabitant of that antient city. Colgan observes, that Mugron was a relative of St. Malachy, who is usually said to have been of the very antient noble family of the O’Morgairs, now called O’Dogherty. But from what has been stated by our Annalists, it must follow, that Mugron was more nearly connected than as a mere relative. In writing about St. Malachy, the Rev. Dr. Lanigan remarks, that St. Bernard makes no mention of his father, and thence it may be justly inferred that he died, when Malachy was very young. At that time, the future Archbishop of Armagh could only have been about seven years old. The Irish Annals designate Mungron O’Morgair as a chief lecturer, not only in the school at Armagh, but in all Western Europe.  Tradition holds that from the time of St. Patrick, a school had been established in his primatial city. The Annals of Innisfallen call Mungron O’Morgair Professor of Literature, while those of Ulster do not mark over what department he presided. However, it was owing to his advice and persuasion, St. Malachy was promoted to the holy order of Deaconship. Colgan makes him a Professor of Theology, as if there were no other professors than theological ones;  however, that opinion is sufficiently probable. No doubt, it would have been a very rare case in most parts of Europe, during the times we are now treating of, to find a layman professor in any school, and when kings, princes and nobles generally could neither read nor write. But the Irish princes and nobles did not sink into this neglect of learning, and some of their most learned men were persons of illustrious birth. It is, therefore, not singular that Mungron O’Morgair, although of high and powerful connections, was a professor. For, as the Irish nobility respected and cultivated literature more or less, so such of them as were duly qualified were not ashamed to teach it. Although the Right Rev. Dr. Reeves holds, that the Abbey of SS. Peter and Paul in Armagh had been founded there in the twelfth century;  yet it seems more probable it had been built at a much earlier period. During many centuries, a convent of Canons Regular of the Order of St. Augustine flourished in that city, and its abbots were distinguished for their sanctity and learning. In the year 1126, it was repaired, and the church annexed to it was rebuilt by Imar O’Hoedegan. In its school the Blessed Mungron laboured and taught. Towards the close of his life, the learned professor, Mughron O’Morgair, seems to have lived at Mungret, near Limerick, where his career on earth closed. His death is assigned to A.D. 1098, in the Chronicum Scotorum. We are told that he died in Mungret Abbey, county of Limerick, on the third of the Nones, or 5th day of October, A.D. 1102. In the presence of many witnesses, he happily departed this life. Such, also, is the date assigned for his departure in the Annals of Ulster. However, in the Index Chronologicus of Ussher, at the year 1103,  his death is recorded.

    Ulster priest, Father James O’Laverty, in his diocesan history of Down and Connor has no difficulty in accepting that the Blessed Mugron was the father of Saint Malachy. His account also tells us of Gillachrist O’ Morgair, Bishop of Clogher, brother of Saint Malachy, who has his own place on the Irish calendars at June 12:

    St. Malachy, whose name in the language of his country was Maolmhaodhog O’Morgair (or according to others O’Mungair), was born in the year 1094, probably in the city of Armagh. St. Bernard tells us that “his parents were by birth and power great, such as the world calls great.” According to the Annals of Innisfallen, his father was Mughron O’Morgair + whose death is recorded by the Annals of the Four Masters at the year 1102:-” Mughron O’Morgair, chief lector of Armagh and of all the west of Europe, died on the 3rd of the Nones of October, at Mungairit in Munster, (Mungret, Co. Limerick).” The family of O’Morgair are, according to Colgan, at present represented by the O’Doghertys of the County of Donegal. St. Malachy’s mother, who, as St. Bernard says, was more distinguished by the gifts of mind than even by birth, belonged to the family which possessed the lands of Bangor under the abbots of that monastery. It may be surmised that Bangor, though at that period it had lost its greatness, still had some class of a high school, to which was attracted from Tyrconnell, either as a student or a professor, Mughron O’Morgair, who there married a daughter of the great local family, but afterwards removed to Armagh, where he became “chief lector,” and where his children were born. ++  His wife bore to Mughron at least three children, two sons and a daughter. The baptismal names given to the sons indicate the piety of the parents. On their elder son they conferred the name Giolla Criost (Servant of Christ), which has been latinized into Christianus. Their younger son they placed under the patronage of St. Maodhog, or Moge, who was the first Bishop of Ferns, by naming him Maolmhaodhog. The adjective Maol in the ecclesiastical acceptation of the word signifies tonsured; and prefixed to Maodhog, it denotes one tonsured, i.e. devoted to the patronage of that saint. The name Maolmhaodhog, though presenting to a reader accustomed only to the English language a very formidable appearance, is pronounced Meelweeoge, and is latinized into Malachias whence it assumes the form more familiar to us of Malachy. Both the sons of Mughron O’Morgair are honoured by the Church as saints. Giolla-Christ or Christian, became Bishop of Clogher, and is described by St. Bernard, as “a good man full of grace and virtue, second to his brother in fame, but possibly not inferior to him in sanctity of life and zeal for righteousness.” The Four Masters, in recording his death at the year 1138, say:— “Gillachrist Ua Morgair, Bishop of Cloghar, a paragon in wisdom and piety, a brilliant lamp that enlightened the laity and clergy by preaching and good deeds; a faithful and diligent servant of the church in general, died and was interred in the Church of Peter and Paul at Ard-Macha.” The Calendar of Donegal enters his festival at the 12th of June:”Criostian, i.e. Gillachrist Ua Morgair, brother of Maelmaedhog, i.e. Malachias, who is of the Cinel-Conail,” which seems to confirm the statement of Colgan, that the O’Morgairs are at present represented by the O’Doghertys. St. Bernard testifies that their countrymen styled St. Malachy and his brother the two pillars of their church.

    + Colgan thinks that Mungron O’Morgair is a relative of St. Malachy, but O’Flaherty, in a MS. note to Colgan’s work, refers to Tighernach’s Annals and the Chronicon Scotorum, which asserts that he was the saint’s father. The entry in the latter is :— “Mugron O’Morgair, lector of Ard-Macha quievit i.e. the father of Maelmaedhog and Gillachrist.” Some are induced to suppose, with Colgan, that Malachy’s father was a chief, because St. Bernard says “His parents were by birth and power great,” The word parentes was, however, commonly used at that period to express relatives or kinsfolk.

    ++ The late Mr. Hanna, of Downpatrick, in a letter to Father O’Hanlon, author of the learned and popular Life of St. Malachy, says speaking of the saint’s birth-place-“I cannot think it was Armagh, for if so why would St. Bernard say he was bred there and not born there also? It is quite evident his mother belonged to the Ards of the County Down, and to some tribe in the neighbourhood of Bangor.”;

    Rev. James O’Laverty, An Historical Account of the Diocese of Down and Connor, Ancient and Modern, Vol. V (Dublin, 1887), 50-52.

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