OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

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  • An Irish Bishop Saint: Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy

    October 25 is the feast of Blessed Thaddeus [Tadhg] McCarthy,  a fifteenth-century Irish Bishop who, having been unjustly deprived of his see, set off to obtain redress in Rome only to die alone on his return journey. Yet although he belongs to a very different world than that of the early medieval period saints this blog usually features, I am nevertheless aware of a thread of continuity which links him to them. In his popular title ‘The White Martyr of Munster’, Blessed Thaddeus reflects the Irish understanding of martyrdom as preserved in the Cambrai Homily:

    The white martyrdom for someone is when they part for the sake of God from everything that they love, although they may suffer fasting and hard work thereby. 

    Furthermore, as an Irishman who died and was buried in Italy, he is following in the footsteps of those peregrini of the Golden Age of the Irish mission to Europe, from the great Saint Columbanus to Cathadulus of Taranto, Donatus of Fiesole or Ursus of Aosta.  This was a link acknowledged by Fra Anselmo Tommassini, in his 1937 study Irish Saints in Italy:

    Our pious pilgrimage throughout the various provinces of Italy in search of traces of Irish sanctity comes to an end with a strangely pathetic figure whose humility is equalled only by his dignity. Our last Irish saint [Blessed Thaddeus] links up in the most curious fashion with the first one encountered on this side of the Alps, with that St. Ursus, the apostle of the Valle d’Aosta, who gave his name to so many churches and hospitals…

    For it was in one of these hospitals, the Hospice of the XXI, where twenty-one beds were reserved for the use of poor pilgrims and an institution served by the Canons of Saint Ursus of Aosta, that Blessed Thaddeus died on October 24/25, 1492. Interestingly, Saint Ursus of Aosta’s feast is February 1, the same day as that of Ireland’s national patroness Saint Brigid.

    Four centuries years later the people of Blessed Tadhg’s homeland rejoiced in the rediscovery of his memory, in the official confirmation of his cultus and in the translation of his relics from Ivrea to Cork. Below is a Pastoral letter from someone very much involved in these celebrations, the then Bishop of Cork, Thomas (Alphonse) O’Callaghan, O.P. detailing the life of Blessed Thaddeus and commending him as an intercessor to his flock:

    An Irish Bishop Saint 
    In his Pastoral, the Bishop of Cork  says: —’With feelings of heartfelt  joy we announce to you that it has  pleased His Holiness Leo XIII. to confirm, by his apostolic authority, the veneration that has been paid since the close of the fifteenth century to the Servant of God, Thaddeus McCarthy, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne. Henceforth he will be revered by us with the title of Blessed. His feast will be celebrated in the diocese each year throughout all future time, and Mass will be offered in his honour.

    He was of the princely house of McCarthy, and was born in the year 1455, at a time when his family was just regaining its former power in Munster. Numerous buildings and castles, the ruins of which are scattered through the diocese, and with which we are familiar, were erected by his kinsmen and contemporaries, Cormac McCarthy Laider, who was appointed his protector in Cork by the Sovereign Pontiff, Innocent VIII., built Blarney Castle, and many churches in the neighbourhood of our city. He founded Kilcrea Abbey and the Abbey of Ballymacadane. Gifted with a rare natural disposition, and trained from his childhood in the practice of virtue, Thaddeus had hardly completed his studies when, despising all worldly allurements, he hastened to enrol himself in the ranks of the clergy. The fame of his learning, of his piety, and of his other virtues, spreading and increasing from day to day, he was, while yet in the flower of his youth, and already effulgent with sanctity, appointed by the Sovereign Pontiff, Sixtus IV., to govern the See of Ross; and he received episcopal consecration in the Church of St. Stephen (del Caeo), in Rome, on the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross, A.D. 1482.

    Having become in very soul the model of his flock, he ruled the Church committed to his care with prudence and diligence. By his devotion to religion, and his zeal for souls, he merited to be praised as the best of pastors. Like our Divine Lord, whose life he imitated, he carried a heavy cross; and in the exercise of his episcopal duties he was opposed, and calumniated, and denounced as a mercenary pastor, and as a steward of iniquity. The intrigues of his enemies went so far that the mind of the Sovereign Pontiff, Innocent VIII., was turned against him, and he was visited with severe ecclesiastical penalties. He bore his humiliation in perfect patience, without a word of complaint, and his virtue, tried on the touchstone of tribulation, attained in a short time the arduous summit of perfection. The innocence of Thaddeus was soon after proved, and his sanctity was made so evident that the same Pontiff, Innocent VIII., resolved not only to restore him, but to call him to still greater honours. He appointed him to the united Sees of Cork and Cloyne, regarding him rather as an angel than a man, and deeming him worthy of the greatest favours. When, by the bitter persecution of powerful enemies, and by the laws that then excluded the native Irish from ecclesiastical benefices, he was again forced into exile, he left Cork clad in the meanest attire in the garb of a pilgrim, and proceeded to Rome. Having worshipped at the Tomb of the Apostles, he laid his cause before the Vicar of Christ, who received him with affectionate cordiality, furnished him with strong-worded letters, and denounced in the severest terms the trespass on the liberty of the Church. In returning on foot he stopped to rest at Ivrea, in Piedmont, where, poor and unknown, he was received into the Hospital for Pilgrims. There, broken down from privations and toil, wearied by long travelling, and already ripe for Heaven, he delivered up his soul to God on October 24, 1492, in the thirty-seventh year of his age.

    His death was announced by a light from Heaven shining in a marvellous manner, and the strangeness of the event attracted many to the bedside on which were laid his mortals remains. The Bishop of Ivrea, Nicholas Garigliatti, accompanied by his clergy, hastened to the spot, and discovered that the poor pilgrim was the Bishop of Cork and Cloyne. His body, attended by a great multitude of the faithful, the clergy, and civil magistrates, was carried to the Cathedral in solemn procession, which the accounts of the time say was rather a triumph than a funeral. It was placed under the High Altar, in the same sepulchre with St. Eusebius, patron of the Diocese of Ivrea, where it has since been venerated, and God willed the remarkable sanctity of His servant should be attested by many miracles.

    It remains for us, dearly beloved brethren, to pay due honour to his memory, and to have recourse to his intercession, that by his prayers we may obtain what we stand in need of. Though forgotten during the centuries in which it was sought to blot out all traces of our religious history and our traditions, we may trust that he has not ceased to plead for us at the Throne of God, and that he has ever been, as the Prophet Jeremiah was to the Jewish nation, a lover of his brethren, who prays much for the people.”

    Catholic Press, (Sydney, NSW), Saturday 4 April 1896, page 21

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  • 'A Vessel of Wisdom and a Man Full of the Grace of God': Saint Adamnan of Iona

    September 23 is the feast of Saint Adamnan, a seventh-century Donegal saint who was the ninth abbot of Iona and one of the most prominent churchmen of his time. I recently treated myself to a copy of a new book on the saint by Brian Lacey, Adomnán, Adhamhnán, Eunan: Life and afterlife of a Donegal Saint, published by Four Courts Press in May of this year and look forward to reading a modern scholar’s reappraisal of this fascinating man. Although he is generally best known as the hagiographer of and successor to Saint Colum Cille of Iona, there remains a more local aspect to the cult of Saint Adamnan who is the co-patron of the Donegal diocese of Raphoe, a connection which has a chapter of its own in Lacey’s book. In the seventeenth century Micheal O’Clery compiled The Martyrology of Donegal, whose entry for this day contains a summary of what had been handed down about local hero, Adamnan. It presents him as an abbot, ascetic, and mystic who is sustained by a vision of the Christ child for three days and who is further associated with an apocalyptic vision of heaven and hell. It concludes with a reference to the List of Irish Parallel Saints in which our native holy men are viewed as local equivalents of major Christian figures, with Saint Adamnan likened to Pope Sylvester:

    23. G. NONO KAL. OCTOBRIS. 23.

    ADAMNAN, son of Ronan, of the race of Conall Gulban, son of Niall, as to his stock. His mother was of the race of Enna, son of Niall. Ronat was her name. This is the Adamnan who was six and twenty years in the abbacy of I-Coluim-Cille. On a certain day that he was at Hi, he meditated in his mind to remain for three days and three nights in his church alone praying to the Lord, and he remained to the end of that time without coming to the monastery at all. They sent some mature men to the church to know how the cleric was, for they thought he was too long absent from them. They looked through the key-hole, and they saw a little boy with brilliance and bright radiance in the bosom of Adamnan. And Adamnan was thanking and caressing the infant; and they were not able to look at him any longer by reason of the divine rays which were around the boy. They were certain that it was Jesus who was in the shape of an infant, delighting Adamnan in this manner, and also that he was his satisfaction and gratification during these three days and nights.  He was a vessel of wisdom, and a man full of the grace of God, and of the knowledge of the holy Scriptures, and of every other wisdom; a burning lamp which illuminated and enlightened the west of Europe with the light of virtues and good morals, laws, and rules, wisdom and knowledge, humility and self-abasement. These are his churches, namely, Rathbhoth, Druim-Thuama, in Cinel-Conaill; The Scrin, in Tir Fhiachrach Muaidhe and other churches besides. Seventy-seven years was his age when he sent his spirit to heaven, His body was interred with great honour and respect at Hi, and his body was removed to Erin after some time.

    It was to Adamnan were revealed the glory of the kingdom of heaven and the pains of hell, as contained in the Vision of Adamnan,which was copied from the Leabhar-na-hUidhre.  And thenceforward it was the glory of heaven and the pains of hell he used to preach. The Life of Ciaran, of Cluain, states, chap. 47, that the order of Adamnan was one of the eight orders that were in Erin.

    A very ancient old-vellum-book, of which we have spoken at 1st of February, at Brighit, and at 17th March, at Patrick, and at 9th of June, at Colum Cille, &c., states, that Adamnan was, in his habits and life, like unto Silvester the Pope.

    J.H. Todd and W. Reeves, eds, John O’Donovan, trans. The Martyrology of Donegal: A Calendar of the Saints of Ireland, (Dublin, 1864) pp. 255-257.

     Dr Lacey comments:

    The Martyrology entry doesn’t tell us anything new or even anything very interesting about Adomnán, made up as it is of extracts from earlier texts and stock hagiographical phrases. But it does tell us how the great seventh-century Donegal intellectual and scholar, Adomnán,was perceived by one of the greatest intellectual and scholarly Irishmen, also from Donegal, about a thousand years later.

    Brian Lacey, Adomnán, Adhamhnán, Eunan: Life and afterlife of a Donegal Saint (Dublin, 2021), p. 214.

     

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2021. All rights reserved.

  • The Prayer of Saint Atty

    A couple of days ago I reprinted a poem by Philadelphia resident Patrick J. Coleman on the founding of the diocese of Achonry by Saint  Nathy.  Now we have another of his poetic offerings, this time in praise of Achonry’s female patroness Saint Attracta and her role as peacemaker and protectress.

    THE PRAYER OF SAINT ATTY.*

    A LEGEND OF ACHONRY

    KING Connor made an edict old:
    “A royal palace I will build;
    Tribute I order of the gold,
    From every clan and craftsman’s guild.

    “Tithings of scarlet and of silk,
    Curtain and screen of regal woof
    Deep-uddered heifers, rich in milk,
    And bronze and timber for the roof.

    “From Leyney’s lord, in token due
    Of fealty, I will ordain
    A hundred masts of ash and yew,
    A hundred oaks of pithy grain.”

    “Saint Atty, keep us safe from scath
    And shield us in the battle crash!
    For roof of royal house or rath
    We will not render oak or ash!”

    Thus lowly prayed the Leyney clan,
    While sang the birds in bush and brake.
    As fast they mustered, horse and man,
    To face the foe by Gara’s lake.

    For, wroth’ at heart, came Connor’s clan;
    Ah, Christ! they made a horrid front,
    With red spears bristling in the van.
    And shields to brave the battle-brunt.

    From wing to wing in wrath they rolled,
    Crested with helmets all afire.
    Of burnished bronze or burning gold.
    To martial measures of the lyre.

    A dreadful war! the blessed saints
    Defend to-day the Leyney clan!
    For they must reel before the steel
    Of such a hosting, horse and man.

    From sounding sheaths the swords flamed out,
    The clattering quivers echoed loud,
    From their dark ranks the battle shout
    Broke out, as thunder from the cloud.

    “Saint Atty, keep us safe from scath!”
    Thus made the Leyney men their prayer ;
    When lo! adown the forest path
    Trooped, lily-white, a herd of deer!

    Broke from the branching thicket green,
    While mute the watching warriors stood;
    Such gracious deer were never seen
    In Irish fern or Irish wood;

    And, mighty marvel, on their backs.
    Bound by a maiden’s tresses gold.
    Clean-hewn as if by woodman’s axe.
    The tribute of the wood behold !

    Nor paused the sylvan creatures sweet,
    But gliding onward, like to ghosts.
    Cast off the wood at Connor’s feet
    In wondrous wise betwixt the hosts;

    Then vanished in the forest green.
    While mused amaze the king and kern;
    And nevermore from then were seen
    In Irish wood or Irish fern.

    Down dropped the sword to thigh and hip,
    “God’s will be done, let hatred cease!”
    Rose up the cry from every lip.
    And harps attuned a chord of peace.

    Yea, “blessings broke from every lip,
    To God and to His saints above.
    And hands that came for deadly grip
    Were mingled in fraternal love.

    ” ‘Gainst scath or scar our battle-shield
    Is Atty, saint of Leyney’s clan!”
    They sang, as homeward from the field
    They hied, unscathed, horse and man.

    For in her chapel in the wood
    The boding war had Atty seen,
    And for the people of her blood
    Made prayer amid the forest green.

    And men do say that on that day
    She saved the Leyney clan from scath,
    Such power there is when lowly pray
    The pure of heart and keen of faith.

    And still when autumn gilds the lea,
    And scythes are shrill in meadows ripe,
    The rural pageant you may see
    Sporting with jocund dance and pipe.

    The village women you may mark
    In Leyney, at Saint Atty’s well.
    Ere yet hath trilled the risen lark
    In golden mead or dewy dell.

    PATRICK J. COLEMAN.

    *Saint Atty is the loving name of the people of Achonry for Saint Attracta, the patroness of the diocese.

    The Irish Monthly, Volume 18 (1890),80-82 

     

     

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2021. All rights reserved.