OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Tag: Irish saints in Europe

  • The Martyrdom of Saint Tanco

    February 16 is the feast of Saint Tanco (Tanchon, Tatta) of Verden (Werda), an Irish missionary in early ninth-century Saxony who was martyred when some local pagans reacted violently to the destruction of their sanctuaries.  Saint Tanco is numbered among the saints of the Benedictine order, and below is a rather graphic account of his martyrdom from a calendar originally compiled by seventeenth-century Benedictine, Father Agidius Ranbeck, OSB. Although the writer begins by referring to Scotland as the homeland of Saint Tanco, this reflects the medieval usage of the term ‘Scotia’ to refer to Ireland:

    Among the noble band of missionaries and martyrs whom Scotland sent forth to spread the light of the Faith
among the heathen nations of Germany and Gaul, we must celebrate S. TANCO. Though the son of noble and wealthy parents, he at an early age entered the Monastery of Amarbarcum, and there, by his unremitting toil, his devotion to prayer, his fasts and watchings, his gentleness towards others while most rigorous to himself, he so gained the love and respect of all, that on the death of the Abbot he was
 unanimously chosen by the Community to be their head. His elevation brought no change in his manner of living. In his own person he set his brethren a perfect example of how to live up to the Rule of S. BENEDICT; yet he tempered his severity with such gentleness that all his orders were executed by his monks with the greatest readiness.

    Our Saint’s soul, however, longed for a wider field. The example of COLUMBA and GALL and countless other Saints incited him to undertake a campaign against the false gods still worshipped in many parts of Germany.
Communicating his intention to his monks, he selected from among them a band of comrades, and proceeded to the country of the Saxons. There, visiting all the villages and towns, he kept sowing the good seed; but the harvest did not answer to his expectations. The savage and ignorant pagans openly mocked the devoted missionaries; so our Saint, leaving some of his companions to look after the few converts he had made, next went to Flanders. In this country, and in the territories adjoining it, his labours were most successful, numbers joining the Church.

    S. TANCO’S name was now celebrated throughout Flanders and Gaul; his fame penetrated even to the royal palace. The inhabitants of Werda as yet were very ignorant of the blessings of Christianity; moreover, they were sunk in the most loathsome vice and wickedness. In his zeal for the Faith, the Emperor Charlemagne sent for S. TANCO, and asked him to take charge of the See of Werda, then vacant. Our Saint consented; but the task was no easy one. In his diocese idols were still openly worshipped, and the most terrible crimes were of daily occurrence. On foot, at the head of the monks whom he had brought with him from his native land, the Bishop went from village to village, encouraging the faint-hearted, denouncing the guilty, and performing miracles to convince unbelievers. Yet his descriptions of the happiness that awaits the pious and of the punishment in store for the wicked were treated as old wives’ tales. Finding his words of no avail, he attacked their idols wherever he found them; he smashed the statues of the false gods, overthrew their altars, and levelled their temples to the ground. At this the fierce barbarians became so enraged, that they beat out their Bishop’s brains with clubs, cut off his legs and arms with their swords, and left the trunk, pierced with a thousand wounds, swimming in its gore, A.D. 815.

    The Saints of the Order of Saint Benedict – January, February, March – from the Latin of F. Agidius Ranbeck, OSB, (translated by J.P.Molohan) ed. Rev J.A. Morrall, OSB (London, 1896), 224-228.

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  • 'Broken in All Things Save of God': Blessed Thaddeus MacCarthy

    BLESSED THADDEUS MAC CARTHY

    THE high Alps, snow-covered, take on, at sunset in Autumn time, such colours and blends as are to be conveyed only in music, or stored in the secret heart. Pathos and longing in the deep blue auras, magic in the silver slides passing in and out of the lanterns of moon and stars, peace and rest in the purple flowing down like a shawl to cover the beloved breasts of hills; until in the dark from the folded world rise, like breathings of children, turnings in sleep, little sighs and cries, the springs and streams of the lower levels, un-frozen as yet and running on to the Mediterranean with word of the hills and how beautiful they are in their sleep, and how holy this work is of handmaiden to them. So poetry steals out of every thought, such poetry as must have touched his heart. For look at him there, a pilgrim dragging himself on to the Italian gate of the Alps. A young man, 37 or so, but broken in all things save of God. Night is falling as he reaches Ivrea and enters the cathedral. He prays for strength to persevere, for now his heart lifts with an agonising hope. There, up in the valley of Aosta, opens out the fan of snows about the great St. Bernard, from whose heights –  oh, God, if only he can reach them! –  the 19 hills will be visible rolling down to the West and Ireland that he craves for. So he is shaken and exalted by the thousand thoughts, the folly of his adventure, the anguish for home, the phantoms that begin to rise of kinsmen clustering round him at the gates of Cork. “Welcome, welcome back -”  But look! How white he turns! The night grows harder with nipping cold, his blood congeals, his skin tingles and is stung, the nails of the coffin rivetting in – so his mind wandering begins to vision it. He staggers to a gate it is a mile beyond Ivrea on the Aosta Road – the hospice of St. Antonio – they admit him; another rover; pilgrims are frequent, not always to be trusted. He flounders to a bed in the common ward ; neglected, scorned maybe. Vespers ring out. The Brothers are at prayer; the pilgrim gives a little gasp on the floor. Suddenly the mountains topple down, the torrents run living gold, lapis lazuli and silver reef across the peaks, avalanches leap and clash like cymbals. An old feeble fellow stretched near by cries out for help: “That one there – the stranger! He is all on fire!” And the bell clangs the brethren round, and they fall upon their knees, breathless and humbled, till the phosphorescence passes from the face and hair of the departed. Oh, Mary and Joseph! a saint and of noble birth! For look what is here and they searching his coarse pilgrim clothes! A bishop’s ring and the scrip from the Pope himself! And the poor man, so holy and good, and he walking and begging his way from Rome! Fling wide your gates, O Cork, and bid his spirit enter. For this Thaddeus of the royal MacCarthys is such a light of humility and faith as must outshine us all ! 

    

     D. L. Kelleher, The Glamour of Cork, (Dublin and London, 1919), 18-20.
    

    

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    Translation of the Relics of Saint Virgilius, September 26
    
			
    

    

    

    

    

    As there are not many commemorations of Irish saints found on the calendars at September 26, Canon O’Hanlon is forced to look further afield to fill up the September volume of his Lives of the Irish Saints. He notes that various continental sources record the Translation of the Relics of Saint Virgilius of Saltzburg at this date. Beneath this Latin name is Fearghal, an eighth-century Irishman, who embodies the missionary and scholarly ideals of Ireland in the Golden Age of the Saints. A contemporary of the English Saint Boniface, with whom he clashed, Saint Virgil established a reputation as a leading European scholar before his death in 784. His feast day, as Canon O’Hanlon notes below, is on November 27 and a paper on the life and work of this great Irish saint in Europe can be read at the blog here. Below is the account of today’s feast from Canon O’Hanlon’s Lives of the Irish Saints, I regret that he does not bring more actual detail of the circumstances of the translation of the saint’s relics:
    

    

    Article IX. Translation of the Relics of St.Virgilius, Bishop of Saltzburg. 
    

    By Canisius and Ferrarius, the commemoration of a Translation of the Relics of St. Virgilius, Bishop of Saltzburg, in Bavaria, takes place on this day. His Acts are more properly deferred to the 27th of November, the date for his principal festival. The Bollandists notice the Translation of his Relics, at the 26th of September. 
    

    

    

    

    

    

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