Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy (IER)(1)

From the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Volume 1 (1836), at pages 375 and following:

 

The Reliquary of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy

In the North Cathedral, Cork City

BLESSED THADDEUS McCARTHY

In an article of the Record for April page 312 we briefly referred to a Bishop of Cloyne and Cork who is venerated as blessed in Ivrea a town of Piedmont. In conformity with the few fragments preserved in the archives of Ivrea and elsewhere regarding him we adopted the opinion that his name according to modern orthography should be rendered Thaddeus Maher. Since the publication of the article just mentioned a paper containing much valuable matter has been communicated to us through the great kindness of the Very Rev. Dr. McCarthy, the learned Professor of Scripture in Maynooth College, who had prepared it long before the article in the Record was published and before he could have had any knowledge of our views on this subject. We are anxious to publish every document that we can find on this interesting question in the hope that by discussing it light may be thrown on the history of a holy Irish bishop who is honoured beyond the Alps but so little known at home that there is great difficulty in determining his real name. In one of our next numbers we shall return to this subject.

On June 23rd 1847 the Most Rev Dr Murray Archbishop of Dublin received at Maynooth a letter covering a bill of exchange for £40 (1,000 francs) sent for the relief of the famine stricken poor of Ireland by order of the good Bishop of Ivrea. The town of Ivrea anciently Eporedia is the capital of the Piedmontese province of the same name which extends from the Po to the Alps. The province contains a population of over one hundred thousand of whom about eight thousand reside in the town where is also the bishop's see. The letter to Dr. Murray enclosed a separate paper of which the following is a copy:-

De Beato Thaddeo Episcopo Hiberniae

Anno Domini millesimo quadringentesimo nonagesimo secundo, die vigesima quarta Octobris, Eporediae (antiquae urbis Transalpinae in Pedemontio) postremum obiit diem in hospitio peregrinorum sub titulo Sancti Antonii, quidam viator incognitos; atque eodem instante lux mira prope lectum in quo jacebat effulsit, et Episcopo Eporediensi apparuit homo venerandus, Pontifi calibus indumentis vestitus THADDEUM MACHAR Hiberniae Episcopum ilium esse innotirit ex chartis quas deferebat, et in Cathedrali ejus corpus solemni pompa depositum est snb altari, et in tumulo Sancti Eusebii Episcopi Epbrediensis, atque post paucos dies coepitmulta miracula facere.

Acta et documenta ex quibus ejus patria et character episcopalis tune innotuerunt, necnon ad patratorum miraculorum seu prodigiorum memoriam exarata, interierunt occasione incendii quo seculo xvii. Archivium Episcopate vastatum est. In qua darn charta pergamena caracteribus Gothicis scripta, quae in Archivio Ecclesiae Cathedralis servatur haec leguntur:

"Marmoreis tumulis hoc templo Virginis altuae Corpora Sanctorum plura sepulta jacent Martinus hic...
"Inde Thaddeus adest quern misit Hibernia praesul
Sospite quo venit saepe petita salus
Regia progenies alto de sanguine Machar,
Quern nostri in Genua nunc Latiique vocant.
Ingemuit moriens quem Hiberno sidere cretum
Non Cariense tenet, non Clovinense solum.
Sic visum superis; urbs Eporedia corpus
Templo majore marmoreo claudat opus.
Hicjacet Eusebii testudinis ipse sacello,
Pauperiem Christi divitis inde tulit.
Hunc clarum reddunt miracula sancta: beatus
Exstat et in toto dicitur orbe pius.
Huc quicunque venis divum venerare Thaddeum
Votaque fac precibus: dicque viator, Ave.
Mille quadringentos annos tune orbis agebat
Atque Nonagenos: postmodum junge duos."
 
Verbis illis solum Cariense vel Cloviense et Clovinense desi nari a poeta civitates Hibemiae in quibus Thaddeus aut natus aut Episcopus fuerit, putandum est forsan Clareh, Carrick.

Quamobrem exquiritur utrmm in Hibernia habeatur notitia hujus Episcopi THADDEI MACHAII - loci ubi natus fuerit, - ejus familiae quae regia seu princepssupponitur in poesi, - civitatis seu ecclesiae in qua fuerit Episcopus. Desiderantur quoque notitiae si quae repenri poterunt et documenta quibus illius vita et gesta illustrari possint; insuper utrum labente saeculo xv. an qua persecutio in Hibernia ad versus Episcopos facta sit, quemadmodum argumentari licet ex quibusdam Epistolis Innocentii VIII. circa immunitatem ecclesiasticam. (End of paper)

As our space precludes a literal translation of this paper a summary may be acceptable to the reader:

On the 24th of October 1492 died at Ivrea in St. Antony's Hospice for Pilgrims Blessed Thaddeus, an Irish bishop, whose body was deposited under the high altar of the cathedral in a shrine over the relics of the holy patron St. Eusebius. At the time of death a brilliant light was seen round his bed and at the same moment to the Bishop of Ivrea there appeared a man of venerable mien clothed in pontifical robes. Several other miracles were also wrought through his intercession. The papers found with him showed he was an Irish bishop and these as well as other documents proving his great sanctity religiously kept in the episcopal archives were destroyed by fire in the seventeenth century. In an old parchment written in Gothic letters still preserved in the archives of the cathedral church are these lines:

Neath marble tombs in this the virgjn's shrine
The bones of many a saint in peace recline
Here martyred Thaddeus there
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
O 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 bacide
Had passed away when St. Thaddeus died.

When Dr Murray received the Bishop of Ivrea's letter he placed it in the hands of the late venerated President of Maynooth College from whose MSS it is now copied together with the very literal translation of the verses made by one of the junior students at the time Dr. Renehan undertook to collect all the notices of Blessed Thaddeus in our Irish annals and to give the best answers he could to the bishop's questions. He even visited Ivrea in the summer of 1850 in the hope of finding traditional records of the life of Blessed Thaddeus but to no purpose. He found the task more difficult than might be expected. All the knowledge regarding the saint's family, see, etc., that can be gathered from Irish or British sources is found in these few lines from Ware on the Bishops of Cloyne:

"THADY McCARTHY succ. 1490. Upon the resignation of William, Thady McCarthy, by some called Mechar, succeeded the same year by a provision from Pope Innocent VIII as may be seen from the Collectanea of Francis Harold" Ware's Bishops (Harris) p. 563

The Blessed Thaddeus's name is unhonoured then in his own country; his biography if ever written is at least not recorded by the Irish historians. Even the scanty information which the industrious Ware supplies was gleaned not from our annals but from Harold's Collectanea probably notes and extracts taken from documents in the continental libraries. Dr. Renehan had therefore little to add on our saint's life. He was however fully satisfied that Blessed Thaddeus of Ivrea was no other than the Bishop of Cork and Cloyne mentioned by Ware. His arguments may be seen in a rough outline of his answer to the Bishop of Ivrea's letter among the O'Renehan MSS in Maynooth, almost the only authority we had time to consult for this notice. Sometimes the very words of the letter are given in inverted commas:-

Anniversary Mass for Little Nellie of Holy God

When we made our annual pilgrimage to Cork's lovely North Cathedral last year to honour our heavenly patron, Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy, the white martyr of Cork, some of us took a detour to visit the grave of Ellen Organ, known with great affection as Little Nellie of Holy God.  This mystic child was a shining example of faith in the True Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament up to her death at the age of 4.

Her impact upon the Universal Church was explored in our journal in 2014, and I made reference to her in the course of my travel journel along the old railways of Cork back in 2011.  This year we are blessed to mark the Anniversary of her death, on the beautiful feast of Candlemas, the feast of the presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple, with a Traditional Latin Mass at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, 2nd February, in the Church of the Resurrection, Farrenree, Cork City, which we have already discussed on this blog as one of the Rosary Churches of Cork.

So you are invited and most welcome to attend this Mass to pray for Little Nellie in the Church of the Resurrection, Farranree, on Tuesday evening.

Father Prout

Today is the birthday of Francis Sylvester Mahony known as 'Father Prout'. With a nom de blog like mine, the thought came to me that I ought to make some tribute to the author of The Bells of Shandon. As it turned out, his story brings side-lights into many of the stories that I have already published.

The Catholic Encyclopedia gives a good biography upon which the authors of wikipedia have been unable to improve and which the Diocese of Cork and Ross has adopted in its entirity. The most notable points are that having studied with the Jesuits in Clongowes Wood, he spent a few years as a novice with them and became a teacher of rhetoric at his own school, the great Canon Sheehan being one of his pupils, but he was dismissed for leading some of the students on a drunken outing to Celbridge. He studied in a variety of Continental Seminaries and was ordained at Lucca in Italy in 1832, against all advice. He returned to his native Diocese, where he served as a zealous and hardworking hospital chaplain during a cholera epidemic, where he won the life-long friendship and admiration of Father Mathew, the Capuchin Temperance campaigner. Among the ecclesiastical misadventures of 'Father Prout' was to be the attempt to have Father Mathew made Bishop of Cork!

The misadventure that led to Father Mahony's leaving the Diocese - and the active Priesthood - was his campaign to be given the living of 'the brickfield chapel,' that was to become St. Patrick's Church on the Lower Glanmire Road, then a chapel-of-ease to the Cathedral Parish. Father Mahony had been the principal fundraiser for the building of the new Church, which, I think you'll agree, is a fine building, and a magnificent achievement that was virtually the first new Church built in the City in two generations. The disappointment of Father Mahony, who had proved himself apostolic and capable, was understandable, especially when met with the immovable object of Bishop Murphy (r. 1815 - 1847).

He moved to London and held his own amid the literary greats of the time, although his name is now 'writ in water.' We read in The Catholic Encyclopedia: "Dowered with a retentive memory, irrepressible humor, large powers of expression, and a strongly satiric turn of mind, an omnivorous reader, well-trained in the Latin classics, thoroughly at home in the French and Italian languages, and a ready writer of rhythmic verse in English, Latin, and French, he produced... an extraordinary mixture of erudition, fancy, and wit, such as is practically without precise parallel in contemporary literature. The best of his work appeared in "Fraser's Magazine" during the first three years of his literary life. He translated largely from Horace, and the poets of France and Italy, including a complete and free metrical rendering of Gresset's famous mocking poem "Vert-Vert" and Jerome Vida's "Silkworm". But his newspaper correspondence from Rome and Paris is notable chiefly for the vigours of his criticisms upon men and measures, expressed, as these were, in most caustic language."

The Catholic Encyclopedia is not noted for its forgiving tone towards renegades but it expresses itself generously towards Mahony: "Although for thirty years Mahony did not exercise his priestly duties, he never wavered in his deep loyalty to the church, recited his Office daily, and received the last sacraments at the hands of his old friend, Abbé Rogerson, who left abundant testimony of his excellent dispositions."

His roguish humour caused him to adopt the name of a certain Father Prout of Watergrasshill as his nom de plume.

The original Father Prout had been forced from his Diocese (Cashel) on account of a wrangle with Archbishop Butler over his refusal to agree to the amalgamation of his Parish, which he described as "the greatest injustice since the partition of Poland." Fortunately, he was welcomed into the neighbouring Diocese of Cork by Dr. Moylan.

Mahony's fictional Father Prout seems no less sanguine, although he claimed to be a French-educated parish priest, the son of Dean Swift and Stella, who writes works such as The Apology for Lent in scholarly praise of fish!

When he died on 18th May, 1866, as we have read, fortified by the rites of Holy Mother Church, his body was taken back to Cork for a Solemn Requiem Mass in St. Patrick's Church "the church which", in the words of his biographers, "was the dream of his impetuous youth," as his biography says, from where he was taken to his family vault in St. Ann's Churchyard, Shandon, to be buried in the shadow of the bells he immortalized.



The Reliques of Father Prout, is perhaps his most famous work and it is in that collection that his true claim to fame, The Bells of Shandon, is to be found as part of The Rogueries of Tom Moore.

In my opinion, it is the true anthem of Cork, although the words of The Banks and Beautiful City were handed out to every school child in the city by the Lord Mayor last year! The Bells has none of those shameless hussies pressing wild daisies and Beautiful City lifts "the sweet bells of Shandon were dear to my mind." I may stand on a Shandon Belle ticket in the next mayoral election!

The clip consists of that fine ecumenical anthem Iníon an Phailitínigh (a Kerry song, mind you) and a verse of The Bells sung by Seán Ó Sé, whose own voice is another contender to be the true anthem of Cork!

THE BELLS OF SHANDON

With deep affection
And recollection
I often think of
Those Shandon bells,
Whose sounds so wild would,
In the days of childhood,
Fling round my cradle
Their magic spells.
On this I ponder
Where'er I wander,
And thus grow fonder,
Sweet Cork, of thee ;
With thy bells of Shandon,
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.

I've heard bells chiming
Full many a clime in,
Tolling sublime in
Cathedral shrine,
While at a glibe rate
Brass tongues would vibrate —
But all their music
Spoke naught like thine ;
For memory dwelling
On each proud swelling
Of thy belfry knelling
Its bold notes free,
Made the bells of Shandon
Sound far more grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.

I've heard bells tolling
Old "Adrian's Mole" in,
Their thunder rolling
From the Vatican,
And cymbals glorious
Swinging uproarious
In the gorgeous turrets
Of Notre Dame ;
But thy sounds were sweeter
Than the dome of Peter
Flings o'er the Tiber,
Pealing solemnly ; —
O! the bells of Shandon
Sound far more grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.

There 's a bell in Moscow,
While on tower and kiosk o !
In Saint Sophia
The Turkman gets,
And loud in air
Calls men to prayer
From the tapering summit
Of tall minarets.
Such empty phantom
I freely grant them ;
But there is an anthem
More dear to me, —
'Tis the bells of Shandon
That sound so grand on
The pleasant waters
Of the river Lee.

First published on the St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association blog in December, 2010.

Pilgrimage in honour of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy

The members and friends of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy's Catholic Heritage Association made a pilgrimage again this year to the Cathedral of Ss. Mary and Anne in Cork City for a Traditional Latin Mass. The report of the Mass last year can be found here. Several accounts of the life of Blessed Thaddeus can be found here, here and here. One of the insights we received from the sermon at today's Mass was the idea that Blessed Thaddeus, like St. Thomas Becket, was converted by the graces of the Episcopal office from a worldling who co-operated in the use of ecclesiastical authority for worldly conflicts, to one whose sanctity adorned his Episcopal state. Blessed Thaddeus died in the odour of Sanctity in the year 1492 and was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on 26th August, 1895.

The Cathedral of Ss. Mary and Anne is a stunning amalgam of early gothic revival architecture, its elegant traceries carry more than a hint of strawberry hill, and an austere modern gothic sanctuary extension. Details of the history and architecture of the Cathedral can be found here, here and here.

Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy Pilgrimage 2015

A Latin Mass to honour Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy

On his feast day, 25th October, members and friends of the Catholic Heritage Association gathered in the (North) Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Anne, Cork City, to honour Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy, the White Martyr of Cork.

Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy pray for us!

Latin Mass for Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy