Side Altar of Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy
in Cobh Cathedral, County Cork
I. The Pilgrim of Ivrea was an Irish bishop who died in the year 1492. The most diligent search through our Irish annals will not discover another bishop to whom even so much of the poet's description will apply but Thaddeus McCarthy, Bishop of Cloyne. About that date there were indeed in Ireland five bishops named Thaddeus: 1. Thady, Bishop of Kilmore since before 1460, but his successor Furseus died in 1464 and Thomas, the third from him, died before 1492. 2. Thady McCragh of Killaloe succeeded in 1430 full sixty years before our saint's death at Ivrea. His third successor died in 1460. 3. Thady, Bishop of Down, was consecrated in Rome 1469, died in 1486 and his successor, R. Wolsey, was named before 1492. 4. Thady of Ross died soon after his appointment in 1488 succeeded by Odo in 1489. 5. Thady of Dromore, appointed only in 1511 and the see was held by George Brown in 1492. The date 1492 is alone enough to prove that B. Thaddeus of Ivrea was not any of the preceding bishops and there was no other of the name for full sixty years after or before but the Bishop of Cork and Cloyne the date of whose death fits exactly all the requirements of the case. Ware quotes from Harold that he was appointed by Innocent VIII (sed. 1484-1492), that he succeeded W. Roch resigned 1490, and further that Gerald who succeeded resigned in 1499, after obtaining a pardon from Henry VII in 1496 (Lib. Mun., i, p. 102).
II Another line of the old fragment seems to name the see of the B. Thaddeus whom the poet describes as lamenting his death abroad far from the "solum Chariense" or "Clovinense," which we interpret far "from Kerry," the burial place of his family, and "from Cloyne," his episcopal see. Cloyne is variously Latinized, even by Irish writers, Cloynensis, Clonensis, Cluanensis, and often Clovens or Clovinen in Rymer's Foedera.* What more natural than that a poet would describe the pilgrim as longing to be buried either in his cathedral church of Cloyne or with his fathers in Kerry.
III. The passage which seems to us most decisive is that which points to the royal extraction and name of this holy bishop "Regia progenies alto de sanguine Machar." Observe how, in the notice from Harold, Bishop McCarthy was called also 'Mechar.' Clearly both were one and the same name. Thus, Mac Carthaigh, anglicised McCarthy, is pronounced Maccaura, with the last syllable short as in Ard Magha (Armagh) and numberless like words. Hence Wadding,** in speaking of the foundation of Muckross Abbey, Killarney, by Domnal McCarthy, Prince of Desmond, quotes to this effect a Bull of Paul II in 1468 in which Domnall's name is spelled Machar, a form identical with that in the contemporary fragment. In truth there is no Irish family name like "Machar" at all but "Meagher" which is invariably spelled with "O," especially in the Latinized form and the O Meaghers had no claim to royal blood.
IV. The Blessed Thaddeus was "regia progenies." Now there was no royal family name in Ireland like that in the inscription except the truly royal name made more royal still by the saintly Bishop of Cloyne. Without insisting with Keating that the ancestry of the McCarthy family could be traced through twenty eight monarchs who governed the island before the Christian era, we may assert with the Abbé MacGeoghan, in a note (tom iii, p. 680), strangely omitted by his translator, "that if regard be had to primogeniture and seniority of descent the McCarthy family is first in Ireland." Long before the founders of the oldest royal families in Europe, before Rodolph acquired the empire of Germany, or a Bourbon ascended the throne of France, the saintly Cormac McCarthy the disciple the friend and patron of St. Malachy, ruled over Munster and the title of king was at least continued in name in his posterity down to the reign of Elizabeth. Few pedigrees if any, says Sir B. Burke, "in the British empire can be traced to a more remote or exalted source than that of the Celtic house of McCarthy... They command a prominent perhaps the most prominent place in European genealogy." Plain then is it that in no other house could the "regia progenies" be verified more fully than in the McCarthy family.***
V. The date of death, the wished for burial place his native soil (Kerry) or his diocese (Cloyne) the name and royal extraction, all point to the Bishop of Cloyne as the saint whose relics are still worshipped at Ivrea. If we add that 'Chiar' is the usual Irish form of Kerry, that Domnall's (the founder of Irralagh) father's name was THADDEUS, not improbably our Saint's uncle, the evidence seems to be overwhelming.
VI. We have said there is no account in Irish writers of even the Bishop of Cloyne, except the few lines in Ware. The continental annalists of the religious orders do however speak of one celebrated Thaddeus, without mentioning his surname or country. Elsius (quoting De Ilerera and Crusen, whose works are not within our reach) notices Thaddeus de Hipporegio sive Iporegia as "a man distinguished for learning, religious observance, preaching, holiness of life and experience, a man of great zeal and a sedulous promoter of the interests of his order." He was prior, he adds, of several convents, seven times definitor, thirteen times visitator, four times president of synods, nine times vicar general and his government was ever distinguished for the greatest love of order and edifying example. See Els Encom August p. 645. After quoting these words in substance from the Augustinian chronicler, Dr. Renehan adds: "After the most diligent inquiry I could make at Ivrea, wherever I could hope for any little information, particularly at the episcopal palace where I was received with marked respect as a priest from the country that sent out the B. Thaddeus, and of the Bishop's secretary, the vicar general and many others whose kind attention I can never forget, I could find no vestige of any other Thaddeus called after the city Eporedia but our own blessed Irish bishop and I was assured, over and over again, that he was the only Thaddeus known in its annals or who ever had any connection with the town by birth, residence, death or any way known to the present generation. It is not then unreasonable to suppose that the Thaddeus so celebrated in the Augustinian Order was no other than our Bishop. True, Elsius gives 1502 for the date of the friar's demise but Elsius is never to be trusted in dates and the printer may easily take MCCCCXCII, the true date, for MCCCCCII. Indeed 1492 is not so different from 1502 that an error may not have crept in.
Dr. Renehan's theory, then, with regard to B. Thaddeus, fully detailed in the letter to the Bishop of Ivrea was this:-
Thaddeus McCarthy was born in Kerry, where the McCarthy More branch of the family resided, and where, in the monastery of Irialac (now Muckross), or in Ennisfallen (see Archdall), the princes of the house were always buried. The young Thaddeus went abroad at an early age and embraced the monastic life. His virtues and piety soon attracted the notice of his religious brethren, as manifest from their chronicles. They became in time known to the ruling Pontiff Innocent VIII who raised him to the episcopal dignity. The B. Thaddeus repaired to Rome, in the first place to receive consecration and jurisdiction from the successor of St. Peter, imitating in this the example of our great patron saint. He stopped at Ivrea, probably on his way home, fell sick there and died, God witnessing to His servant by signs and wonders. The silence of our annalists is thus accounted for to a great extent by the long residence of B. Thaddeus abroad. This theory is remarkably borne out by the independent notice in last Record. Having little to help us to arrive at any correct notion of the saintly bishop's life beyond the epitaph and the slender tradition at Ivrea, we entirely subscribe to this view. Other sources of information may be opened now that we have ventured to bring for the first time the name of B. Thaddeus before the Irish Catholic people, and for this service, little as it is, and entirely unworthy of our saintly bishop, we still expect his blessing in full measure.
Footnotes
*Clove CIoyne fiymer's Foedera Tom v par iv p 105 Lib Mun Tom i par iv p 102
**"Maccarthy=Carthy=Macare=Maccar." Wadd. Annal. Min. ad. an. 1340 n. 25, ed. Roman, tom. viii, p. 241; ibid tom. xiii, p. 432, et pp. 558-9.
***"Kings of the McCarthy race," Annuls of Innisfallen, ad an. 1106, p. 106, an 1108, 1110, 1176. Annals of Boyle, an. 1138, 1185. Annals of Ulster, an. 1022-3, 1124. Gir. Cambr. lib. i, cap iii. S. Bernard in Vit. Malac., cap. iv. "Their burial place," Archdall Monast. Hib. pp. 302, 303.
