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:-
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