Blessed Thaddeus M'Carthy.
[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. M'Carthy, 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 incognitus; atque eodem instante lux mira prope lectum in quo jacebat effulsit, et Episcopo Eporediensi apparuit homo venerandus, Pontificalibus indumentis vestitus. Thaddeum Machar Hiberniae Episcopum illum esse innotuit ex chartis quas deferebat, et in Cathedrali ejus corpus solemni pompa depositum est sub altari, et in tumulo Sancti Eusebii Episcopi Eporediensis, atque post paucos dies coepit multa miracula facere.
“Acta et documenta ex quibus ejus patria et character episcopalis tunc innotuerunt, necnon ad patratorum miraculorum seu prodigiorum memoriam exarata, interierunt occasione incendii quo seculo xvii. Archivium Episcopale vastatum est. In quadam charta pergamena caracteribus Gothicis scripta, quae in Archivio Ecclesiae Cathedralis servatur haec leguntur:
“Marmoreis tumulis hoc templo Virginis almae
Corpora Sanctorum plura sepulta jacent
Martinus hic . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Inde Thaddeus adest, quem misit Hibernia praesul
Sospite quo venit saepe petita salus,
Regia progenies alto de sanguine Machar,
Quem 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.
Hic jacet 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 tunc orbis agebat
Atque Nonagenos: postmodum junge duos.
“Verbis illis solum Cariense vel Cloviense et Clovinense designari a poeta civitates Hiberniae in quibus Thaddeus aut natus aut Episcopus fuerit, putandum est, forsan Clareh, Carrick.
“Quamobrem exquiritur utrum in Hibernia habeatur notitia hujus Episcopi Thaddei Machar—loci ubi natus fuerit,—ejus familiae, quae regia seu princeps supponitur in poesi,—civitatis seu ecclesiae in qua fuerit Episcopus. Desiderantur quoque notitiae si quae reperiri poterunt et documenta quibus illius vita et gesta illustrari possint; insuper utrum labente saeculo xv. aliqua persecutio in Hibernia adversus 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 virgin's shrine
The bones of many a saint in peace recline;
Here martyred . . . . .
Thaddeus there. From Erin's shore he came,
A bishop, of M'Carthy'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.
'T is 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 beside
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 M'Carthy (succ. 1490).—Upon the resignation of William, Thady M'Carthy, 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:—
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 M'Carthy, Bishop of Cloyne. About that date there were indeed in Ireland five bishops named Thaddeus: 1. Thady, Bishop of Kilmore, since [pg 379] before 1460; but his successor Furseus died in 1464, and Thomas, the third from him, died before 1492. 2. Thady M'Cragh, 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.[7] 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 M'Carthy was called also “Mechar”. Clearly both were one and the same name. Thus [Gaelic: Mac Careaw], Anglicised M'Carthy, is pronounced Maccaura, with the last syllable short, as in Ard-Magha (Armagh), and numberless like words. Hence Wadding,[8] in speaking of the foundation of Muckross Abbey, Killarney, by Domnal M'Carthy, 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”, [pg 380] 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 M'Carthy family could be traced through twenty-eight monarchs who governed the island before the Christian era, we may assert with the Abbe 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 M'Carthy family is the 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 M'Carthy, 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 M'Carthy.... 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 M'Carthy family.[9]
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 Irrelagh) 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 Herera 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 [pg 381] 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 M'Carthy was born in Kerry, where the M'Carthy 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 [pg 382] is, and entirely unworthy of our saintly bishop, we still expect his blessing in full measure.