"The old cathedral, or rather the oldest part of the first cathedral of Waterford, was built in 1096, by the Ostmen, on their' conversion from paganism; and about two centuries later it was endowed by King John, a dean and chapter having been appointed under the sanction of Innocent III. Endowments of various kinds had accumulated from age to age, till the Reformation, when the old altars were thrown down and the ornaments defaced. During the rebellions and wars that followed, its most costly treasures were carried away, with the brass ornaments of the tombs, the great standing pelican which supported the Bible, the immense candlesticks, six or seven feet high, the great brazen font, which was ascended by three stairs made of solid brass, and various gold and silver-gilt vessels. In 1773 the dean and chapter pronounced the old building so much decayed as to be unsafe for public worship, and unfortunately resolved that the whole pile should be taken down and replaced by a new edifice."
It will be seen that some of those lasting monuments of Irish skill and piety were raised subsequent to the English invasion, but the advent of the Norman soldiers was destined soon to dry up the springs of public munificence, if not to exterminate the old race, and obliterate the faith of St. Patrick. The Anglo-Norman of the twelfth century, though professing Christianity, was at heart as much a pagan as the race from which he sprung. He was brave, cunning, cruel, and rapacious. His greediness could not withstand any inducement to plunder, even though sacrilege had to be added to robbery; and he generally had courage and skill enough to carry out his intentions. He was neither an Englishman nor a Frenchman, but a compound of elements common to the worst classes of both races, super-induced on the genuine, old northern barbarism. He was, in fact, the prototype of the modern filibuster, and, though given to fighting, preferred the spoils to the glory of warfare. Like most of his class in every age and country, he substituted superstition for religion, and became only generous of his goods when death threatened to snatch them from his grasp. When reduced to Protestantism by act of parliament, it is unnecessary to say that even the check of remorse, weak as it was, was removed, and the spoliation of gifts given to God and his poor sat as lightly on his conscience as his coronet or crown sat on his head. Consequently, from the landing of Strongbow and his friends until the Reformation, the wars which ensued against the natives were occasionally diversified by the plunder of a rich abbey, or the burning of a church, while now and then we read of an institution being founded by some repentant lord of the Pale, from which all "mere Irish" were excluded.
There were, indeed, a few men who came into Ireland in the track of its invaders, who were men of true piety. Among these may be classed John Cornin, archbishop of Dublin. It was he who, in 1190, built St. Patrick's collegiate church in that city, and repaired and beautified Holy Trinity; St. Lawrence O'Toole having, eighteen years before, added to its original dimensions by building a choir, belfry, and three chapels. Those two noble buildings are still in use by the Protestants of Dublin, and but little changed since their Catholic days. St. Patrick's has been renovated and improved through the liberality of a public-spirited merchant. Though ever dear to the Catholic hearts of Dublin for its old memories; its fame, since it has fallen into the possession of its present occupants, rests only in its association with the name of the gifted and eccentric Swift, whose flashes of wit and sly sarcasms were wont to arouse his drowsy congregation.
Notwithstanding the impoverished condition of the people, and the insecurity of life and property, during the wars of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and early part of the fifteenth centuries, we find the following religious houses established throughout the country: Priories of the Canons Regular of St. Augustin, 20; abbeys of the Cistercian order, 29; convents of the Dominican order, 23; of the Franciscan order, 56; of the Augustan order, 21; of the Carmelite order, 24; commanderies of Knights Templar, 11. This latter order was suppressed about the middle of the fourteenth century, and its property given to the Hospitallers.
But a new era now commenced in the history of the church. To the bitterness of national hate were to be added bloody persecution and wholesale confiscation. Henry VIII. had commenced his quarrel with the pope, and, with the vain intention of revenging himself on his holiness, he turned reformer, initiated a state religion, and unanimously elected himself head of the same. But Henry Tudor had method in his madness, and knew well that the best way to convert his Anglo-Irish subjects was by appealing to their old passion for plunder. Accordingly, his lord deputy, St. Ledger, in 1536, summoned, what was in that age called a parliament, and this assembly, representing nobody but the hirelings about the deputy, with one fell swoop confiscated three hundred and seventy monasteries and abbeys, whose yearly value amounted to £32,000, while their movables amounted to more than three times that amount. A year or two later all religious houses were suppressed and their property turned over to the king.
That this atrocious spoliation of the patrimony of the church and the property of the poor had not even the pretext of being perpetrated to replenish the treasury of an impoverished, state may be inferred from the words of Ware, who, in his life of this new Defender of the Faith, says: "Henry soon after disposed of the possessions of the religious orders to his nobles, courtiers, and others, reserving to himself certain revenue or annual rents." This exhibition of royal magnificence at once convinced the aforesaid "nobles and courtiers" that Henry was the veritable Head of the Church, not only in England, but in Ireland also, and they hastened to accept his gifts and his new religion with equal alacrity. The cathedrals and churches had now to be disposed of. That portion of the laity described as nobles and courtiers was well provided for, and the clergy had to be satisfied; a new religion, Henry wisely thought, would not look well without churches and a hierarchy. Pliant tools of the school of Cranmer and Cromwell were sent over from England, who shielded by the military power of the deputy, and aided by a few apostates of native growth, were fraudulently inducted into Irish sees. While Brown, who had become archbishop of Dublin, was burning in the public streets the sacred image of our crucified Redeemer, taken from the abbey of Ballibogan, and the crosier of St. Patrick, rifled from Holy Trinity; the lord deputy was "gutting" the old cathedral of Down, violating the graves of Ireland's three greatest saints, and destroying their sacred relics. As these acts did not bring enlightenment to the minds of the benighted Catholics, a more general system of devastation was adopted. All the churches were seized and their sacred vessels and ornaments appropriated as legitimate spoils, by the "reformed clergy," while such of the buildings as were not required for the preachers of the new evangel were converted into barracks or stables. The people, though decimated and dispirited by long and disastrous wars, were too much attached to the ancient faith not to resist those iniquitous proceedings; but fire, sword, famine, and pestilence pursued them everywhere, martyred their priests, and laid their homes and their fields desolate.
What Henry commenced, his son, and worthy daughter Elizabeth, followed up; Cromwell's troopers nearly left the country a desert; and the vacillating and treacherous Stuarts added, if possible, to its already degraded condition. So abject was the state of the population in the time of William of Orange, that his penal laws, and those of the house of Hanover subsequently enacted, though in themselves most atrocious, were comparatively harmless, so well had the scythe of persecution been wielded by their predecessors. Even as late as the middle of the last century, the Catholics, still the bulk of the population, were sunk in the most pitiful misery and prostration; their priests churchless and outcasts before the laws, their monks and nuns banished or fled the country; or, if any remained of the once splendid institutions of piety and charity, they were to be found secreted in the purlieus of the larger towns, stealthily attending the sick and consoling, if unable to relieve, the wants of the poor. "No places of public worship were permitted," says the author of the History of Dublin, "and the clergyman moved his altar-books and everything necessary for the celebration of his religious rites from house to house among such of his flock as were enabled in this way to support an itinerant domestic chaplain; while for the poorer part some waste house or stable in a remote or retired situation was selected, and here the service was silently and secretly performed, unobserved by the public eye." Indeed, in many counties the people suffered worse; children were unbaptized, men and women unmarried, the dying deprived of the last consolations of religion, and the poor and infirm left to the cold charity of an unfeeling and hostile minority. The force of persecution could go no further. The experiment of conversion by force had been tried with a vengeance, and had signally failed. It was evident that utter extermination or reaction must follow.
Fortunately for the honor of humanity it was the latter. God was with his people in their afflictions and hearkened to their prayers. Slowly the light of toleration broke upon the darkened minds of the dominant Protestant party, and, though but the merest glimmer at first, gradually and steadily gained in intensity. One hundred and twenty years ago the first chapel tolerated by law was publicly opened in Dublin; the more atrocious of the penal laws fell into disuse; chapels, poor indeed, and monasteries, feeble in their very sense of insecurity, commenced to raise their humble heads. Protestant gentlemen of liberal views found a voice in the Irish and English parliaments. Maynooth and Carlow colleges were established; a great and fearless Catholic, O'Connell, arrayed his coreligionists in solid phalanx in defence of their rights; and, finally, the British government, abashed at the scorn of Christendom, and yielding to fears of internal revolution, consented to emancipation. Of the many causes which led to this tardy act of justice the moral effect of religious freedom in the United States and the conduct of our Catholic immigrants during the revolution were not among the least effective.
Turning from the past with all its varied trials and defeats, it is pleasant to dwell on the condition of Catholic Ireland of to-day, with its churches, monasteries, colleges, and schools innumerable. Of the city of Dublin, where the Reformation made its first attacks, and where, at the beginning of the century, there were but a few poor chapels and "friaries," we find the following picture drawn by one who, though not a Catholic nor of Catholic sympathies, is too clear-minded to shut his eyes to the actual condition of affairs around him. He says: [Footnote 302]
[Footnote 302: Ireland and Her Churches. By James Godkin. This very able book has just been published in England, and, though written by a Protestant and a devoted believer in the opinions of that sect, is full of very valuable information regarding the present condition of the Catholics of Ireland.]