Ireland's Martyrs.
[Footnote 292]
[Footnote 292: Memorials of those who suffered for the Catholic Faith in Ireland in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries. Collected and edited from the original authorities. By Myles O'Reilly, B.A., LL.D. New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1869. 12mo, pp. 462.]
The Catholic Church in Ireland, oppressed from the days of the Norman invasion, became, from the time of Henry VIII., a living martyr; her sufferings having no parallel in Europe from the time of the three centuries of persecution under the Roman emperors. It was not so much the persecution and martyrdom of individuals so much as of a race and nation. Hence, while the Acts of the Early Roman Martyrs, formally drawn up, have long since been collected by Ruinart; while a Challoner, for England, collected records of the martyrs of the faith in his Missionary Priests, that all-absorbing favorite of our earliest days; while even the memorials of the missionary martyrs in our own land had been collected, no one seemed to think of selecting the records of Ireland's martyred priests from the harrowing tale of the suffering and unconquerably faithful people amid whom they perished.
It has been well that this pious task has at last been undertaken, and so well accomplished. This work of Mr. O'Reilly is a plain, unvarnished collection of contemporary accounts, with no attempt to make, from the simple details given, a graphic and affecting picture. Brief, too brief, indeed, many of these records are; but further researches, unexplored archives, correspondence not hitherto consulted, will, we trust, ere long, give more extended and edifying memorials of these faithful clergymen, these bishops, priests, secular and regular, of the Isle of Saints.
During much of the period of the great Irish persecution, during that long interval between 1540 and 1701 it was scarcely possible to draw up and send out of Ireland, much less preserve in it, extended accounts of the martyrdom of those who died for the faith. Research or inquiry into their births or early lives was out of the question.
The chief sources where we can now seek information as to these heroic men are the historical writings of the religious orders who labored in Ireland. Among the Franciscans, the great annalist of the order is Father Luke Wadding, an Irishman, who has preserved many valuable accounts relating to his native country. Colgan, another Irish writer of the same order, in the preface to the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae, gives an account of the death of two of his literary associates, Fathers Fleming and Ward.
De Burgo, of the order of Preachers, published a well-known work, Hibernia Dominicana, devoted to the history of his order in Ireland.