Chapter VIII: The Irish and the Tudors.--Henry VIII (2)

The pretext for their destruction was, of course, the same in England as in all the other countries of Europe - their need of reformation; but it does not appear that even this pretence was put forward in the case of the Irish monasteries. The fact was, the breath of suspicion could not rest upon those stainless establishments in the Isle of Saints. In the idea of the natives, their very names had ever been synonymous with holiness and all Christian virtues, and so they continued to enjoy the most unbounded popularity. The fact of the English Government selecting them as a special point of attack is in itself sufficient to vindicate their character from any aspersion. Two measures were deemed necessary and sufficient for the purpose of detaching Ireland from its allegiance to the Holy See, and of introducing schism, if not heresy, into the country. One, and certainly the most efficacious of these, was thought to be the destruction of convents for both sexes. This, we affirm, is ample apology for their inmates.

But this general reflection is not enough for our purpose, which is, to delineate and bring out the true character of the nation. It is, therefore, fitting to give an idea of the extent to which the monastic influence prevailed, and of the nature of the people who cherished, loved, and accepted it at all times.

It may be said that the Christian Church, as established in the island by St. Patrick, rested mainly for its support on the religious orders. In many cases the abbots of monasteries were superior to bishops, and, as a general rule, the hierarchy of the Church was, as it were, subordinate to monastic establishments.1 (1 Vide Montalembert's "Monks of the West: Bollandists, Oct.," tome xii., p. 888.) At the time we speak of, indeed, such was no longer the case; but the previously-existing state of reciprocal subordination between abbots and bishops during several centuries, in Ireland,, had left deep traces in the nature of the institutions and of the people itself. It may be said that in the mind of an Irishman the existence of Christianity almost presupposed a numerous array of convents and religious houses. And this idea of theirs can scarcely be called a wrong one, nor did they exaggerate the value of religious orders, since their estimate of them was no higher than that of Christ himself and his Church.

If with justice it was said that the French monarchy was established by bishops, with equal justice may it be said that the Irish people had been educated, nay, created by monks. The monks had taken the place left vacant by the Druids, and thus they became for the Christian what the others had been for the pagan Irish. For a long period the Irish monks formed a very considerable portion of the population. In their body were concentrated the gifts of science, art, holiness, even miracles without number, unless we are to suppose that the hagiography of the island was intrusted to the care of idiots incapable of ascertaining current facts. The vast literature of the island, greater indeed than that of any other Christian country at the time, was either the product of monastic intellect and learning, or at least had been translated and preserved by monks. The gifted Eugene O'Curry could fill numbers of the pages of his great work with the bare titles of the books which are known to have issued from the Irish monasteries, of which but a few fragments remain; and no sensible man who has read his book can affect to despise establishments which could produce so many proofs of fancy, intellect, and erudition. The scattered fragments of that rich literature, which had escaped the fury of the Scandinavian, the ignorance and rapacity of the early Anglo- Norman, the blind fanaticism of the Puritan, could still in the seventeenth century furnish materials enough for the immense compilations of the Four Masters, Ward, Wadding, Lynch, and Colgan.

What we have here stated is the simple, unvarnished truth; yet it is but yesterday that the subject has really begun to be studied.

But what is chiefly worthy our attention is, that the monasteries were not only the seats of learning and literature in Ireland, but they constituted and comprised in themselves every thing of value which the nation possessed. As they were found everywhere, there was not room for much else in the department they filled in the island. Take them away, and the country is a blank. So well were the crafty counsellors of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth satisfied of this, that they insisted on the destruction of the monasteries, and turned all their efforts to carry their purpose into effect.

Feudalism had failed in its endeavor to cover the country with castles; the native royalty and inferior chieftainship being engaged in constant bickerings with each other and with the common foe, had been unable to enrich the country with monuments of art and wealthy palaces; the Church alone had accomplished whatever had been effected in this way, and in the Church the monks rather than the bishops had for a long time exercised the preponderating influence. Hence, it may be truly said that Ireland was essentially a monastic country, more so than any other nation of Christendom.

This fact explains how it happened that the monastic institutions could not be destroyed. The convent-walls might be battered down, the more valuable edifices might be converted into dwellings for the new Protestant aristocracy, their property might go to enrich upstarts, and feed the rapacity of greedy conquerors, but the institution itself could not perish.

It is true that in all Catholic countries this seems also to be the case; but wide is the difference with regard to Ireland. In all places religious establishments have frequently been the object of anti-Christian fury and rage. They have often been destroyed, and seem to have utterly disappeared, when the world has been surprised by their speedy resurrection. The fact is, the Church needs them, and the practice of evangelical counsels must forever be in a state of active operation upon earth, since the grace of God always inspires with it a number of select souls. God is the source; consequently the stream must flow, since the life-spring is eternal and ever-running.

But in other countries besides the one under our consideration religious houses and institutions have sometimes been effectually rooted out, at least for a time. When the French Constituent Assembly, by one of its destructive decrees, closed those establishments all over France, such of them as by their laxity deserved to die, ceased at once to exist, and poured forth their inmates to swell the ranks of a corrupt society, and add religious degradation to the immoral filth of the world. Those religious houses, within whose walls the spirit of God had not ceased to dwell, were indeed closed and emptied; but their inmates endeavored to live their lives of religion in some unknown and obscure spot, until the madness of the Convention, and the Reign of Terror which soon followed, rendered the continuation of the holy exercises of any community absolutely impossible. But mark this well: the holy aims of the monks and nuns found no response in the nation, and, finding themselves almost entirely rejected by a faithless people, with no resting- place in the whole extent of the country, a sudden and total interruption of religious ascetic life in the once most Catholic nation of Europe was the result.

The same may soon come to pass in our days in Italy and Spain, until better times return to those now distracted countries, and the extremities of evil bring them back to something of their primitive faith.

Not so in Ireland: the communities could continue to exist even when turned out-of-doors, because the nation wanted them, and could afford them asylum and peace in the worst periods of persecution. And this great fact of the mutual love between monks, priests, and people, contributed also in no small degree to that union among all, which henceforth became the characteristic feature of a people hitherto split up into hostile clans. Nothing probably tended so much toward effecting the birth of the nation as the deep attachment existing between the Irish and their religious orders. The latter had always preached peace and often reconciled enemies, and brought furious men to the practice of Christian charity and forbearance.

We have seen instances of this when the clans were all powerful and the chieftains thought of nothing but of "preyings," as they called them, compelling their enemies to give "hostages" and devastating the territories of hostile clans. Then the voice of the monk came to be heard in the midst of contending passions, and real miracles were often performed by them in changing into lambs men who resembled roaring lions or devouring wolves; but their action became much more efficacious when nothing was left to the people save their religion and the "friars." These, it is true, could no longer reside within the walls of their convents, but on that very account their life became more truly one with that of the people.

Sometimes they found refuge in the large, hospitable dwellings of the native nobility, where, during the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII. and the whole of that of Elizabeth, the almost independent power of the chieftains could still afford them succor. Sometimes also the humbler dwelling of the farmer or the peasant offered them a sure asylum, wherein they could practise their ministry in almost perfect freedom, owing to the sure and inviolable secrecy of the inmates and neighbors. For a great distance around, the Catholics knew of their abode, were often visited by them, even without mach danger of the fact becoming known to spies and informers. And this brings naturally before us a new feature of the Irish character.

Their nature, which was so expansive and passionate on all other subjects, so that to keep a secret was an impossible feat to them, wore another character when danger to their religion or its ministers required of them to set a seal on their lips. For years frequently, large numbers of priests and religious could not only exist, but move and work among them, without their place of abode becoming known to the swarms of enemies who surrounded them. The nation was trained to prudence and discretion by centuries of oppression and tyranny. Many facts of this nature are known and recorded in the dark annals of those times; but how many more will be known never!

Thus, in the year 1588, during the worst part of Elizabeth's reign, "John O'Malloy, Cornelius Dogherty, and Walfried Ferral, of the order of St. Francis, fell finally victims to the malice of the heretics. They had spent eight years in administering the consolations of religion throughout the mountainous districts of Leinster. Many families of Carlow, Wicklow, and Wexford, had been compelled to take a refuge in the mountains from the fury of the English troops. The good Franciscans shared in all their perils, travelling about from place to place, by night; they visited the sick, consoled the dying, and offered up the sacred mysteries for all. Oftentimes the hard rock was their only bed; but they willingly embraced nakedness, and hunger, and cold, to console their afflicted brethren." - (Moran's Archbishops of Dublin.)

In these few words, we have a picture of the mountain monastery. During those eight years, how many Irish were consoled and comforted by those few laborers, who, driven from their holy home, had chosen to live in the wilderness, and practise their rule among the wandering people of three large counties, receiving in return the substance, the love, and loving secrecy of their flock! We have only to figure to ourselves this scene, or similar, repeated in every corner of the land, and we may then easily understand how the Irish people were brought to the unanimous resolve of standing by each other, and how, from the state of complete division which formerly prevailed, the elements of a compact, solid, and indestructible body, began to form.

We attribute this "birth of a nation" to Henry VIII., because the change which he tried to introduce into the religion of the island constituted the occasion and origin of it; and, although his reign never witnessed that perfect union of the people which came later on, nevertheless, it is true that then it surely began, and its origin was the attempt to establish his spiritual supremacy in Ireland.

This feeling of union and strength in love went on growing, and showed itself more and more, wring the two centuries which followed, when so many scenes similar to the one described were enacted in the remotest parts of the island. God, in his mercy, provided it with many high mountains, difficult of access, whose paths were known only to the natives. In these fastnesses, the holy men, who had been driven from their dwellings and their churches, could rest in peace and attend to the duties of their office. They could even recruit their shattered forces, admit novices, and train them up; and thus their rule continued to be observed, and their existence as a body protracted, long after their enemies imagined that they had perished utterly. As soon as quiet was restored, when persecution abated, and breathing- time was given them, so that they could show themselves, with some safety, more openly, they visited their old abodes, often found some portions of the ruins which admitted of repair, and dwelt again in security where their predecessors had dwelt for centuries.

The peasant's hut would also often afford them shelter; some solitary farm-house on the borders of a lake, or near a deep morass, took the name of their monastery; some cranogue in the lake, or dry spot in the thick of the morass, which they could reach by paths known to themselves only, was their asylum in times of extraordinary danger. In ordinary times, the farm-house, to which they had given the name of their lost monastery, was their convent. It was thus the brothers O'Cleary, and their companions, lived for years, editing the work of the "Four Masters," until, at length, they succeeded in publishing their extraordinary "Annals." The manuscripts which, in spite of the raging persecution, and the "penal laws," they traversed the whole island to collect, were preserved, with a reverend care, in a poor Irish hut. Literary treasures which have since unfortunately perished, but which they saved for a time from the reach of the enemy, and which they perpetuated by having them printed, filled the poor presses and the old furniture of their asylum, and, owing purely to the friendly help of those who had given them shelter, they were enabled to enrich the world with their marvellous compilation.

From the mountain and the hut, on the river-side, the monks were sometimes allowed to move to their former dwellings, at the risk, nevertheless, of their liberty and lives. What their ancestors had done during the Scandinavian invasions, when the monasteries were so often destroyed and rebuilt, that did the monks of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries likewise in many parts of the island.

Thus, Father Mooney, a Franciscan, relates that his monastery - that of Multifarnham - having been totally destroyed by Sir Francis Shean, and many monks having been killed, he, with a few others, after long and extraordinary adventures, came back to the spot, then abandoned by the enemy, and "before the feast of the Nativity of our Lord, we built up a little house on the site of the monastery, and there we dwelt who were left after the flight . . . . . Afterward, Father Nehemias Gregan, the father guardian, began to build a church, and to repair the monastery, and for this purpose caused much wood to be cut in the territory of Deabhna McLochlain; and when they had roofed a chapel and some other buildings, there came the soldiers of another Sir Francis Ringtia, and they burned down the monastery again, and carried off some of the brethren captive to Dublin."

This convent of Multifarnham was raised a third time; and, in fact, remained in possession of the Franciscans throughout the persecution, so that to this day the old church has been restored by them, and the modern house, which now forms their convent, is built on the site of the old monastery.

Such for a long time was the case with many other religious establishments; for the same Father Mooney, writing as late as 1624, says: "When Queen Elizabeth strove to make all Ireland fall away from the Catholic faith, and a law was passed proscribing all the members of the religious orders, and giving their monasteries and possessions to the treasury, while all the others took to flight, or at least quitted their houses, and, for safety's sake, lived privately and singly among their friends, and receiving no novices, the order of St. Francis alone ever remained, as it were, unshaken. For, though they were violently driven out of some convents to the great towns, and the convents were profanely turned into dwellings for seculars, and some of the fathers suffered violence, and even death; yet, in the country and other remote places, they ever remained in the convents, celebrating the divine office according to the custom of religious, their preachers preaching to the people and performing their other functions, training up novices and preserving the conventual buildings, holding it sinful to lay aside, or even hide, their religious habit, though for an hour, through any human fear. And, every three years, they held their regular provincial chapters in the woods of the neighborhood, and observed the rule as it is kept in provinces that are in peace."

Thus, when the Cromwellian persecution began, the religious orders were again flourishing in Ireland. They had obtained from the Stuarts some relaxation in the execution of the laws, and, as all at the time were fighting for Charles I. against the Parliamentarians, it was only natural that the authorities did not carry out the barbarous laws to their full extent in the island.

It is no matter of great surprise, therefore, that, in 1641, more than one hundred years after the decree of Henry VIII., the Franciscan order still possessed sixty-two flourishing houses in Ireland, each with a numerous community, besides ten convents of nuns of the order of St. Clare. The acts of the General Chapter of the Dominicans, held in Rome in 1656, referring to the same persecution of Cromwell, state that, when it began, there were forty-three convents of the order, containing about six hundred inmates, of whom only one-fourth survived the calamity. The Jesuits were eighty in number, in 1641, of whom only seventeen remained when the storm had passed away. From a petition presented to the Sacred Congregation, in 1654, we learn that all the Capuchins had been banished, except a few who remained on the island, where they lived as "shepherds," "herdsmen," or "tillers of the soil."

All the decrees of the Parliaments of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had not succeeded, in the space of a century, in destroying monasticism; the Cromwellian war alone seemed to have done so, as it left the entire nation almost at the last gasp, on the verge of annihilation. Nevertheless, a few years saw the orders again revive and prepare to start their holy work anew. Henry VIII. then, and his vicar, Cromwell, deceived themselves in thinking that they had put an end to monasticism in the land which had been the cradle of so many families of religious. They succeeded only in intensifying the determination of Irishmen not to allow their nationality to be absorbed in that of England. If any thing was calculated to nourish and keep alive that sentiment in their hearts, it was their daily communing with the holy men who shared their distress, their mountain-retreats, their poverty in the bogs, their wretchedness in the woods and glens. If monasticism had created and nurtured the nation on its first becoming Christian, it gave to the people a second birth holier than the first, because consecrated by martyrdom. Henceforth, divided clans and antagonistic septs were to be unknown among them: only Catholic Irishmen were to remain ranked around the successors of "the saints" of old, all determined to be what they were, or die. But as laws, edicts, and measures of fanatic frenzy cannot destroy a nation, the new people was destined to survive for better and brighter days.

We have anticipated the course of events somewhat, in order to pass in review the chief facts connected with the designs of the English Government upon the religious orders. These few words will suffice to give the reader an idea of the new character which such events impressed upon the Irish nation. Every day saw it more compact; every day the resolve to fight to the death for God's cause, grew stronger; the old occasions of division grew less and less, and that unanimity, which suffering for a noble cause naturally gives rise to in the human heart, showed itself more and more. A nation, in truth, was being born in the throes of a wide-spread and long-continued calamity; but long ages were in store in times to come to reward it for the misfortunes of the past.

It is a remarkable thing that, when England, through fear of civil war, was compelled to grant Catholic emancipation in 1829, when Irish agitators succeeded in wrenching it from the enemy, and obtaining it, not only for themselves, but likewise for their English Catholic brethren, the British statesmen, who finally consented to such a tardy measure of justice, steadily refused, nevertheless, to extend the boon to the religious orders. These remained under the ban, and so they remain still. The "penal laws" were never repealed for them, and, even to this day, they are, according to law, strictly prohibited from "receiving novices" under all the barbarous penalties formerly enacted and never abrogated.

But the nation has constantly considered this exception as not to be taken into account. The religious orders now existing are under the protection of the people, and England has never dared to use even a threat against the open violation of these "laws." Dr. Madden, in his interesting work on "Penal Laws," gives prominence to this fact by warmly taking up the old theme of thorough-going Irish Catholicity, by asserting, with force, that "religious orders are necessary to the Church," and that to deny their right to exist, even though it be only on paper in the statute-book, is none the less an outrage against so thoroughly Catholic a nation as the Irish.

The only fact which appears to clash with our reflections is the one well ascertained and mentioned by us, that some native Irish lords occupied certain monasteries and took their share in the sacrilegious plunder. But a few chieftains cannot be said to constitute the nation, and doubtless many of those who yielded to the temptation, listened later to the reproving voice of their conscience, as in the following case, given by Miles O'Reilly, in his "Irish Martyrs:"

"Gelasius O'Cullenan, born of a noble family in Connaught . . . joined the Cistercian order. Having competed his studies in Paris, the monastery of Boyle was destined as the field of his labors. On his arrival in Ireland, he found that the monastery, with its property, had been seized on by one of the neighboring gentry, who was sheltered in his usurpation by the edict of Elizabeth. The abbot . . . went boldly to the usurping nobleman, admonishing him of the guilt he had incurred; and the malediction of Heaven, which he would assuredly draw down upon his family. Moved by his exhortations, the nobleman restored to him the full possession of the monastery and lands; and, some time after, contemplating the holy life of its inmates, . . . he, too, renounced the world and joined the religious institute."