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the scars of them to his tomb,) and was reconducted to his former prison; this was "a subterraneous dungeon, damp and noisome-not a ray of light penetrated thither; and for thirteen years this was his unvarying abode." During all that time his food was of the coarsest kind, and, with the exception of rare intervals, when the intercession of some influential friends obtained a momentary relaxation, he was allowed no occupation that could cheer the tedium. of his imprisonment. In all this lengthened martyrdom, prayer was his resource, and, as he himself subsequently avowed, he oftentimes passed whole days and nights overwhelmed with heavenly consolations, so that his dungeon seemed transformed into a paradise of delights. To preclude the possibility of idleness, he procured a bed made of twisted cords, and whensoever his mind was fatigued with prayer, he applied himself to untie those cords, and often was he well wearied with the exertion before he could reunite them to compose himself to sleep.

His persecutors, overcome by his constancy, and finding his fervor in spiritual contemplation a continual reproach to their own wickedness, at length, about Christmas, 1572, connived at his escape. Sailing from our shores, his only regret was to abandon the field of his spiritual labors, and to leave his flock defenceless amid the many enemies that now compassed its destruction. He says himself, (letter of July 5th, 1573,) "I was snatched from that place by the liberality and care of my friends, and having met with the opportunity of a ship of Brittany, I threw myself into it, not heeding my age, which was above sixty years, or my state of health, deeming it safer to trust my life to the danger of the sea than again to experience the cruelty of the enemies of the Catholic religion." For sixteen days he was tossed on the waves by a violent storm, and was at length driven in shipwreck on the coast of France. Weighed down with the infirmities which he had contract

ed in prison, and with the burden of more than sixty years, he was compelled to remain for six months unknown and abandoned in Nantes. At length, receiving aid from the nuncio, he proceeded to Paris, and thence to Spain. The closing years of his life were spent in Alcalá.* A noble Spanish lady received him into her house, and attended him as though he were an angel from heaven. The sores which yet remained from his dungeon chains she kissed as the trophies of his martyrdom. She would allow none but herself to wait on him, and on her knees she usually dressed his wounds and ministered to his wants. From this asylum of charity, thus providentially prepared for him, he passed to the convent of the Cistercian fathers in the same city, and there, on the 4th of January, 1577, he happily closed his earthly life, which, as many attested, he had never sullied by any stain of mortal sin.† His remains were placed in the Collegiate Church of Saint Secundinus, and a monument erected over them by the Bishop of Grenada, with the following inscription:

"Here lieth William Walsh, a Cistercian monk, and Bishop of Meath, who, after thirteen years' imprisonment, and many labors for the Catholic faith, at last died in exile at Alcalá, on the day before the nones of January, 1577."

He is held in veneration by his Cistercian brothers as a holy martyr in the cause of the Catholic faith, and his memory lives in benediction in the diocese he adorned.‡

Alcalá, called by the Romans Complutum. It was here Cardinal Ximenes had the Complutensian Polyglot, as it was called, printed.

↑ "Con grandissima ragione fu questo stimato martire e ricevuto per santo come quello che in tutto il decorso di sua vita mai con peccato grave aveva macchiata l'innocenza battessimalę." -Martyrolog, Cisterc. MS. ap. Moran.

The life of Dr. Walsh I have taken entirely from his two learned modern biographers, Dr. Moran, in his introduction to the History of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, and Rev. A. Cogan, Diocese of Meath, where the reader will find the originai authorities referred to.

Anno 1565.

CONOR MACCARTHY, ROGER MACCONGAIL, AND FERGAL WARD, FRANCISCAN FRIARS.*

THE Occurrence in which these confessors suffered is undoubted, but there is a slight confusion as to the name of the second. "In this year the heretical soldiers attacked the convent of the Franciscans in Armagh, and called upon such of the brethren as had not effected their escape to renounce the Catholic religion, and acknowledge the queen's supremacy. Upon their refusal, they were bound and most cruelly flogged to make them abjure, but in vain, and the soldiers at length left them half-dead." This is the first instance of military floggings for religion's sake; but from this date they never ceased in Ireland until the present century, many innocent Catholics having been flogged to death in 1798: among others, two who died under the stripes in the barrack of Dundalk.

Anno 1568.

REV. DAVID WOLF, S.J.

THE life of this remarkable confessor has been so well and ably written by Dr. Moran that, with the kind permission of the author, we give it in his words. Father Wolf is enumerated in the catalogue of martyrs and confessors given by Dr. Roothe in his Analecta.

One of the most remarkable men who, during the first years of Elizabeth's reign, labored in our Irish Church to

The only notices I have found of these confessors is in Luke Wadding's Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, and his Annales Ordinis Min. ii. 1291. In the first passage their names are given as Conacius Macuarta, Rogerus MacCongail, and Fergallus Bardeus. In the second passage Macuarta and MacCongail are not mentioned; but the sufferings of Fergallus Vardoeus and Henricus Femlamaidh are commemorated. Probably there were four who suffered. Apparently Wadding has confounded Fergial Ward, who was hanged in 1577, with the others who were thus scourged in 1565. See later, at the year 1577.

gather together the scattered stones of the sanctuary, was Father David Wolf, a member of the Order of St. Ignatius. A native of Limerick, he spent seven years in Rome, imbibing the full spirit of his order, under the immediatę guidance of its holy founder and St. Francis Borgia; and in August, 1560, he was sent by the Holy See, with all the privileges of apostolic commissary, to confirm his countrymen in the faith, amid the impending persecutions of Elizabeth. His chief care was to propose learned and zealous men to fill the vacant sees of our island; and the names of Richard Creagh, of Armagh, Donald McConghail, of Raphoe, Eugene O'Hart, of Achonry, Maurice McBrian, of Emly, to omit many others, are a sure guarantee of the fidelity with which he fulfilled this charge.

Father Wolf resided, for the most part, in his native diocese; but his jurisdiction extended to the whole island, and we find him incidentally referred to in contemporary records as visiting the district of Tyrone, and again as travelling through various dioceses of Connaught and Ulster. The English agents were filled with alarm at the presence in the country of one who, by public acclamation, received the title of papal nuncio; and when, in 1561, Pope Pius IV. invited Queen Elizabeth to send her representatives to the Council of Trent, she absolutely refused, assigning as one of the chief reasons for her displeasure that "an Irishman (Father Wolf) had been sent from Rome to Ireland to excite their disaffection against her crown." So watchful were the agents of the English government in pursuit of the Jesuit father that he was for several years unable to enter within the limits of the pale; and we find him, when delegating his jurisdiction for Dublin and its vicinity to Father Newman, in 1563, affirming that, so many were the dangers which beset his journey. thither, he feared to visit that district.

Among the papers of the secret archives of the Vati

can there is one which was presented in 1560 to the Cardinal Protector of Ireland, and which sketches the course to be pursued by the agents of the Holy See while performing the visitation of our island. A few extracts will suffice to prove how full of responsibility and peril was the mission entrusted to the disciple of St. Ignatius: "His first care shall be to visit the Catholic leaders, and especially the four chief princes of the kingdom, to commend, in the name of his holiness, their unflinching constancy and zeal, and to encourage them to persevere in the defence of the Catholic faith." The bishops also were to be visited, "to see if they resided in their dioceses and instructed their flocks; if they were attentive to the due decorum of the sacred edifices, and vigilant in selecting zealous and worthy ministers for the altar." As to the clergy, he was to inquire into their manner of administering the sacraments, and to afford them every aid, especially in administering the holy sacraments of confession and communion, in preaching the word of truth, and in exhorting their Catholic flocks to lead holy and Christian lives. Should any heretical minister be found, the agent of Rome was to guard the people against the contagion of his errors, and, above all, to seek, in the spirit of charity, to bring him back to the paths of truth. "He must also seek to establish grammar-schools, supplying them with Catholic masters, and thus remedy the great ignorance of the natives; admonishing the parents to send their children to the schools, that thus they may be instructed in literature and morality, and at the same time acquire a meet knowledge of the saving, truths of faith." If possible, some monasteries were to be established, and exact discipline maintained; hospitals, too, were to be founded, and other places of refuge and succor for the poor.

For these things, and for whatsoever else might be done, no reward or recompense, even in the name of alms, was

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