St. Patrick's purgatory.

Donegal, about which the penitent was compelled to crawl, bare-legged and bare-armed, painfully lacerating his knees and hands as he slowly effected his passage over the sharp stones". Another was the high mountain of Slieve Donard, in the county of Down, to the top of which he was sentenced to climb under the heat of a midsummer sun, and there to offer his devotions to the saint from whom the mountain derives its name,3.

But of these superstitions the former seems to require more particular notice. It was founded upon a vision, ascribed by Matthew Paris to the fraud or illusion of an Irish soldier in the twelfth century, adopted by a Cistercian monk, and embellished with all his powers of ingenuity; and thence publickly set forth, and impressed upon the minds of the uneducated and credulous natives, with circumstances calculated to work upon their hopes and fears, and thus to bring them under more absolute thraldom to their priests by the influence of stimulating and deceitful imaginations. Christ, as the soldier is reported to have told his vision seen in St. Patrick's purgatory, appeared to St. Patrick, but whether to the primitive apostle of Ireland, or to one who bore the name of his more illustrious predecessor, about the year 850, the legend has not determined; and leading him to a desert place, showed him a deep hole, and instructed him that whoever repented and was armed with true faith, and entering into that pit continued there a night and a day, should, during his abode there, behold the pains of purgatory and of hell, and the joys of heaven, and be thereby purged and cleansed from 19 ARCHDALL, p. 102; LEDWICH, p. 134. 13 HARRIS's County of Down, p. 121.

all his sins. A church and monastery, founded by the saint; seven chapels or cells in different parts of the island, which is only one hundred and twentysix yards long and forty-four broad, or about the size of an English acre; about the same number of circular inclosures or conical piles of stones, distinguished by the names of the beds or circles of St. Patrick, St. Abage, St. Molass, St. Brendan, St. Columba, St. Catherine, and St. Brigid, were the results of this impious invention; above all, the purgatory of St. Patrick, which was a cave sixteen feet and a half long by about two wide; so low, that a tall man could not stand in it upright; so confined, that it could not contain more than nine persons; and so closed, that no light could enter in, except through the doorway, or a small window in one corner. In and round these structures, at stated seasons of the year, for two or three weeks in succession, and from every district of the land, vast multitudes of pilgrims promiscuously crawled: painfully exercising their bodies with penitentiary inflictions, but crowning the tortures of the day with nightly scenes of revelry, intemperance, debauchery, and riot; and exhibiting by their subsequent conduct scant fruits of penitence.

penance.

There were other favourite spots, where the other places of macerations of self-tormenting were succeeded by the orgies of self-indulgence: such, for example, as the valley of Glendaloch, and the islands of Inniscattery and Inniscaltra: but the small isle of Lough Dearg appears to have been pre-eminent in evil at least in a scandalous notoriety. For much to the discontent and loss of the priests, who throve upon the sufferings and sins of the deluded people, the shameful imposture and enormities of the place

Occasional penances.

excited, at length, papal displeasure; and by a decree of Pope Alexander the Sixth, in 1497, it incurred a sentence of demolition; which, however, was not effectually accomplished, for in the year 1630, the government of Ireland gave orders for its final suppression".

Such penances as these, that have been now mentioned, were in ordinary course. An example of occasional penance is furnished by the narrative of an assault made on the Earl of Ormonde, in 1434, by the citizens of Dublin, who, at the same time, furiously attacked and broke open the gates of St. Mary's abbey, and carried off the abbot by force, "bearing him up, some by his feet, and others by his hands and arms." A publick penance was in consequence enjoined upon the mayor and citizens to proceed barefoot to the cathedrals of the Holy Trinity and St. Patrick's, and to the monastery of the Blessed Virgin, begging pardon for the offences committed by them in their churches. And, in 1492, another treacherous and violent assault was made on another Earl of Ormonde, in St. Patrick's cathedral, by the citizens of Dublin, with circumstances of sacrilegious outrage; which was visited by the Pope's legate with this sentence, that "in detestation of so horrible a fact, and in perpetual memory of the transaction, the mayor of Dublin should go barefoot throughout the city in open procession, before the sacrament, on Corpus Christi's day, which penitent satisfaction was after in every such procession, duly accomplished".

12. Indulgences by the Pope have been already 14 Cox, vol. ii. p. 54.

15 MASON'S St. Patrick, pp. 132, 141.

gences in reward

intimated to have been connected with the practice Papal indulof undertaking pilgrimages. Such indulgences were of pilgrimages; granted in 1399 and 1401, to all who should visit he monastery of Sligo on certain festivals, and to all who should visit the friary of Drogheda; and, in 1415, to all persons who should visit the friary of Arklow, and give alms to the friars; and, in 1450, to all who should make a pilgrimage to the abbey of Navan, or contribute to repair or adorn it. Other similar privileges were granted in 1400 and 1423, to all persons who should visit the Dominican friary of Galway on particular festivals, and contribute to its repairs; and, in 1426, to all who had contributed to the building of the monastery of Portumna; and, in 1450, to all who should undertake pilgrimages to the abbey of Navan".

purposes.

Papal indulgences were also given for purposes And for other differing in kind from the preceding. In 1476, Octavian del Palatio, the Pope's nuncio in Ireland and the adjoining isles, granted an indulgence of two months to all inhabitants of this kingdom who should give subsidies towards the propagation of the Christian faith and the Crusades; provided they should visit the Cathedral of St. Patrick's and the Holy Trinity, the chapel of St. Mary near the old bridge, belonging to the preaching friars, and that of St. Thomas, and should there say thrice seven psalms with litanies, or else the Lord's Prayer three score times, with the angel's salutation. The subsidies required were, from archbishops, bishops, earls, and countesses, two marks each; from abbots, barons, and baronesses, one mark and a half; from nobles of inferior quality, doctors and their wives, one mark; and from other persons, half a mark each.

16 ARCHDALL, pp. 638, 760, 559, 274, 275, 295, 559.

Episcopal indulgences.

All indulgences to other churches were to cease for eight months".

And of the same nature appears to be a document in the archives of Christ Church, Dublin, being a later indulgence and plenary pardon of all sins, however enormous, granted by Donald O'Fallon to Richard Skyret, then canon, but afterwards prior, of that cathedral, for contributions to the Crusade. He entitles himself Deputy of the Order of Minors, being an observantine Franciscan, and on the seal is called the Guardian of Youghal. In the year 1485, he was advanced to the see of Derry by the provision of Pope Innocent the Eighth; but it was not in his episcopal capacity that he granted the foregoing indulgence, which was dated in 1482.

But there were other "indulgences," of which frequent mention is made in the history of this period of the Irish Church, and which require some explanation: for, as Harris observes, "possibly every reader may not know what is meant by these indulgences. Fuller, in his Worthies of Cambridgeshire, declares his ignorance of them: unless,' says he, 'they signified a promise of a pardon of so many days to such who should go on pilgrimage to such a church, or be contributors to the repairs or building of it.' And this he thinks an over-papal act for a plain bishop. But," continues Harris, "it was usual with the Pope to grant faculties to bishops for this purpose. Thus Maurice de Portu, archbishop of Tuam, in 1506, obtained a faculty from the Pope for granting indulgences to all who should hear his first mass at Tuam, after his return from Rome; but he died on his journey before he had the opportunity of celebrating his first mass. These indul17 MASON'S St. Patrick, p. 139. 18 WARE'S Bishops, pp. 197, 198.