Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10.djvu/115

 MAYO

MAYO

Peter J. Delort, the Rev. Andrew Darr^, the Rev. Louis Delahogue and the Rev. Francis Anglade — all Doctors of the Sorbonne. On the original staff may also be found the name of the Rev. John C. Eustace, author of the well-known "Classical Tour in Italy". Amongst the distinguished personages who have visited the college were Thackeray, Montalembert, Carlyle, Robert Owen, Cardinal Perraud, Huxley, the late Empress of Austria, and King Edward VII. The col- lege possesses several memorials of the Empress of Austria, who lived in the neighbourhood during her visits to Ireland. The Centenary of the foundation of the college was celebrated in 1895, on which occasion congratulations were sent from all the Catholic educa- tional centres in the world. The college library con- tains upwards of 40,000 volumes. It possesses a great many rare and precious works and some very valuable manuscripts. The Aula Maxima which was opened about the year 1893 was the gift to his Alma Mater of the Right Rev. Mgr. MacMahon of the Catholic Univer- sity at Washington, 1). C, and previously of New York. The chapel which has just been completed is a work of rare beauty both in design and ornamentation. Maynooth has already sent out into the world ujiwards of 7,000 priests. Her alumni are in all lands and in almost every position that an ecclesiastic could oc- cupy. The average numlier of students in recent years is about 600. The ordinary theological course is four years, and the extra course of the " Dunboyne Es- tablishment" three years more. Students in arts and philosophy have to graduate in the National Univer- sity of which Maynooth is now a " recognized College ". Healy, Maynooth College, Its Centenary History (Dublin, 1895); Calendarium CoUegii Sancti Patricii (Dublin); A Record of the Centenun/ CeJihrallon . . . Maynooth College (Dublin, 1895); Cornunlh' . r,,,,, ,„,.„,;, ncc,- Memoirs of Viscount Caslle- reagh; Life (iiiii / 11 nry Grattan; Hansard^ s Parliamen-

tary Debates: ' ■ of Edmund Burke; Gladstone,

The State in il.< /,, r/ ,,,, /,, fh, t'hurch; HoGAN, Maynooth College and the Laity \\UthUn) . J. F. HoGAN.

Mayo, School of (Irish Magh Eo, which means, according to Colgan, the Plain of the Oaks, and, ac- cording to O'Donovan, the Plain of the Yews), was situated in the present parish of Mayo, County Mayo, almost equidistant from the towns of Claremorris and Castlebar. The founder, St. Colman, who flourished about the middle of the seventh century, was in all probability a native of the West of Ireland, and made his ecclesiastical studies at lona during the abbacy of the renowned Segenius. After the death of Finian, the second Bishop of Lindisfarne, Colman was appointed to succeed him. His episcopate was much disturbed by a fierce renewal of the Easter Controversy. Colman vigorously advocated the old Irish custom, and cited the example of his predecessors, but all to no effect. At a synod specially summoned to meet at Whitby in 664, the Roman method of calculation triumphed, and Colman, unwilling to abandon the practice of the "holy elders of the Irish Church", resolved to quit Lindisfarne forever.

In 668 he crossed the seas to his native land again, and in a remote island on the western coast called Inishl5ofin, he built a monastery and school. These things are clearly set out in the "Historia Ecelesias- tica " of Bede, who then proceeds to describe how they led to the founding of the great school of Mayo. " Col- man the Irish Bishop", says Bede, "departed from Britain and took with him all the Irish that he had assembled in the Island of Lindisfarne, and also about thirty of the English nation who had been instructed in the monastic life. . . . Afterwards he retired to a small island which is to the west of Ireland, and at some distance from the coast, called in the language of the Irish, Inishbofinde [island of the white cow]. Arriving there he built a monastery, and placed in it the monks he had brought with him of lioth nations ".

It appears, however, the Irish antl English monks could not agree. " Then Colman sought to put an end

to their dissensions, and travelling about at length found a place in Ireland fit to l>uild a monastery, which in the language of the Irish is called Magh Eo (Mayo) ". Later on we are told by the same historian that this monastery became an important and flour- ishing institution, and even an episcopal see.

Though Colman, we may assume, lived mainly with his own countrymen at Inishbofin, he took a deep and practical interest in his new fountlation at Mayo — " Mayo of the Saxons ", as it came to be called. In the year 670, with his consent, its first canonical abbot was appointed. This was St. Gerald, the son of a northern English king, who, annoyed at the way Colman 's most cherished convictions had been slighted at Whitby, resolved to follow him to Ireland. The school gained greatly in fame for sanctity and learning under this youthful abbot. About 679 St. Adamnan, the illus- trious biographer of St. Columba, visited Mayo and, according to some writers, ruled there for seven years after Gerald's death. This latter statement is not, on the face of it, improbalile if Gerald, as C^olgan thinks, did not live after 697; but the Four Masters give the date of his death as 13 March, 726, and the " Annals of Ulster" put the event as late as 731. After Gerald's death we have only the record of isolated facts con- cerning the school he ruled so wisely and loved so well, but they are often facts of considerable interest and importance. We read, for example, that the monas- tery was burned in 783, and again in 805; also — but only in the old Life of St. Gerald — that it was plun- dered liy Turgesius the Dane in SIS. That the mo- nastic grounds were regarded as exceptionally holy we can gather from the entry that Domhnall, son of Torlough O'Conor, Lord of North Connacht, "the glory and the moderator and the good adviser of the Irish people" (d. 1176), was interred therein. That it had the status of an episcopal see long after the Synod of Kells (1152), is clear from the entry under date of 1209, recording the <leath of "Cele O'Duffy, Bishop of Magh Eo of the Saxons".

Mayo, like the other ancient Irish monastic schools, suffered from the raids of native and foreigner, espe- cially during the fourteenth century. But it survive<l them all, for the death under date 1478 is recorded of a bishop — "Bishop Higgins of Mayo of the Saxons". The time at which the See of Mayo, on the ground that it contained not a cathedral but a parochial church, was annexed toTuam, cannot with certainty be ascer- tained, but as far back as 1217, during the reign of Honorius III, the question was before the Roman authorities for discussion. It was probably not set- tled definitively for centuries after. James O'Healy, "Bishop of Mayo of the Saxons", was put to death for the Catholic Faith at Kilmallock in 1579.

Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica (London, 1907); Colgan, Acta Sanctorum HibemifB (Louvain, 1645); O'Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints (Dublin, s. d.); Healy, Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars {5th ed., Dublin, 1906).

John Healy.

Mayo Indians. — An important tribe occupying some fifteen towns on Mayo and Fuerte rivers, south- em Sonora and northern Sinaloa, Mexico. Their lan- guage is known as the Cahita, being the same as that spoken, with dialectic differences, by their neighbours, the Tehueco and Yaqui, and belonging to the Piman branch of the great Shoshonean stock. The name Mayo is said by Ribas to be properly that of their principal river and to signify "lioundary". The known history of the tribe begins in 1532 with the naval expedition of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who landing at the mouth of the Fuerte, went up the river to the villages, where he was killed with his com- panions while asleep. In 1533 a land expedition under Diego de Guzman crossed through their country and penetrated to beyond the Yaqui river in the north. In 1609-10 they aide_d the Spaniards against the Yaqui, the two tribes being hereditary enemies,