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 IRISH

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IRISH

placet! at the disposal of the British Government three milHon and a half sterling, to indemnify British subjects in France for the losses they had sustained durnic; the Revolution. In ISIO a claim for an in- domiiily was ])resented on behalf of the Irish college. That claim was rejected by the Privy Council in 1825 on the ground that the college was a French estab- lishment. In 1S32 the claim was renewed by Dr. M'Sweeny, rector of the college, with the same re- sult. Another attempt to obtain compensation was made by the Rev. Thomas McNamara in 1870. On 9 May in that year a motion was made in the House of Lords for copies of the awards in the case of the Irish college in 1825 and 1832. This step was fol- lowed up by u motion in the House of Commons for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the claims of the college to compensation for losses sustained during the French Revolution. The mo- tion was introduced on 30 April, 1875, by Isaac Butt, M.P. for Limerick, and, after a prolonged discussion, it was negatived by 116 to 54 votes.

After 1805 the administration of the college was subject to a "Bureau de Surveillance" which gave much trouble until it was dissolved by Charles X, in 1824. After that date, the superior, appointed on the ])resentation of the four archbishops of Ireland, be- came official administrator of the foundations, sub- ject to the minister of the interior, and at a later period to the minister of public instruction. The students no longer frequented the university. The professors were Irish priests appointed by the French Government on the presentation of the Irish episco- pate. In 1858, with the sanction of the Sacred Con- gregation of Propaganda, and with the comment of the French Government, the bishops of Ireland placed the management of the college in the hands of the Irish Vincentian Fathers. In recent years the num- ber of students has been between sixty and seventy. They are admitted on the nomination of the bishops, and, after a course of two years in philosophy and four years in theology, they are ordained and return to Ireland. In the nineteenth century the college gave to the Church a long array of good priests and bishops, including Dr. Fitz Patrick, Abbot of Mel- leray; Dr. Maginn, Coadjutor Bishop of Derry; Dr. Keane, of Cloyne; Dr. O'Hea and Dr. Fitz Gerald of Ross, Dr. Gillooly of Elphin, and Dr. Croke of Cashel. Dr. Kelly, the present Bishop of Ross, and Dr. Mac- Sherry, vicar Apostolic at Port Elizabeth, South Africa, are also alumni of the college. The present occupant of the see of St. Patrick, H.E. Cardinal Logue, held the chair of dogmatic theology from 1866 to 1874.

In the three hundred years of its existence the college has not been without a share in the eccle- siastical literature of Ireland. Among the rectors of the college have been Thomas Messingham, prothono- tary Apostolic, author of the "Florilegium Insulse Sanctorum" (Paris, 1624); Dr. Andrew Donlevy, author of an "Anglo-Irish Catechism" (Paris, 1742); Dr. Miley, author of a "History of the Papal States" (Dublin, 1852); Father Thomas MacNamara, author of "Programmes of Sermons (Dublin, 1880), "En- cheiridion Clericorum" (1882), and several other similar works. Abb^ Mageoghegan, Sylvester O'Hal- laran, Martin Haverty, and probably Geoffrey Keat- ing, all eminent Irish historians, were students of the college. Dean Kinane, a student and then a pro- fessor in the college, is widely known for his "Dove of the Tabernacle" and nmnerous other devotional works. More recently, the Rev. John MacGuinness, C.M., vice-rector, has published a full course of dogmatic theology. Amongst the rectors of the college. Dr. John Farely and Dr. John Bapti.st Walsh, in the eighteenth century, and Dr. MacSweeney and the Rev. Thomas MacNamara, in the nineteenth, have been administrators of marked ability. Since

1873, the admini.stration of the property of the col- lege has been vested in a board createtl by a decree of the Conseil d'Etat. On thai board t he Archbishop of Paris was represented liy a delegate, and he was also the official medium of communication between the Irish episcopate and the French (iovernment. In December, 1906, the law of separation of Church antl State in France came into operation. In the January following, the French Government notified the British Government of its intention to reorganize the Irish Catholic foundations in France so as to bring them into harmony with the recent legislation regarding the Church. It was further stated that the purpose of the Government was to close the Irish college, to sell its immovable property, and to invest the proceeds of the sale, to be applied together with the existing burses for the benefit of Irish students who shall be admitted, on the presentation of the British Ambassador to France, either to the state schools or to the schools of theology which have taken the place of the diocesan .seminaries. A plea for the preservation of the college has been presented on behalf of the bishops of Ireland, through the British Foreign Office. The question is still iunlccided.

The history of the Irish colleges on the Continent is a manifest proof of the tenacity with which Ireland has clung to the Catholic Faith. Without the suc- cession of priests prepared in those colleges, the preservation of the Faith in Ireland in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries would have been impossible. At the present day the colleges in Ire- laud are sufficient to supply the needs of the Church in Ireland, but the colleges on the Continent are still useful as a witness of the past, and they serve to bring a large section of the clergy of Ireland into con- tact with the life and thought and work of the Church in the ancient Catholic nations on the Continent.

For the Peninsula: Irish Colleges since the Reformation in It. EccL Rec, VIII, 307, 465- Healy, Maynooth College centenary History (Dublin, 1895). — For Belgium: Spelman, Ir. Eccl. Rec.^ 3rd ser., VII, 350, 437. 641; Meehan, The Rise and Fall of the Franciscan Monasteries (Dublin, 1877); De Berck, L'Archeolo- gie Irlarulaise au convent de Saint-Antoine de Padoue A Louvain (Paris, 1869): Tovrnkvr, Esquisse d'une histoire des etudes eel- tiques (Li^ge, 1905). — For France: Boyle, The Irish College in Paris {1578-1905) with a brief sketch of the other Irish Colleges in France (London and Dublin, 1905); Idem in Ir. Eccl. Rec, 4th ser., X, 385; XI, 193, 432; XII, 233: XIV, 24, 289: XV, 48; XVIII, 431; XXI, 285; XXII, 127; XXIII, 454: Hurley in Dvhlin Review, CX, 45, 353 ; Bellesheiai, Geschichte der katol- ischen Kirche in Irland, II, III (Mainz, 1890-91); Bertrand, Histoire des shninaires de Bordeaux et de Bazas (Bordeaux, 1894); DANgoiSE, Histoire des etahlissements religieux fondes a Douai avant la Revolution Fran^aise (Douai, 1880); Jourdain, Histoire de V Universite de Paris (Paris, 1888) ; Pagny, Memoirea historiques et chronologiqites sur les seminaires ^tablis dans la ville de Toulouse (Toulouse, 1852).

P.-VTHICK BOYI.E.

Irish Confessors and Martyrs. — The period covered by this article embraces that between the years 1540 and (approximately) 1713. Religious persecution in Ireland began under Henry VIII, when the local Parliament adopted acts establishing the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, abolishing the pope's jurisdiction, and suppressing religious houses. The act against the pope came into operation 1 November, 1537. Its penalties were sufficiently terrible, but the licence of those enforcing it was still more terrible. When they had been at work little over a year the Bishop of Derry wrote to Pope Paul III that the King of England's deputy and his adherents, refusing to acknowletlge the pope, were burning houses, de- stroying churches, ravishing maids, robbing and kill- ing unoffending persons. They kill, he said, all priests who pray for the pope or refuse to erase his name from the canon of the Mass, and they torture preachers who do not repudiate his authority. It would fill a book to detail their cruelty. Intolerable as these evils seemed, they were aggravated beyond measure, tliree years later, when the general sup- pression of religious houses was superadded. Then