Luke Wadding (bishop)
Luke Wadding (1628 - 1687) was a Roman Catholic priest and Bishop during the Stuart Restoration, who was descended from Ireland's Old English nobility. In addition to seeking to rebuild the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns following the devastation of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and despite the renewed religious persecution caused by the anti-Catholic witch hunt masterminded by Titus Oates and Lord Shaftesbury, Bishop Wadding is well known as one of the later Metaphysical poets whose Christian poetry, heavily influenced by that of Richard Crashaw, is still sung as part of the Wexford Carols cycle during the Twelve Days of Christmas and which have also been recorded commercially.
Life[edit]
Wadding was born in his father's castle at Ballycogley, in the Yola-speaking Barony of Bargy. He was one of four children, in a family of staunchly Catholic, Royalist, and Old English descent. His father, Walter Wadding, was a successful merchant of Wexford, while his mother, Mary (née Sinnott), was the daughter of Raheen landowner David Sinnott.[1]
Despite the Wadding family's Royalist preferences, escalating pressure was being put on Irish Catholics, and particularly on Ireland's Hiberno-Norman elite, to conform to the State-controlled Protestant Church of Ireland. After the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Walter Wadding found it impossible to balance political loyalty to King Charles I with religious loyalty to the Catholic Church in Ireland and reluctantly joined the Irish Catholic Confederation. During the later Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Walter Wadding was killed for this very reason by Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army during the 2–11 October 1649 Sack of Wexford and all his property was declared forfeit to the Commonwealth of England under the Act of Settlement. Later that same month, Luke Wadding fled Ireland for a 17-year long exile in Catholic Europe.[2]
According to historian D.P. Conyngham, "It is impossible to estimate the number of Catholics slain the ten years from 1642 to 1652. Three Bishops and more than 300 priests were put to death for their faith. Thousands of men, women, and children were sold as slaves for the West Indies; Sir W. Petty mentions that 6,000 boys and women were thus sold. A letter written in 1656, quoted by Lingard, puts the number at 60,000; as late as 1666 there were 12,000 Irish slaves scattered among the West Indian islands. Forty thousand Irish fled to the Continent, and 20,000 took shelter in the Hebrides or other Scottish islands. In 1641, the population of Ireland was 1,466,000, of whom 1,240,000 were Catholics. In 1659 the population was reduced to 500,091, so that very nearly 1,000,000 must have perished or been driven into exile in the space of eighteen years. In comparison with the population of both periods, this was even worse than the famine extermination of our own days."[3]
Meanwhile, Luke Wadding entered the Irish College in Paris in 1651, where he is known to have closely followed the ongoing debates over Gallicanist and Jansenist heresies. He is also known to have been ordained to the priesthood at an unknown date and to have received a doctorate in theology from the Sorbonne in 1668.[4]
According to Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, "Ferns was without a regular Bishop between 1651 and 1684. Bishop Nicholas French had left Ireland to seek the help of the Duke of Lorraine, but because of the enmity of the Duke of Ormonde he was refused permission to return even after the restoration of Charles II. In 1668, French invited his first cousin Luke Wadding to return to Wexford to represent him as Vicar General of Ferns. He appointed him parish priest of New Ross."[5]
Due to the sympathies of the King and his suspension of all anti-Catholic religious persecution through the Declaration of the Indulgence, there was a general relaxation and the Tridentine Mass generally moved from outdoor Mass rocks (Irish: Carraig an Aifrinn) to thatched "Mass houses" (Irish: Cábán an Aifrinn, lit. ‘Mass Cabin’). Writing in 1668, Janvin de Rochefort commented, "Even in Dublin more than twenty houses where Mass is secretly said, and in about a thousand places, subterranean vaults and retired spots in the woods".[6]
At the same time, the whole Catholic Church in Ireland had been devastated and Fr. Wadding had to rebuild the Diocese from the ground up. With the assistance of Irish Jesuits Stephen Gelosse and Stephen Rice, he founded a Catholic school in New Ross for 120 young boys. After grudgingly accepting a promotion to Coadjutor Bishop of Ferns with right of succession in 1673, Wadding moved to Wexford, while indefinitely delaying his episcopal consecration with Bishop French's approval. He asked, however, to be sent from abroad a pectoral cross, a mitre, a crozier, some vestments, and everything else necessary for saying a Pontifical High Mass, "for nothing of the sort can be had here".[7]
References[edit]
- ^ Bishop Luke Wadding, Dictionary of Irish Biography
- ^ Bishop Luke Wadding, Dictionary of Irish Biography
- ^ D.P. Conyngham, Lives of the Irish Martyrs, P.J. Kenedy & Sons, New York. pp. 138.
- ^ Bishop Luke Wadding, Dictionary of Irish Biography
- ^ Diarmaid Ó Muirithe. The Wexford Carols, Dolmen Press, Naas, 1982. pp. 11-12.
- ^ Nugent, Tony (2013), Were You at the Rock? The History of Mass Rocks in Ireland. Liffey Press. p. 143.
- ^ Diarmaid Ó Muirithe. The Wexford Carols, Dolmen Press, Naas, 1982. p. 12.
Publications[edit]
Further reading[edit]
- Diarmaid Ó Muirithe. The Wexford Carols, Dolmen Press, Naas, 1982.