Blessed Peter O'Higgins, O.P.

Blessed Peter O'Higgins, O.P.

The Dominican Peter O'Higgins, of the Priory of Yeomanstown between Newbridge and Naas, on the banks of the River Liffey, was beatified with 16 other Irish Martyrs on 27th September, 1991. Today is their collective feast day.

In his Historical Sketch of the Persecutions Suffered by the Catholics of Ireland Under the Rule of Cromwell and the Puritans, Rev. Dr. Patrick Francis Moran as he then was, Vice Rector of the Irish College in Rome and later Cardinal Archbishop of Sidney, gives the following account of the martyrdom of Blessed Peter O'Higgins:

F. Peter O'Higgins belonged to the order of St Dominick and in 1641 he was led to the scaffold for the Catholic faith in the court yard of Dublin Castle. We will allow father Dominick O'Daly to describe the scene of his suffering:- "This pious and eloquent man," thus writes O'Daly, in 1655, "was arrested and brought before the lords Justices of Ireland on a charge of endeavouring to seduce the Protestants from their religion. When his accusers failed to sustain any capital charge against him, the men in power sent to inform him that if he abandoned his faith he might expect many and great privileges; but all depended on his embracing the Protestant religion. From the first he knew well that they had resolved on his death; but it was on the morning of the day fixed for his execution that the messenger came to him with the above terms."

"O'Higgins in reply desired to have those proposals made to him under the signature of the Justices, and requested, moreover, that it should be handed to him in sight of the gibbet. The lords Justices hearing this, together with the order for his execution, sent the written document for pardon on the aforesaid condition. Now when the intrepid martyr had ascended the first step of the ladder leading to the gibbet the executioner placed the paper in his hand. He bowed courteously on receiving it, and loud was the exultation of the heretical mob who thought he was about to renounce the Catholic faith; but he standing on the scaffold, exposed to the view of God and man, exhibited to all about him the document he had received, and commenting with warmth on it, convicted his impious judges of their own avowed iniquity."

"Knowing well that there were Catholics in the crowd, he said addressing them:- 'My brethren, God hath so willed that I shonld fall into the hands of our relentless persecutors. They have not been able, however, to convict me of any crime against the laws of the realm; but my religion is an abomination in their sight, and I am here to-day to protest, in the sight of God and man, that I am condemned for my faith. For some time, I was in doubt as to the charge on which they would ground my condemnation; but, thanks to Heaven! it is no longer so, and I am about to suffer for my attachment to the Catholic faith. See you here the condition on which I might save my life. Apostacy is all they require but, before high Heaven I spurn their offers and, with my last breath, will glorify God for the honour He has done me in allowing me thus to suffer for His Name.' Then, turning to the executioner, after having cast the Justices autograph to the crowd, he told him to perform his office, and the by-standers heard him returning thanks to God, even with his latest breath. Thus did iniqnity lie unto itself - thus did the martyr's constancy triumph." (From History of the Geraldines by Dominick de Rosario O'Daly, O.P., originally written in Latin, and printed at Lisbon in 1655; translated by Rev. C.P. Meehan, and printed in Dublin in 1847. See also De Burgh's Hib. Dom., page 561.)

In the aforementioned The Geraldines, Earls of Desmond, and the Persecution of the Irish Catholics, translated from the original latin, with notes and illustrations, by Rev. C. P. Meehan, in the footnote to page 251, where the martyrdom of another Dominican in 1651 in Clonmel is recounted, we read:

Thomas O Higgins was put to death in the year 1651. In the Hib. Dom. p 561 there is mention made of Peter O Higgins, who was slain for no other crime than that of being a Dominican Friar. His death took place in the year 1641, immediately after the rising of the Catholics. The mortal remains of this victim were denied sepulture in the city of Dublin; and as the friends of the murdered priest were carrying him to a burial place outside the walls, the partisans of the Lords Justices shattered the lifeless head with their muskets. Acta Capituli Generalissimi. Romae, 1644. p. 119.

Blessed Peter O'Higgins, pray for us!

Saint Ninian of Cloncurry

Dr. Comerford includes the following information on Saint Ninian of Cloncurry, in the modern Parish of Kilcock:

"The Saint chiefly connected with Cloncurry is Ninine, or Monine, whose feast is marked in our calendars at the 16th September. Thus the Martyrology of Tallaght has the entry: "Monenn Cluana Conaire;" and the Martyrology of Donegal, "Maoineann, Bishop of Cluain Conaire, in the north of Ui Failan." Some authorities suppose this saint to have been Ninidh Lamoidhan, or of the pure hand, who attended Saint Brigid when dying; but the weight of authority seems to be in favour of St. Ninian, so celebrated as a missioner in Scotland, in the fourth century; and Archbishop Moran unhesitatingly adopts this opinion. His Grace thus writes in his Irish Saints in Great Britain, p.133:

"It was amongst the Gallgaedhels of Galloway that another ornament of the British Church, St. Ninian, was born, about the year 360. Of this family only two traditions have come down to us: one is the tradition of Scotland, that Ninian was nephew of St. Martin of Tours; the other is a tradition of the Irish Church, preserved by Ussher, that it was in compliance with a request made to him by his mother, that, in his old age, he set out to associate himself with St. Palladius in the conversion of Ireland. We might, perhaps, from this fact, conjecture that she herself belonged to the Gaelic race. Being arrived at the age of manhood, Ninian proceeded to Rome. Alaric had not as yet knocked at the gates of the devoted city. In the full majesty of imperial sway, it was still at the golden height of its wealth and material splendour; and its palaces and forums and public monuments displayed all the profusion of magnificence with which the plunder of the world had enriched the proud mistress of nations. Pope Damasus then ruled the Church of God, and, with the blessings of peace, religion smiled on the seven hills. Silver and gold and precious marbles enriched the Basilicas devoted to Christian worship; the shrines of the martyrs were adorned with the most costly gems; the learning of St. Jerome and St. Ambrose added lustre to its sacred teaching, and Rome was, even then, not only the source of spiritual authority, but also the great centre of religious life, and of the love and affection of the Christian world.

For about twenty years St. Ninian lived in Rome... Being at length consecrated Bishop, he set out for his native Galloway, to merit by his sanctity and missionary labours the title of its chief apostle. On his homeward journey he remained for some time at Marmoutiers, to enjoy the heavenly lessons of wisdom of its great founder, St. Martin of Tours; and Aelred, in his Life of our Saint, mentions that he brought with him from the monastery some skilled masons, by whose aid he desired to erect in his native district a Church on the model of those which he had seen in Italy and France. He chose for its site a sheltered spot on the southern promontory of Galloway… The Church was built of chiselled stone, a style of edifice, as Bede states, till then unknown in N. Britain, from which circumstance it became known as Candida Casa, and in the British language it was called Whitherne, or the White House, which name, Whithorn, it retains to the present day. We learn from Ven. Bede that whilst engaged in erecting this Church, Ninian received intelligence of St. Martin’s death, and so convinced was he of the sanctity of that holy man, that he at once chose him for his patron in his missionary labours, and dedicated the Church to God under his invocation. St. Martin most probably died in the year 402. I need not dwell upon the apostolic labours of St. Ninian. He penetrated into the Pictish territory far beyond the British frontier, and, at his preaching, as Bede attests, many of the southern Picts forsook idolatry and became fervent children of God. He was remarkable, like most of the early Celtic Saints, for his austerities… Like St. Martin, he loved to withdraw himself, from time to time, from the busy world in which he laboured, to renew his spirit by meditation on heavenly things. The cave is still pointed out on the sea-shore of Wigtonshire in Galloway, whither he was wont to retire. It is placed high up in a white lofty precipitous range of rocks, against which the impetuous waves of the stormy Irish sea unceasingly spend their fury. The cave is open to the winds and spray, but runs inward about twenty feet. At the mouth it is twelve feet high and about as many in breadth, and it is only accessible by climbing from rock to rock."

The death of this saint is marked by Scottish writers as having occurred in the year 432; his remains were interred in St. Martin’s Church, and were honoured by many miracles. St. Ninian is commemorated in our Irish calendars on the 16th of September, under the name of Monennio, and it is a very ancient tradition, preserved in the Festology of St. Aengus and other authentic records, that a few years before his death he came to Ireland to aid Palladius, and erected at Cluain Conaire, now Cloncurry, in the north of the present County of Kildare, an oratory and religious institution which reproduced in miniature the great Church and Monastery of Whitherne. Bishop Forbes gives a list of more than sixty Churches, dedicated to him throughout Scotland; and Chalmers, in his Caledonia, writes that "the name of St. Ninian was venerated in every district of Scotland, and in the northern and western Isles."

The Four Masters record the death of an abbot of this Monastery of St. Ninian, in the year 869: "A.D. 869, Colga, son of Maetuile, abbot and anchorite of Cluain-Conaire-Tomain, died." As in the case of Whitherne, so also in that of Cloncurry, St. Ninian appears to have dedicated the Church to St. Martin of Tours conjointly with the B. Virgin."

St. Ninian of Cloncurry, pray for us!

Vienna 1683

Today, the feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary, marks the day, a mere three and a quarter centuries ago, when Christendom breathed a collective sigh of relief at the victory of the Holy League before the gates of Vienna. With this victory, the Holy League had finally halted the second Islamic pincer to enslave Europe.



The first pincer had swept across the whole of Christian North Africa in little more than a generation, from about 632. From North Africa, they advanced steadily into Europe through Iberia. The victory of Charles Martel at Poitiers in 732 checked the Arab advance but it was not until 1492 that Arab forces were finally expelled under the Catholic Monarchs of the Spains.

The second line of advance was contemporary with the first. It swept away the Christian powers of the Near East as it had swept away Christian North Africa and swept them away, never, it seems, to return. For some time, the Crusades checked the relentless tide. However, in 1453, while the Arabs still held parts of Iberia, the Ottoman Turks, already masters of Asia Minor, had captured Constantinople, the capital of the Christian East. Throughout the Mediterranean, nowhere was entirely safe from raids by one Islamic group or another.

With the fall of Constantinople, the Ottomans advanced seadily into the heart of Europe from the East, just as the Arabs had done from the South centuries earlier. Would they succeed now where their co-religionists had failed before? Christian cities fell like dominoes: Belgrade in 1521; Rhodes in 1522; and Buda(pest) in 1526 for the first time. Vienna was beseiged by the Turks in 1526. The Turk would be defeated again at Malta in 1565 and Lepanto in 1571 but Vienna remained a front-line City for more than a century. This is the scene as the Battle for Vienna commences in 1683. In truth, it was a battle for the future of Europe and the survival of Christendom.

The city was invested on 14th July, 1683. Graf von Starhemberg, the Governor of the city, refused to capitulate, which was a wise move, given the wholesale slaughter of the citzens of Perchtoldsdorf when they had surrendered a few days earlier.



Imperial forces under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, were successfully harrying the forward guard of the beseiging Turks when Jan III Sobieski, elective King of Poland, responded to the appeals from Pope and Emperor to lend his aid to the beleagured Christian forces in Austria. He set out for Vienna in August, his forces marching behind the banner of the Blessed Virgin. Passing by the Sanctuary of Our Lady in Czestochowa, they implored Our Lady's help and blessing. Writing to the bishops of Poland, Pope Pius XII recalled the supplications of Sobieski to Mary at the Sanctuary:

"To the same Heavenly Queen, on Clear Mountain, the illustrious John Sobieski, whose eminent valour freed Christianity from the attacks of its old enemies, confided himself." [Cum iam lustri abeat, 1951]

The Polish army crossed the Danube on 6th September. The massed forces of the Holy League, under the flag of the Crown of Our Lady, identical to that used today for the European Union, assembled on the Kahlenberg Heights above Vienna. A key figure at this point was Friar Mark d'Aviano, confessor to Emperor Leopold I. He preached passionately to the men of the Holy League in his capacity as Papal Legate, ensuring that the Holy League remained united and persevered to victory. After Mass early on the morning of 12th September, 1683, the forces of the Holy League swept down upon the foe. In the aftermath of the victory, the Holy League swept the Turks before them out of Hungary, regaining Buda(pest) in 1686.

In 1513, Pope Julius II had granted a local indult to celebrate the feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary to the diocese of Cuenta in Spain. It was assigned a proper Office. With the reform of the Breviary undertaken by Pope St. Pius V, the feast was abolished, only to be reinstituted by his successor, Pope Sixtus V. The feast spread to the Archdiocese of Toledo by 1622 and, eventually, to all of Spain and to the Kingdom of Naples.

In thanksgiving for the victory, Blessed Innocent XI extended the feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary to the Universal Church, it then being celebrated upon the Sunday after the 8th of September, the feast of Our Lady's Nativity. Pope St. Pius X, by a decree of 8th July, 1908, fixed the feast upon the day of the victory itself.

Blessed be the Most Holy Name of Mary!

The Hallowing of Time

The Catholic Church, both in its wisdom and in its understanding of humanity, has many means of sanctifying time. Today, set between Candlemas, which brought Christmastide to a close, and Septuagesima, which opens the long period of preparation for Easter, is an excellent moment to consider the lesser cycles that sanctify time which are blessed by the Church.

Liturgically, we have Ember Days, seasonal periods of prayer and fasting, or Rogations, the twice-yearly occasions for rogating or imploring the mercy and goodness of God.

We also have the dedication of days and months to particular devotions. One traditional method, for example, dedicates Monday to the Holy Ghost, Tuesday to the Holy Angels, Wednesday to St. Joseph, Thursday to the Blessed Sacrament, Friday to the Sacred Passion, Saturday to Our Lady and Sunday to the Most Holy Trinity. The cycle of Votive Masses in the Missal varies from this formula slightly, dedicating Monday to the Most Holy Trinity and including the Holy Ghost on Thursday, while including the Holy Apostles in the dedication of Wednesday.

Of the days dedicated, the most familiar and the most commonly practised, even in our own day, is the dedication of Saturday to Our Lady. The visions of Simon Stock and the children of Fatima would seem to be confirmation from Heaven of this venerable tradition. However, the origin of the dedication of Saturday seems to originate in the Court of Charles the Great (742-814) with the monk Alcuin of York, who composed two Masses in honour of Our Lady for Saturdays. By the 11th Century, the devotion was well established in the Universal Church when St. Peter Damien famously promoted the devotion and Pope Urban II prescribed prayers to Our Lady on Saturdays for the success of the first Crusade.

The dedication of months is also very traditional and frequently enriched with Indulgences. One traditional method devotes January to the Holy Name of Jesus, March to St. Joseph, May to Our Lady, June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, July to His Precious Blood, September to the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, October to the Holy Rosary, November to the Holy Souls, and December to the Holy Infancy. Most of these are derived from liturgical feasts ocurring during the month.

The tradition of special devotions to Our Lady during the month of May can certainly be traced to the High Middle Ages, the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X of Castille being frequently cited. The dedication of the entire month to Our Lady may have taken until the 17th Century to be widespread. However, to Pope Clement VIII we owe the custom of the Crowning of Images of Our Lady, now strongly associated with May.

The origin of the dedication of June to the Sacred Heart is less clouded in the mists of history. We owe it to Angéle de Saint Croix, a Parisienne schoolgirl of the 1830s, who was inspired to propose it to the Superioress, not because the feast of the Sacred Heart falls in June, since it is a movable feast dependent upon the timing of Easter, but because Angéle felt that, if Our Lady had a whole month of May, the Sacred Heart should have a whole month of June.

The Superioress recommended her to make the suggestion to the Archbishop when he visited the school the following week. This she did and the Archbishop responded immediately, dedicating the month of June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus throughout the Archdiocese for the joint intentions of the conversion of sinners and the return of France to the practice of the faith. The devotion soon spread and became universal throughout the Church.

In such ways, the Church recommends to the Faithful to dedicate each moment of time to God and to His Angels and Saints, to sanctify time and, by doing so, to sanctify ourselves.