'This venerable old man' : Father Nicholas Young

 

 I am going to look at the accounts of a trio of Irish martyrs who feature in Bishop Rothe's 1619 catalogue De Processu Martyriali but whose deaths occurred on dates he was unable to record. Two and a half centuries later Myles O'Reilly featured their cases in his compilation Memorials of those who Suffered for the Catholic Faith in Ireland in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries. The first of the three is an elderly priest, Father Nicholas Young, who died in prison in Dublin:

A priest from the village of Newton, near Trim, a venerable old man for hatred of his religion was cast a prisoner into the Tower of Dublin, where he ended his days, worn out with suffering and misery, about the year_

M. O'Reilly, Memorials of those who Suffered for the Catholic Faith in Ireland in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries, (New York 1869),  pp. 222-223.

The other major nineteenth-century work on the Irish Martyrs, Our Martyrs, by Irish Jesuit Denis Murphy also features Father Young's case. He too translates the same account from Bishop Rothe but for reasons which are not immediately obvious assigns the year 1600 as the date of the priest's death:

1600. NICHOLAS YOUNG

(From Rothe's Analecta, p. 387). 

He was a priest from the village of Newton, near Trim. This venerable old man, through hatred of his calling, was thrown into the prison of Dublin Castle, where, worn out with suffering and misery, he ended his life.

 

See also Molanus. 

Rev. Denis Murphy, S.J. , Our Martyrs,  (Dublin, 1896), p. 209.

The reference to Molanus is to another seventeenth-century martyrologist, John Molanus (Mullen) who published a work known as the Idea Togatae Constantiae in 1629. I can only assume that Father Murphy derived the date from this source.

Father Young's cause was among those submitted to Rome and is number 21 on the Official List of Irish Martyrs published in 1918.

Content Copyright © De Processu Martyriali 2020. All rights reserved