Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A FIGHTING BISHOP. THE CONFEDERATION OF KILKENNY. However modern notions of propriety may be shocked at the idea of a Catholic prelate exchanging the crozier for the sword, it cannot be denied that in the early Christian ages many pious and illustrious ecclesiastics took up arms to defend the Church and to crush its infidel and idolatrous enemies. Bishop McMAHON, of whose career we abridge the following sketch from a recent work by the Rev. C. P. Meehan, inherited the fiery zeal of those holy prelates, and fought for a cause as sacred as that which called Italy to arms against the Goths, or poured upon the plains and hills of Palestine the flower of European chivalry. We have preferred to give as near as possibleFather Meehan’s own words, as from his long study of the subjects treated in his valuable little book, and his intense, though judicious patriotism, he is more fitted than any man living, to describe the plans and actions of such a man as the valiant Bishop of Clogher, and to draw correct deductions therefrom. The Franciscan Monasteries and the Irish Hierarchy of the nth century. By the Rev. C. P. Meehan. Dublin, 1869. Heber, or Emeric, son of Turlough Mac- Mahon and Eva O'Neill, was born in Mon- aghan, in 1600. Heber’s father had fought on the side of the northern chieftains, from the beginning of the war which the latter waged against Queen Elizabeth; and on every field, from Clontibret to the great victory of the Blackwater, he acted the part of a brave soldier, proving himself on all occasions a worthy representative of an ancient race, always renowned for valorous achievements. The child Heber was only seven years old when his kinsman, James Colla MacMahon, was obliged to join the Earls in their flight from Lough Swilly; and, in the course of a few years …