Sketches of greedy monks

Sketches of greedy monks

Lough Derg--Station Island--Middle Ages--Protestant satire

Caesar Otway imagines the avaricious monks of Station Island in the Middle Ages

Caesar Otway, 1780-1842

Otway, Caesar, Sketches in Ireland: Descriptive of Interesting, and Hitherto Unnoticed Districts, in the North and South, 175-77

W. Curry, jun. and co.; [etc., etc.], Dublin; First published, in part, in the Christian examiner. cf. Pref. A series of letters signed "C. O.", the first four entitled "Sketches in Donegal", the last five "Sketches in the south of Ireland."

1827

Digitised by Google, sponsored by New York Public Library, archived on Hathi Trust digital library

Public domain

1 p., ℓ., iv, vi, 411 p. 19 cm.

English

Description and travel

Text

DD_0044

54.608689,-7.870387

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433066646450

“…[A]s we rowed away from the island, I busied my mind with supposing the various characters of priests and friars that have sat in that window, observing the freights of human folly that were discharged from this little boat before their eyes. I fancied one, a man, who had from his infancy to manhood, year after year, taken up a new trammel of submissiveness to authority under the bearing-down system of Popery, until his intellect was enveloped amidst the cords that tied it up ; and there he sat, deluded and deluding— the slave of a talisman, which, if he had the courage to strike with one vigorous thought, would have shivered into atoms. Another I fancied as one who gloated on the lucre of the craft, and who sat in his window, counting the coming pilgrims—his avaricious heart beating quick with delight, as he measured the boatfuls of people coming over to add to the store of money he was collecting, and which was to him as a God;—and then I conceived another ecclesiastic sitting sadly in that casement ; every deep line in his countenance denoting the inward struggles and discontent that consumed him—sitting there as the abettor of a fraud that his soul revolted at—acting there a part in a drama that at one time forced him unfeignedly to laugh, and at another time to weep; and yet still without courage to break through the guards that custom, associations, and the frown of others drew around him—with the deep compunctions of the guilty—without the courage of a martyr—the Breviary he was forced to read—his abomination—the Bible, which some secret force impelled him to examine, his accuser, and at the same time convincer—thus a child of light walking in darkness, who would not mourn over, yes, and find excuses too for such a man, when in the gaudy vestments that covered his abased body and his suffering soul, he administered those rites he knew were idolatrous ; and took a part in those absurd and monstrous superstitions which he felt were as contrary to the simplicity of the Gospel, and the truth as it is in Jesus, as darkness is to the risen light.”

Monograph