“About forty years later, the Purgatory of St. Patrick was visited by another eminent prelate of our Irish Church, Dr. Thomas De Burgo, who, in his _Hibernia Dominicana_, has recorded his impressions on visiting that far-famed sanctuary. ‘So great’, he says, ‘are the penitential deeds performed there, that they exceed, in my opinion, those of any other pilgrimage in the universe’;(57) and he adds: ‘Non quae audivi, sed quae vidi refero; mihi enim feliciter contigit, insulam ipsam sanctissimi Patritii habitatione et miraculis consecratam, praeclarumque austeritatis primorum ecclesiae saeculorum praebentem exemplar, invisere anno 1748’. “As regards the relations of the Holy See with this place of devotion, we learn from the Bollandists, that, in 1497, the cave was destroyed by order from Rome, in consequence of its being represented to the Pope as _an occasion of shameful avarice_, by a monk from Holland, who had visited it, attracted by its wide-spread fame, and yet saw there none of the wonderful visions which he had heard so often described.(58) The Ulster Annals also commemorate this destruction, but state that it was occasioned by its not being the true cave hallowed by St. Patrick.(59) The proper lessons for the feast of the Purgatory of St. Patrick were inserted in the Roman Breviary, printed at Venice in 1522, but were expunged by order of the Holy Father, in the next edition, by the same printer, in 1524. The nature of the devotion was subsequently explained to the Holy See; and we are informed by Messingham, that indulgences were attached to its penitential exercises before the close of the sixteenth century.(60) When Dr. M’Mahon wrote his Relatio, the term of the indulgences granted by pope Clement X. had just expired. A little later, the cardinal archbishop of Benevento, who was subsequently raised to the papal chair as Benedict XIII., made the Purgatory of St. Patrick the theme of one of his homilies to his flock; and since that time this devotion has been ever cherished and encouraged by the sovereign pontiffs.