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When the two last
remaining great Gaelic Chieftains, O'Neill and O'Donnell, fled Ireland in 1607,
an event known in Irish history as The Flight of The Earls, they took with them
their Ollavs (scholars and genealogists).
Many Irish manuscripts were spirited out of the country mainly to Spain and France
at that time.
The defeated
Irish nobility wandered the Continent making what alliances they
could seeking to establish Irish schools so that Irish priests and Irish scholars
could be
smuggled back into occupied Ireland to keep the Gaelic dream alive.
The Ollavs the Chieftains brought with them were an unknown element in
Europe at that time. But they were a distant echo of the days when
European princes, like Charlemagne, had such learned men around them.
The Protestant Reformation was bringing the period before their own
ascendancy into great disrepute. To them everything that
went before, even Saint Francis, was tainted with greed and corruption.
Church leaders, especially the Pope, under threat from the work of Luther
and Calvin, recognized the value of these Irish Ollavs. They immediately
put them to work. They wished to redeem the reputation of the
Middle Ages. The way to do it was to reestablish the reputation of the
great Saints like Saint Francis.
We will never know the full impact these scholarly Irishmen had on Europe
regaining something of its old equilibrium following the ravishes of the
Reformation.
Míchéal Ó Cléirigh
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One such scholar was Míchéal Ó Cléirigh who having joined the Franciscans in his
native Donegal found
himself in the new Franciscan Irish College at Louvain. He was the man who wrote
the Annals of the Four Masters, without which we would have lost much of our
Irish identity. I will try and trace how Ó Cléirigh's work became possible.
Luke Wadding
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I will start the story with an extraordinary man called Luke Wadding, an
historian and theologian, born at Waterford, Ireland, 16 October, 1588 and died
November 18th, 1657 at the
Irish Franciscan College of St. Isidore in Rome (which he founded in
1625).
Wadding had read logic and physics in Ireland under the Jesuits and entered the Irish seminary at Lisbon where he was ordained a priest in 1613. He
mastered the Portuguese and Castilian languages and wrote extensively in those
languages for the
common people. He mastered Hebrew at Salamanca where he achieved the
chair of theology in the College of St. Francis and taught there until
1818. (Salamanca had a student body of 6,778 in 1584, surely one of the great
universities of the ages.)
In 1618 he was chosen by Philip III as theologian in a legation which Philip was then sending to Rome to promote the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception. He reached Rome on December 17th 1618 and never left it until his
death in 1657.
He became the champion of many causes for the See of Rome and
earned extraordinary influence in the ruling body of the Church. A
scholar in so many languages, ancient and modern, he scoured the libraries of
Europe in support of whatever brief the Vatican gave him. He was their lawyer
extraordinaire for most of his life and one of their most indispensable
intellectual assets.
When he arrived in Rome in 1618 he found it a cold place for the Irish
due to the new rapprochement between Catholic Europe and Protestant England.
The
Spanish expeditionary force had not fired one shot in support of the Irish
at Kinsale. Their Kinsale expedition was really part of the secret peace
negotiations taking place at the time. The Spanish hoped to get more
favorable terms by demonstrating that Britain's western flank, Ireland,
was vulnerable from the sea.
Wadding well
understood the English suppression of Irish culture at home and all over the Continent
in consolidating their conquest of Ireland and securing their western
flank.
He was determined
to save what he could of the great work done by Irish scholars in Ireland and in Europe. By the time he died in 1657 the perception of Ireland in
the corridors of power in Europe was very different than in 1618.
Time and again
he was offered plum jobs such as Cardinal and it is rumored, even Pope, but the
Waterford man refused them all saying he could best serve his beloved country behind the
scenes. To contemporary Irishmen in Europe it was like having a permanent
insider in today's White House.
The Irish
Colleges in Rome
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He founded the Irish Franciscan College of St. Isidore in Rome, where he assembled 5,000 selected works and a priceless
collection of manuscripts bound in 800 volumes. Then he persuaded the wealthy Cardinal Ludovisi, protector of Ireland, to immortalize himself by endowing a similar
institution for the Irish secular clergy. The college opened on January 1st,
1628 and was called, you guessed it, the Ludovisian College for Irish secular
priests.
Wadding's support of O'Neill in Ireland
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The career of this eminent Churchman in less religious matters would make a
modern IRA gunrunner jealous. He made sure that each Papal Legate to Ireland was
furnished with plentiful supplies of arms, ammunition and particularly money. He
was tireless in enlisting the sympathies of the Catholic powers of Europe which resulted in Irish
officers, trained in the armies of France and the Netherlands, being sent to
Ireland which probably played no small part in O'Neill's victory at Benburb on
June 5th, 1646 after which a "Te Deum" was sung in the Basilica of St. Mary
Major in Rome. The British standards taken in the battle were hung as
trophies in the cupola of St. Peter's.
I wonder how many historians fully understand the part
played by dedicated expatriate Irishmen like Luke Wadding? It was the memory of the Battle
of Benburb and the part played by the Vatican that brought the Cromwellians down
so hard on Ireland and sowed the seeds of such bitter hatred of Rome among
the Ulster Planters to this day. And it was the friendship of the Vatican
during such trying times against the British that bound the Irish people
so tightly to their powerful friends in Rome for centuries.
The Irish
College at Louvain
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The other great university where the Irish found refuge was Louvain, the Athens
of Flanders. It was a refuge for more than the Irish during the age of religious
persecution. Thomas More found safety there for a time. During the long
religious wars the student body were often called upon to stoutly defend their University with
rapiers.
Louvain got its Irish College, the Franciscan College of St.
Anthony of Padua (one of Ireland's most popular saints), due to the influence of another
important Irishman called Hugh MacCaghwell. The Irish College at Louvain proved to be of immense importance
in the
preservation of whatever of the old Gaelic order has managed to survive through
the efforts of alumni like Míchéal Ó Cléirigh and others.
Hugh MacCaghwell
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Hugh MacCaghwell was born in Saul, Co. Down in 1571. His family were Ollavs to the O'Neills. Hugh O'Neill had sent him as his special messenger to Salamanca, where
the Court of Spain then resided, to seek aid against the English.
Being an Ollav and already
a scholar and a linguist, he found the University of Salamanca irresistible. He
took a doctorate in divinity there and joined the Franciscan order. Now both a
churchman and an accredited diplomat he persuaded the Spanish Court to establish
the Irish Franciscan College of St. Anthony at Louvain.
Having taught with great distinction at the University of Salamanca he was the natural
choice to serve as the first superior at Louvain. He also lectured there and taught John Colgan,
Patrick Fleming and Hugh Ward, all important to our story about Irish
manuscripts.
But
Hugh MacCaghwell was too good to waste at Louvain, so he was summoned to Rome where he assisted Luke Wadding on many papal
commissions and helped him found St. Isidore (in a suppressed Spanish convent of
all things).
On
March 17th, 1626, Hugh was nominated Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all
Ireland. He was consecrated on June 7th, in the church of St. Isidore, but he never made it out of Rome; he died
there September 22nd, 1626. He had
greatly weakened his health by traveling everywhere on foot and doing prodigious
penances. He was a true Franciscan and the Irish College in Louvain is his
legacy.
Hugh Ward
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About this time a
very important meeting took place at the Irish College in Paris between two
great Irish scholars, Hugh Ward and Patrick Fleming.
Ward was then Rector of the
Irish College at Louvain and Fleming was traveling Europe as an eminent
archivist doing research on behalf of the Vatican. Ward was writing a history of
early Christianity in Ireland and he asked for Fleming's expert assistance which
he got. Hugh Ward was born in Donegal about 1590. His family were the Tirconnell (Donegal)
version of the ancient Irish family named Mac-an-bhaird. This particular
branch of the Ward family were the Ollavs or historians to the O'Donnells.
Already a scholar Hugh
went to Salamanca to join his Chieftain O'Donnell where he met Luke Wadding and joined the Franciscans
in 1616. The Franciscans sent him to lecture on philosophy in Paris; they later
appointed him professor of Divinity at St. Anthony's College, Louvain. In 1626 he was elected rector of the college. Luke Wadding considered him a
great intellectual with "profound knowledge of the Irish language and
antiquities".
But Ward was still a Mac-an-bhaird, hereditary Ollav to the O'Donnells. Starting
with Irish hagiography (in order to get financed by his Franciscan superiors)
he managed to include the history and genealogies of the great Irish noble
families.
Patrick Fleming
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Patrick Fleming was born at Lagan, Couny Louth, Ireland, April 17th, 1599. He
had gone to Flanders and studied at the Irish College at
Louvain. In 1622 he had gone to Rome with Hugh MacCaghwell, where he completed
his studies at the College of St. Isidore and was ordained a priest. Probably
due to Ward's influence after their chance meeting in Paris, he was sent back to Louvain to lecture on philosophy.
After only a few short years at Louvain helping Ward the Franciscans sent him as
the first superior of a newly opened college in Prague. In 1631 with The Thirty
Years War raging he was killed by a Calvinist peasant mob in what is now the
Czech
Republic.
Before he left Louvain for Prague however, he had provided Ward with a considerable
collection of Irish manuscripts and had written a "Life
of St. Columba". He also wrote a life of his friend Hugh MacCaghwell.
John Colgan
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Unfortunately
Father Ward died in 1635. He is buried in the church of the Irish College in Louvain.
During his short time at Louvain he had amassed a huge collection of Irish manuscripts from many sources
particularly Ireland.
He had sent the young Franciscans brother, Míchéal Ó Cléirigh to Ireland in 1626 to
collect as many manuscripts as he could regarding the lives of the Irish saints.
It fell to
John Colgan to complete Ward's work. Colgan was born in County Donegal about the
beginning of the seventeenth century and died in 1657. He joined the Franciscans
in Ireland and inevitably ended up in Louvain where he became a professor of
theology. But his heart was in Irish studies.
Colgan was a master of the Irish
language and set about reading and studying Ward's vast collection of Irish
antiquities. Before his death in 1657 he published a series of huge tomes on
Irish hagiology.
Just before his death he published a life of Duns Scotus,
dedicated to proving that this great Franciscan doctor of the Church was born in
Ireland, and not in Scotland. This has been the subject of great dispute ever
since.
His greatest work was "Trias Thaumaturga", the lives of Patrick,
Bridget and Colmcille and
the "Acta sanctorum Hiberniae", published in six volumes the last in 1645
on Irish ecclesiastical history upon which Míchéal Ó Cléirigh not only provided
much of the source material from Ireland but labored for several years on its
compilation at Louvain.
Mícheál Ó Cléirigh
writes the Annals of the Four Masters
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Mícheál Ó Cléirigh
was
in Ireland for 11 years from 1626–37.
It was Colgan, in a preface to "Acta sanctorum Hiberniae", who first called Ó Cléirigh's freelance genealogy work "The Annals of the Four
Masters" (Annála Ríoghdhachta Éireann).
The other three Masters were his
assistants Fear Feasa O'Maolchonaire (Farfassa O'Mulconry), Cuchoigríche Ó
Cléirigh (Peregrine O'Clery) and Cuchoigríche Ó Duibhgheannáin (Peregrine) O'Duignan.
Maurice O'Mulconry and Conary
O'Clery also worked on it.
Somehow Mícheál had persuaded Fergal O'Gara, Lord of
Moy Gara and Coolavin, near Ballaghadereen, who was in possession of a
particularly valuable collection of ancient manuscripts, to finance him while he
copied all the vellum books he could lay his hands on around Ireland and make
them into one great book. Such an undertaking cost money and required the
patronage of a powerful man. The vellum alone would have required 150 sheep.
He wrote "I thought that I could get the assistance of
the chroniclers for whom I had most esteem, in writing a book of annals in which
these matters might be put on record, for that should the writing of them be
neglected at present, they would not again be found to be put on record even to
the end of the world. All the best and most copious books of annals that I could
find throughout all Ireland were collected by me--though it was difficult for me
to collect them--into one place to write this book."
With his work done on the lives of the saints and lay patronage secured he
readily obtained the permission of his Louvain superior Hugh Ward to hole up in a secluded convent
in Donegal from the
22nd of January, 1632, to the 10th of August, 1636 to complete this priceless
historical work. His fears were well founded. Hardly any of the ancient manuscripts he collected and copied survived the Cromwellian and Williamite wars.
The
Ó Cléirigh Annals Survive
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The "Annals", as they are affectionately known in Ireland, were in archaic Gaelic and can only be understood by linguistic
scholars today. It appears that O'Clery made at least two copies, one of which
he presented to his patron Ferghal Ó Gadhra and the other forwarded to Louvain.
Fortunately the parts of each that have survived tend to complement each other.
With the outbreak of the French Revolution in the late 18th century the
collection of Irish manuscripts at Louvain was moved to St Isidore's College,
Rome in 1792 and there it remained until it was again removed to the Franciscan
Friary at Merchants' Quay Dublin in 1872 out of fear of an unfriendly Italian
government who were seizing Church assets. A new Franciscan Library was
established at Dún Mhuire, in Killiney near Dublin in 1946 and all Irish
manuscripts in Franciscan hands stored there. In November 2000 they were housed
under the curatorship of University College Dublin where they are now available
to scholars.
The Irish College
in Salamanca closed in 1951. 50,000 documents accumulated since its founding in
1592 were transferred to Maynooth College Ireland. This treasure includes some
from other Irish Colleges in Spain and Portugal: Lisbon (1590-1834), Valladolid
(1592-), Santiago de Compostela (1605-1769), Seville (1612-1767), Madrid (1629-), Alcalá de Henares (1649-1785).
Up until recently and the publishing of some very distinguished works by Prof. Nollaig Ó
Muraíle from Knock County Mayo, we have had to rely on a single translation of
the "Annals", made by
John O'Donovan in 1845 with the aid of a great Irish Scholar, his
brother-in-law, Eugene O'Curry. Nollaig Ó Muraíle's work will probably be at
least as
significant as the work of Eugene O'Curry and that is saying something.
Eugene O'Curry
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Eugene O'Curry (1796-1862) got his inspiration and love of Irish
antiquity from his father, an ordinary farmer with a powerful intellect, and
from his
scholarly teacher Peter O'Connell (1746-1826), who was a frequent guest in
his father’s house at Doonaha, County Clare.
O'Curry later wrote: 'It was not until
my father's death that I fully awoke to the passion of gathering those old
fragments of our history. I knew that he was a link between our day and a time
when everything was broken, scattered, and hidden; and when I called to mind the
knowledge he possessed of every old ruin, every old manuscript, every old legend
and tradition in Thomond, I was suddenly
filled with consternation to think that all was gone forever, and no record made
of it'.
O'Curry's
teacher, Peter O'Connell
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O'Curry's teacher
Peter O'Connell had spent his life traveling throughout Ireland, Wales,
the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides in search of the meaning and use of
Gaelic words. It is interesting that he was a friend of Charles O'Connor ("the Venerable") of Belanagare,
Co. Roscommon (1710-1791) with whom Samual Johnson corresponded regarding Irish
literature. The O'Connor Don family of Ballaghadereen, Co. Roscommon, now called MacDermotts,
are descendents of the O'Gara who financed the "Annals", are current heirs to the
Gaelic title "Prince of Coolavin" and this Charles O'Connor's direct descendents.
Peter O'Connell completed a comprehensive Irish dictionary in 1819 but
failed to get it published. His kinsman the so-called "Great Liberator", Daniel
O'Connell, scoffed at the waste of such a talent on a dead language. He
frequently called the Irish language "the badge of slavery" when it really was
the other way around, English being the real badge of slavery. He also
frequently referred to the famine Queen Victoria, as "the darling little Queen".
I wonder what Luke Wadding would have thought of him.
Peter O'Connell's dictionary was pawned
in Tralee and and later sold to James Hardiman, who hired a young man called
John O’Donovan to make a copy so he could sell the original to the British
Museum, which he did. Eugene O’Curry said it was the best Irish-English dictionary
ever produced.
O'Curry's great Legacy
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Maybe because of this O'Curry found a way in 1849, while working for the Ordnance
Survey office, to compile
in his own hand a catalogue of Irish manuscripts in the British Museum where he made
some important "discoveries".
He finally secured an appointment
as Professor of Irish
History and Archaeology in the newly established Catholic University of
Ireland in 1854. With a secure income for the first time in his life he went to work with a vengeance.
He describing his work as an
"attempt to analyze the contents of the whole body of manuscripts in the Gaedhelic language, the investigation of which must form an
indispensable preliminary to the accurate study of the History of the country".
Thomas D'Arcy McGee described him: "There, as we often saw him in the flesh ... behind that desk,
equipped with ink-stands, acids, and microscope, and covered with half-legible
vellum folios, rose cheerfully and buoyantly to instruct the ignorant, to
correct the prejudiced, or to bear with the petulant visitor, the first of
living Celtic scholars and palaeographers". His lectures and writings in
printed form remain to this day an "indispensable preliminary to the accurate
study of the History of the country".
He was a tireless worker who carefully transcribed everything he laid his hands
on including the Book of Lecan, an important book of Irish genealogies. He was
the first scholar since its author Duald MacFirbis (the last Ollav of the
Chieftain's, murdered by the Cromwellians in 1670) to read and understand it in
the old Gaelic.
He transcribed and translated the Brehon Law tracts in thirteen
volumes for which he got into severe arguments with the government
officials of the day who feared he was fostering the dangerous seeds of Irish
nationalism once again at a time when the British thought they had wiped out any consciousness of nationhood among the Irish.
He died suddenly in
Dublin in 1862 but his legacy was secure.
© Pat Flannery 2004
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