Born:1528, Limerick, County Limerick
Entered: c 1550, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Died: 28 June 1578, County Clare

Left Society of Jesus: 1578??

◆ Rev. Edmund Hogan SJ : “Distinguished Irishmen of the Sixteenth Century” - London : Burns and Oates, Limited, New York, Cincinnati : Chicago, Benzinger Brothers, 1894 : Quarterly Series : Volume Ninety

Father David Woulfe

It is universally acknowledged that “in the sixth and seventh centuries Ireland reached a high degree of learning and culture which were diffused by her innumerable missionaries throughout all Europe”. (1) But only those who are acquainted with the byways of Irish history are aware that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Ireland produced very many remarkable men of world-wide reputation. Perhaps, few Irishmen of our times know even the name of Father Richard Fleming, S.J., who was Chancellor of the University of Pont à-Mousson, and for his extraordinary ability was selected by the Society to replace the celebrated Maldonatus, as professor of theology in the College of Clermont at Paris. Fewer still have heard of the four Waddings of Waterford, all men of distinction of the same period, of the same family and of the same Order, one of whom, Peter, was Chancellor of two German Universities at one and the same time. How many, save the erudite Bishop Reeves and Cardinal Moran, know anything of Stephen White, S.J., so much praised by Ussher and many other competent judges, and styled “Polyhistor”, on account of the vastness of his erudition? It is time to put before our readers, on both sides of the Atlantic, sketches of these and other long forgotten worthies, who by their talent, labours, and virtues shed lustre on the land of their birth. I propose first of all to write of the members of the Society of Jesus; afterwards I shall give biographies of laymen, learned bishops, priests, and members of religious orders, of one of which the Bollandist De Buck significantly says: “The Order of St. Francis has produced a great number of savants and historians ; but has it produced historians more erudite than Wadding, Ward, Fleming, Colgan, and O'Sherrin, all of them Irish Franciscans?” (2)

One of the kindly influences under which Irish intellect and talent were allowed to develope them selves in the sixteenth century was the Apostolic charity of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In the year 1555 he wrote to Cardinal Pole: “There is in the German College one Englishman of good natural ability, and in our Roman College one Irishman of great promise. If your Eminence should think proper to send from those islands some talented youths to either of these Colleges, I entertain a hope that they could soon return home well equipped with learning and virtue, and with a supreme veneration for the Holy See. We have thought it our duty to make this proposal under the impulse of a great desire to be of service to the souls of those kingdoms-a desire which the Divine and Sovereign Charity has communicated to our heart”. On the feast of St. Patrick, 1604, St. Ignatius' successor, Father General Aquaviva, expressed his wish, that “by all means Irishmen should be admitted into the Society, as they seem formed for our Institute by their humility, obedience, charity, and learning, in all which, according to the testimonies that come from all quarters, the Irish very much excel”. Finally, in the year 1652, all the Fathers of the tenth General Congregation assembled at Rome unanimously decreed on the feast of St. Patrick, that every Province of the Society should undertake to have always one Irish Jesuit in training at its own expense for the distinguished Mission of Ireland. (3)

It is remarkable that the year, in which this kindlier influence radiated from the heart of St. Ignatius, was that in which war was first waged against the education of Irishmen. Father FitzSimon, S.J., in his Preface to his Treatise on the Mass, writes in the year 1611: “From about the year 1555, as is well known, these late heresies by force, never by voluntary allowance, oppressed religion in our country, banished teachers, extinguished learning, exiled to foreign countries all instruction, and forced our youth either at home to be ignorant, or abroad in poverty rather to glean ears of learning than with leisure to reap any abundance thereof. Yet such as travelled to foreign countries, notwithstanding all difficulties often attained to singular perfection and reputation of learning in sundry sciences, to principal titles of universities, to high prelacies, of whom some are yet living, some departed in peace. Seventeen years ago, Christopher Cusacke, a man of honourable descent and alliance with the noblest ranks, of great virtue, zeal, and singular sincerity, yet inexperienced in foreign countries, meanly languaged, and meanly furnished for a building to reach this height, began to assemble and maintain our young students in this place of Douay, wherein at this instant I am resident. It cannot be imagined how much since that time the obscurity of our nation's renown hath been diminished, and the glory thereof increased; how much the name of Ireland has become venerable, nay, admirable for peculiar towardness to learning, forwardness to virtue, modesty of conversation, facility to be governed, consent among themselves, and prompt ness to all that might be exacted, yea, or in reason expected, of any of most complete and conform able education or condition. Let none think that any partial affection has had place in this attestation, considering such to be the public and private letters patent and testimonies of princes, prelates, universities, cities and colleges, extant to all men's view ; so that little may rather seem affirmed than their desert duly declared. I omit to speak of other Irish seminaries in Spain of no less commendation, increase and account”. In another book Father FitzSimon thus addresses his Father General, Aquaviva : “I proclaim that I am greatly indebted to you for the immense services rendered to myself and to my country. To us you have been not only a Father General, as you are to all the members of our Society, but you have wished to be our Father Assistant by the special care you have taken of us. With what solicitude have you not rescued us from the greatest difficulties! What shelter and comfort did you not afford us when we were abandoned on every side! With what an open heart you have admitted our candidates; at what expense have you not nursed our sick and infirm, with what wholesome advice you have cheered us while we were fighting the good fight! Under your auspices, in spite of a thousand obstacles, we possess in Spain alone three seminaries, from which the waters of the faith in cessantly flow over to our kingdom and the neigh bouring islands”. (4)

I shall now proceed to lay before the reader some sketches of Irish Jesuits, who distinguished themselves in the first century of the Society of Jesus.

David Woulfe was received into the Society by its holy founder some time between the years 1541 änd 1551. He was born in Limerick, about the year 1520, in which city men of his name held the office of mayor in the sixteenth century, and from which, in 1594, “a hundred tall men went to ye North under the leadinge of David Woulfe, captaine”, to fight for Elizabeth against the formidable O'Neills. Under the leading of David Woulfe, S.J., Ireland successfully resisted the inroads of the heresy of which Elizabeth was the head. He was, says Cardinal Moran, “one of the most remarkable men who, during the first years of Elizabeth's, reign, laboured in our Irish Church to gather together the scattered stones of the sanctuary”. (5) He spent seven years in Rome, where he became a professed Father. What work he was engaged in there I have not been able to ascertain; but before the year 1560 he had been long and much employed in “evangelical expeditions”. In 1557 he was Rector of the College of Modena; in 1559 he was sent to the Valtelline to found a college there, and to perform other duties of the ministry. In 1560, Cardinal Morone, founder of the College of Modena, and Protector of Ireland, seeing that Elizabeth had declared herself in favour of the new heresy, thought it necessary that a pious and prudent man should be sent to Ireland to examine into the state of religion, to confirm laymen and ecclesiastics in the practice of piety and in obedience to the Holy See, and to preserve the Irish people in the profession of the true faith of their fathers. Father Woulfe was considered most fit for such a difficult task; he had all the necessary qualities, he knew his country and countrymen well, and had long practice and much experience in evangelical expeditions.(6) He had already settled the affairs confided to him in the Valtelline, and with Father Possevino was engaged in useful labours at Fossano, when he was called to Rome. The Pope wished to consecrate him a bishop, and send him home with the full powers of an Apostolic Nuncio. But the General, Father Laynez, requested that as a member of the Society he should not be made a bishop, and he suggested that he could thus work more freely, and would give less umbrage to the enemies of the Catholic faith. The Pope consented, but gave him plenary powers, commissioned him to examine what sees were vacant, and to recommend to His Holiness proper persons to fill them. His Superiors charged him to visit the chief Catholics of the kingdom, and specially the four principal Princes, or Lords; to visit all the bishops and the parish priests; and even to risk his life, if necessary, in the discharge of his duties for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. He left Rome on the 11th of August, 1560, with another Irish Jesuit named Edmund.. At Nantes he was taken for a Lutheran, and imprisoned and otherwise harassed for four days; at St. Malo, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his companion, he put his luggage on board a vessel, and journeyed on foot to Bordeaux, and thus his life was spared for the good of his country, as the ship with its crew and cargo was lost. Though dreadful storms were raging at that time and had wrecked many goodly vessels, in spite of the warnings of his friends he sailed from Bordeaux, and reached Cork on January 21, 1561, having been four months on his journey from Rome. When he had secretly made known the object of his mission, crowds of men and women came from all parts, even from a distance of sixty miles, to get his blessing and settle the affairs of their consciences. In accordance with the earnest wish of St. Ignatius, he selected and sent many Irish youths to Rome. In compliance with the mandate of the Pope, he sought out and recommended learned and pious priests to fill the vacant sees; and the names of Richard Creagh of Armagh, Donall MacCongail of Raphoe, Owen O’Hairt of Achonry, Morogh MacBriain of Emly, Conor O’Cervallain, and Nicholas Landes, not to mention others, are a guarantee of the fidelity with which he carried out the orders of the Holy See. He resided for the most part in his native diocese, yet visited Tirone, and Shân the Proud, Prince of Ulster, and traversed the various regions of Ulster and Connacht; but on account of the “wars” and the many dangers of falling into the hands of English agents and spies, he could not enter the precincts of the Pale, and accordingly, in 1561, he delegated his jurisdiction to Father Newman, of the archdiocese of Dublin.

In that very year, Father Woulfe's mission was mentioned by Elizabeth to the Pope's Ambassador as one of her reasons for not sending representatives to the Council of Trent. Her Majesty's priest hunters were on his track, yet he managed to visit the great Irish lords, to ascertain whether the bishops resided in their dioceses and instructed their flocks, to see how the clergy administered the sacraments, to guard the faithful against the contagion of heresy, and to bring heretical ministers back to the fold. He had been charged by the Pope to establish grammar schools, provide Catholic masters for them, and urge parents to send their children to be instructed in literature, and in the knowledge of the saving truths of faith; he was also, if possible, to establish monasteries, hospitals, and places of refuge for the poor, and he was ordered to acquaint the Holy See with the real state of the Irish Church. As Cardinal Moran writes, “the course traced out in these instructions was exactly pursued by Father Woulfe, and his letters clearly demonstrate how indefatigable he was in his labours, and how unceasingly he struggled to restore the Irish Church to its primitive comeliness and fervour”.

The monastic schools had been swept away, and no mere Irishman or Catholic could, without risking liberty or life, teach the rudiments of literature or religion. To meet this want of intellectual culture, the Holy Father, in 1564, empowered Primate Creagh and David Woulfe to erect colleges throughout the kingdom, and to found a University like those of Paris. and Louvain. For this purpose Dr. Creagh had petitioned the Holy See to send Jesuit Fathers into Ireland. (7) However, the Primate and Nuncio were not able to carry out the commands of the Pope, as the agents of England were in sharp pursuit of them. A priest hunter, named Bird, wrote to Lord Burghley: “If the surprising of Creagh and some other Romish Legates of the Irishíry, with some English Jesuits (8) lately arrived, may be an inducement to Her Majesty's gracious favours, I shall, shorten the number of these importunate members, by whom others of their sort may be disordered in England, passing and repassing to and fro”. The Primate and Father Woulfe were captured and imprisoned in Dublin Castle in the year 1567. On the 13th of March of the following year, St. Pius the Fifth wrote to his Nuncio at Madrid : “We have been informed that Our venerable brother, the Archbishop of Armagh, who, as you are aware, is Primate of Ireland, has been cast into prison in the Tower of London, and that Our beloved son David, of the Society of Jesus, is also closely confined in the City of Dublin, and that both of them are treated with the utmost severity. Their sufferings overwhelm Us with affliction, on account of their singular merit and their zeal for the Catholic faith. . . . You will therefore use every endeavour with His Catholic Majesty, and urge and request and solicit in Our name letters from him to his Ambassador and to the Queen, to obtain the liberation of these prisoners”.

The mediation of the King of Spain was without effect, as Dr. Creagh remained a prisoner for life, and Father Woulfe was confined in Dublin Castle for five years. A good deal has been said of the horrors of prison life in modern times; but what are they to life in the cells in which Dr. Creagh and Father Woulfe were buried? Father Houling S.J., in his history of the Irish martyrs of his own time, says that Dr. Creagh was kept in a very dark underground cell of Dublin Castle, into which the light of the sun never penetrated, and in which he was not allowed the light of a candle. In a letter written by Dr. Creagh from the Tower “to the Right Honourable the Lords and others of the Queen's Majesty's Privy Council”,' he thus explains why he made his escape from the Dublin prison : “Which my going away I think no man would wonder that should know well how I was dealt therein withal; first in a hole, where without candle there was no light in the world, and with candle (when I had it) it was so filled with the smoke thereof (chiefly in summer), that, had there not been a little hole in ye next door to draw in breath with my mouth set upon it, I had been soon undone. My dwelling in this Tower the first time for more than a month's space might may-chance make a strong man to wish liberty, if for his life he could ... but foregoing further rehearsal of bearing almost these eight years irons, with one of my legs (as the beholders can judge) lost by the same, of my manifold sickness, colics, ... loss of all my big teeth, save two, and daily sore rheumes and many other like miseries”....

We are not aware that Father Woulfe suffered so much in health as his friend the Primate; but that his cell was not very comfortable we may gather from the fact, that when Bishop Thomas (Leverous of Kildare) had gained access to him, he could not stand the horrible stench of the place, and went away without being able to transact any business. We learn this from a letter written from prison by David Woulfe, a copy of which was discovered by the learned Brother Foley, S.J., among the Roman transcripts of the Public Record Office. (9) Here are a few extracts from this interesting document : “James Fitzmaurice, of the House of Desmond, remains in this country and governs Munster in the fear of God. He is young, a good Catholic, and a valiant captain. He was desirous to enter a religious order, but was prevailed on to remain at home for the good of his native land. Donail Aenoc Senez (O'Connor Sligo?), a great friend of Father Woulfe, was received with much honour by the English Queen, and has returned to Dublin with great power, and has promised to use his influence with the Viceroy to procure Father Woulfe's liberation from prison. This Father has been visited in his cell by Bishop Thomas (Leverous of Kildare); but his lordship, not being able to bear the horrid stench of the place, was obliged to go away without transacting any business. The Primate is kept in irons in an underground, dark, and horrible prison, where no one is allowed to speak to him or to see him except his keeper. He has many sores on his body, and, although not over forty-four years of age, has lost all his teeth. He has been many times brought before the magistrates, but in spite of threats, torrents, and promises of great honours and dignities, he ‘looks on all things as filth, that he may gain Jesus Christ’. All men, and, most of all, his enemies, are much amazed at his extraordinary fortitude and constancy in the Catholic faith. From his boyhood he has despised the pleasures of this world, and has treated his body with great penitential severity. Many things could be said of the integrity and holy life of this great man, but it is not convenient to write them at present : they will be told in their own place and time, as they cannot be concealed, since the Lord has manifested to the world a servant of His who possesses such eminent qualities. This holy prelate, in the presence of Father Woulfe and other persons, foretold to Shân O’Neill the circumstances of his death, specifying the year, month, place, and persons. O'Neill turned the nobles of Tirone against himself by his tyrannous conduct; he was defeated at Cumloch, where he lost six hundred men; on May 9, 1561, he was again vanquished by Hugh O”Donnell, while passing a river near Fearsidmor, where he lost eight thousand men and seventy-four of the noblest and bravest men of Tirone. He then took refuge among the heretics of Scotland, and was barbarously murdered by them. O'Donnell has ravaged the country of O'Connor Sligo, to punish him, whom he claims to be his vassal, for having gone over to the Court of the English Queen”.
Father Woulfe escaped from his loathsome prison in the month of October, 1572, and, accompanied by Sir Rice Corbally and the son of James Fitzmaurice, took refuge in Spain; but before his departure he received the Protestant Bishop of Limerick into the true Church, as appears from a State Paper published some years ago by Lord Emly; it was discovered by Mr. Froude, and transcribed by Dr. Maziere Brady. It runs thus : “I, William Cahessy, priest, some time named Bishop of the diocese of Limerick, yet nothing canonically consecrated, but by the schismatical authority of Edward, King of England, schismatically preferred to the bishopric of Limerick aforesaid, wherein I confess to have offended my Creator. I renounce also, if I might have the same, the bishopric of Limerick, and the charge and administration of the said cure; also other benefits and privileges received from the said Edward, or other heretics and schismatics. And I draw unto the said Holy and Universal Church, and do bow myself unto her laws, and I embrace the Reverend Lord David Woulfe, appointed the Apostolic Messenger for all Ireland from the Most Holy Lord the Pope. And I pray and beseech that, as a lost child, he receive me again into the bosom of the holy mother the Church, and that he will absolve mne from all ecclesiastical sentences, censures, punishments, heresies, rules, and every blot, dispense with me and reconcile me again to the unity of the same Church”.

According to a letter of the filibuster, Sir Peter Carew, to the Privy Council, and another letter in the State Paper Office, “Sir Davy Wolf, an arrant traitor, fled from Dublin, is gone to Spain, and carried with him the son of James Fitzmaurice, accompanied by Sir Rice Corbally”. However, he soon returned to the former field of his labours, landed at Tarbert, and in 1575 was once more engaged in visiting and consoling the Catholics of Ireland. In that year his fellow-citizen and brother Jesuit, Edmund O'Donnell, was hanged, drawn, and quartered for the Faith. Father Woulfe was denied that great happiness, and from that year he begins to fade away from our view. He was in Ireland in 1575, 1576, 1577, and 1578, in which year also he was at Lisbon and at Paris, and seems to have returned to his native land again, as Dr. Lynch, the author of Camorensis Eversus, (10) says, “I have heard that Father Woulfe was a man of extraordinary piety, who fearlessly denounced crime whenever and wherever committed. When the whole country was embroiled in war, he took refuge in the Castle of Clonoan, on the borders of Clare and Galway; but when he heard that its occupants lived by plunder, he scrupled to take any nourishment from them, and soon after grew sick and died”. He died, probably, at the end of 1578 or the beginning of 1579, as he is not mentioned in the detailed correspondence of 1579 or afterwards, during the eventful period of the second Desmond war. The last years of the life of this extraordinary man are involved in an obscurity which I tried to penetrate a quarter of a century ago, by consulting the original documents in Rome. I failed to get at them, on account of circumstances over which neither I nor any one else had control. What a chequered life was that of this most distinguished, perhaps, of all the citizens of Limerick! He first comes into view as Rector of the Jesuit College of Modena, he establishes a College in the Valtelline, declines the dignity of Bishop, and the pomp and circumstance of a nunziatura (11) and through perils on sea and land, journeying through woods and bogs, in a loathsome prison, “through good and ill he was Ireland's still”, and amidst the distracting political issues that tore Ireland piecemeal, he sought nothing but the good of his country, provided her with prelates of the most distinguished merit, and instructed and comforted her faithful people. His is a name of which the citizens of Limerick should be proud, and which the sea-divided Gael would not willingly let die. By Stanihurst, his contemporary, he is called a distinguished divine, and is by him classed among “the learned men and authors of Ireland”. Of the Limerick Woulfes', who now “all, all are gone”, one was bailiff of that city the year Father David went to reside there as Nuncio (as he is always styled by his friend, Primate Creagh); another was mayor in the year of Father David's death; a third, “David Wolfe, gentleman, black hair, middle stature”, was transplanted by the Cromwellians in 1563; and another member of that stock was the famous General Wolfe, who died in the moment of victory at Quebec.

https://www.dib.ie/biography/wolfe-david-a9107

DICTIONARY OF IRISH BIOGRAPHY

Contributed by
Barry, Judy

Wolfe, David (1528–c.1578), leader of the second Jesuit mission to Ireland, was born in Limerick. His command of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese strongly suggests that he was educated on the Continent, but he is first recorded as dean of the diocesan chapter in Limerick. He was received into the Society of Jesus in Rome in 1554 and resigned the deanery in June 1555. On 30 April 1558 Ignatius Loyola appointed him rector of the College of Modena. On 2 August 1560 an effort to revive the morale and discipline of the catholic church in Ireland was initiated with the appointment of Wolfe as papal commissary (the title of nuncio being withheld at the request of his superior, Diego Lainez) with instructions to establish schools, hospitals and places of refuge for the poor where possible, to reform monasteries, and to recommend suitable candidates for bishoprics and deaneries; as a corollary, Irishmen seeking preferment were prohibited from travelling to Rome without his approval. Wolfe arrived in Cork on 20 January 1561 on his way to Limerick, where he intended to establish his base, but was forced into hiding when he learned that the government had ordered his arrest. His initial report of his reception by the laity was optimistic, noting that he had dealt with over a thousand marriage dispensations in the first six months.

The clergy, however, were less responsive. A number of the bishops countered his order to abandon their concubines by challenging his authority as papal commissary and refusing him the right of visitation to their churches. His sole right to sanction visits to Rome in search of promotion was particularly resented, and as early as 12 October 1561 he found it necessary to warn Cardinal Morone (the protector of Ireland in the curia) against Irish clerics who claimed to have no knowledge of Wolfe or his authority in Ireland. Wolfe's powers of recommendation were central to the success of his mission, and the appointments of O'Crean (qv) (Elphin), O'Harte (qv) (Achonry) and MacGongail (Raphoe), all on 28 January 1562, began the process of bringing the church hierarchy in Ireland into the mainstream of Tridentine reform. In the same year, Wolfe sent his reluctant fellow townsman, Richard Creagh (qv) to Rome from which he was to return two years later as archbishop of Armagh with faculties which extended the scope of what now became their joint mission. In the meantime, Wolfe had both recruited seven new candidates for the Jesuits and sent them to various houses on the Continent and, in 1563, drawn up a religious rule of life for a group of Limerick women, who became known as ‘Menabochta' (mna bochta, poor women) and gave rise to scandalous rumours assiduously spread by his episcopal opponents.

Wolfe asked to be recalled in 1563, but the new faculties issued by Pope Paul IV in 1564 prevented Lainez from dealing with his request. Later in the year, however, Wolfe's authority lapsed as a result of the pope's death and it was decided to recall him. It is not known when news of this decision reached Wolfe, but it is clear that he was not in a position to act upon it. In October 1565, the assize judges issued a warrant for his arrest and a reward of £100 was offered for information leading to his capture. He fled across the Shannon and led the life of a penniless fugitive in the neighbourhood of Limerick, his difficulties aggravated by his reluctance to leave Ireland without repaying the substantial debts that he had incurred.

Hearing that Richard Creagh had returned to Ireland after his escape from the Tower of London, Wolfe made his way to Armagh where they met on 6 January 1567. Since Wolfe was no longer a papal commissary, Creagh made him his vicar general and commissioned him to conduct a visitation of the metropolitan sees. At a meeting of the northern bishops, Creagh also secured a condemnation of the rumours concerning Wolfe and the house for women in Limerick. Wolfe's financial circumstances and the restraints on his freedom of movement made it difficult for him to carry out his duties and he decided to ease his position by suing for a pardon from the viceroy.

Using Hugh O'Donnell (qv) as an intermediary he arranged to see the lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney (qv), at Carrickfergus. The meeting was friendly and Sidney promised that if Wolfe came to Dublin he would arrange for a pardon to be issued. When Sidney put the matter to the Irish council in Dublin, however, the protestant bishops demanded that before a pardon was granted Wolfe should declare the pope an Antichrist and submit to the queen as supreme head of the church. Wolfe refused these terms and was committed to Dublin castle in October 1567. For a while he attended to the spiritual needs of the other prisoners, but when it became obvious to the authorities that he would not change his views he was put in solitary confinement in an underground cell.

Wolfe escaped in 1572, but it was not till September 1573 that he set sail for Portugal, accompanied, significantly, by the 7-year old son of the rebel James fitz Maurice Fitzgerald (qv), who had submitted earlier in the year. His departure was facilitated by an Irish merchant who agreed to pay his debts on condition of immediate repayment on reaching Lisbon. Lisbon proved to be a troubled refuge. The Jesuit house was unable to provide the large sum required and the Dublin merchant complained publicly of the order's bad faith. More serious were accusations by an Irish student at the University of Coimbra that Wolfe had fathered a child in Ireland, taken bribes, and secured his release from prison by swearing to obey the queen's laws. Most serious was the intervention of the Jesuit general who blocked the payment of the debt, partly to allow the student's charges to be investigated, but largely because he was made aware of the possibility that the money was to be used to buy munitions. It is likely that this was suggested by Wolfe's frame of mind, but it was grounded on the facts that he was known to be writing a book in which he intended to show the king of Spain how to conquer Ireland and that he had met the Spanish ambassador, Juan Borgia, on several occasions with a view to persuading Philip II to support fitz Maurice's son at the Jesuit college in Lisbon.

Wolfe was formally warned by the procurator for the mission in Lisbon that he must not bring disrepute to the society by involving himself in matters of war. Nonetheless, in October 1574 he left Lisbon for Madrid, hoping to persuade Philip II and the papal nuncio to advance money for fitz Maurice's projected invasion of Ireland. He returned in March 1575 to the Jesuit house at Evora, Portugal, where his openly declared intention of collecting arms for fitz Maurice was seen as wholly inappropriate for a priest. The Portuguese provincial ordered that he should be confined to the house, but with the influence of both King Philip and the pope behind him Wolfe was able to free himself and he joined fitz Maurice in Saint-Malo in the summer of 1575. He subsequently visited Spain and went on to Rome, which he left in the company of fitz Maurice in February 1577.

He is said to have left the Jesuits during this period, but as late as June 1578 the general of the order wrote that he would be ‘glad of any employment for old David Wolfe' (CSPI, 1574–85, 136). It is likely that Wolfe died shortly afterwards. He was not among those who accompanied fitz Maurice to Ireland in June 1579 and nothing further is recorded of him.

Sources
Irish Jesuit archives (Leeson St., Dublin), MacErlean transcripts; CSPI, 1509–82; CSP Rome, 1572–8; DNB; Memorials of the Irish province, S.J., i, no. 6 (1903); Proinsias Ó Fionnagáin, SJ, The Jesuit missions to Ireland in the sixteenth century (c.1970; privately published); C. Lennon, An Irish prisoner of conscience (2000); Brendan Bradshaw (ed.), ‘Father Wolfe's description of Limerick city, 1574', North Munster Antiquarian Journal (1975), 47–53

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
WOULFE, DAVID, had been Chaplain to James Maurice Desmond de Giraldinis, as I find from that nobleman’s letter, dated from St. Malo, the 31st of January, 1576. The Father had returned to Ireland.

◆ Edmund Hogan SJ, CatChrn
Rector of Modena College;
Nuncio to Ireland;
Prisoner;
Writer;

Classed by Stanihurst among “the learned men and authors of Ireland and as a distinguished divine”.

A man of great reputation for austered sincerity

Had been Chaplain to James Fitzmaurice, of Desmond de Geraldinis, as appears by a letter from that nobleman, dated St Malo 31/01/1576, expressing his gratitude to the Society for having given him the letters of aggregation to the prayers and good works of the Order, through the petition and recomendation of Fr William Good. The Father had returned to Ireland. (Oliver from Stonyhurst MSS)

Examination of Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, prisoner in the Tower of London, printed in Shirley’s original leters and papers respecting the Church in Ireland - London, Rivington, 1851 p171 :
“Touching him whome he calleth the Pope’s Nuncio, doth answer that the said Nuncio came from Rome about four years since August last past (the date is March 16th 1564/5) and hath made his continual abode all the said time in Ireland, called by name David Wolfe, born in Limerick where the examinate also was born. And further he saith that the said David Wolfe hath been about seven years abiding in Rome, and was a Jesuite there professed, and sent from the Pope by obedience into ireland, by commission to see what Bishops did their duties there, and wgat sees were void and ... having asked where the Nuncio doth commonly keep in Ireland, he saith that he doth secretly come to Limerick, and hath been this last summer in Tyrone with Shane O’Neill as he heard, and the letters that he received were delivered unto him in Limerick, in the presence of a Priest called Sir Thomas Molam”.

◆ Henry Foley - Records of the English province of The Society of Jesus Vol VII
WOLFE, or WOULFE, DAVID, Father, of Limerick (Irish); entered the Society about 1550, and died after 1578. (Hogan's list and eulogia Ibernia Ignatiana. He had been Chaplain to James Fitzmaurice, of Desmond de Geraldinis, as appears by a letter from that nobleman, dated St. Malo, January 31, 1576, expressing his gratitude to the Society for having given him letters of aggrega tion to the prayers and good works of the Order, through the petition and recommendation of Father William Good. The Father had returned to Ireland, (Oliver, from Stonyhurst M53:) Examination of Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, prisoner in the Tower, printed in Shirley's original letters and papers respecting the Church in Ireland, London, Rivington, 1851, p. 171. "Touching him whom he calleth the Pope's Nuncio, doth answer that the said Nuncio came from Rome about four years since August last past (the datc is March 16, 1564-5), and hath made his continual abode all the said time in Ireland, called by name David Wolle, born in Limerick, where the examinate also was born. And further he saith that the said David Wolfe hath been about seven years abiding in Rome, and was a Jcsuite there professed, and sent from the Pope by obedience into Ireland, by commission to see what Bishops did their duties there, and what sees were void; and ... having asked where the Nuncio doth commonly keep in Ireland, he saith that he doth secretly come to Limerick, and hath been this last summer in Tyrone with Shanç O'Ncil as he heard, and the letters that he received were delivered unto him in Limerick, in the presence of a Priest called Sir Thomas Molam.' At p. 128 of the same book are faculties granted to Father Newman, Priest, of Dublin, dated Limerick, December 7, 1563, beginning, "David Wolfe, Priest $.j., and Commissarius of Our Most Holy Lord Pius Papa IV., to the most illustrious Princes and the whole Kingdom of Ireland." He had been Rector of the College at Modena, and was once in prison. (Father Hogan's list).

◆ Memorials of the Irish Province SJ June 1902 1.6

A Brief Memoir of Father Alfred Murphy SJ - by Matthew Russell SJ

Father David Wolfe SJ

Seemingly on the Continent, about the end of the year 1578 or beginning of 1579, died Father David Wolfe, a native of Limerick. He may be looked upon as the pioneer Jesuit of the Irish Mission, having been the first member of the Society, after Fathers Brouet and Salmeron, to labour in Ireland. After having spent seven years in Rome, and been Rector of the College of Modena, he was at the instance of Pope Paul IV., who made him Apostolic Nuncio, sent by Father Lainez to Ireland, where he landed at Cork on the 20th January, 1561. On hearing of his arrival vast numbers flocked from places as much as sixty miles distant to receive his ministrations, Cardinal Moran speaks of him as “one of the most remarkable men who, during the first years of Elizabeth's reign, laboured in the Irish Church to gather together the scattered stones of the Sanctuary”. He came to Ireland with plenary powers from the Pope to examine what sees were vacant, and to recommend fitting persons to fill them. Moreover, he was charged to visit the chief Catholics of the kingdom, especially the four principal princes or lords, to visit the bishops and parish priests, to establish grammar schools, provide teachers, found, if possible, monasteries, hospitals, and places of refuge for the poor, and to inform the Holy See of the real condition of the Irish Church. He was also empowered to establish an Irish University in conjunction with the Primate. In 1567 the Primate and Father Wolfe were captured and imprisoned in the Castle of Dublin. In the following year Pope St. Pius V. wrote to his Nuncio in Madrid: “We have been informed that our venerable, brother the Archbishop of Armagh has been cast into prison .... and that our beloved son, David, of the Society of Jesus, is also closely confined in the city of Dublin, and that both of them are treated with the utmost severity. Their sufferings overwhelm us : with affliction, on account of their singular merit, and their zeal for the Catholic faith”. Father Wolfe endured the sufferings of a loathsome prison for five years, after which he made his escape to Spain, accompanied by Sir Rice Corbally. In 1575 he again returned to Ireland, where, for the three following years he laboured among his afflicted countrymen. His portrait is preserved in the Irish College at Salamanca. Father Hogan asserts that he died in the county of Clare in Ireland.

Born: 1556, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Entered: 11 June 1593, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: pre Entry Valladolid, Spain
Died: 07 May 1622, Irish College, Santiago de Compostela, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

Older Brother of Stephen - RIP 1647; Uncle of Peter White - RIP 1678; and Thomas White - Ent 30/09/1612, LEFT 12/11/1618; Cousin of William White - RIP 1625

Brother was Mayor of Clonmel
Before he entered he was Rector of Irish Seminary (Salamanca??). Salamanca SAT 1592 “Este Padre es Irlandes y està fuera “T or Y”)??) no se sabe lo particular del” C 08/09/1601
Studied 3 years Casus.
1606 Age 50 Soc 12 - was 9 years Rector of Irish Seminary Salamanca. Helps in Irish, English and Scotch business
1617 Ib CAST Age 60 Soc 24
His portrait is at Irish College Salamanca
In Irish Ecclesiastical Record 1922 pp578-597 there is an article on Fr Thomas White and the Irish College Salamanca. It appears to contain some first hand information and would be read to advantage by anyone wishing to give a life of him (JPR)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica” :
First Rector Irish College Lisbon 1593
With William White and Richard Conway he took possession of Santiago, Compostella (cf IER September 1874)
Mentioned honourably in a letter of Henry Fitzsimon 26 October 1611 (Irish Ecclesiastical Record March 1873)
Founder of Irish College Salamanca 1592, which was the first, or one of the first establishments the Irish Catholics obtained on the Continent after the Reformation
Juvencius (“Hist SJ” xiii p215) says he was an elderly secular priest at the time, and that he entered the Society, after putting the College (Salamanca) under the charge of our Fathers, under whose charge it remained until 1762 (expulsion of Jesuits from Spain). He was a man of great piety and zeal, and a great pillar of the Irish Church.
(cf his life by William McDonald DD in IER 1873)

Note from Bl Dominic Collins Entry
About a year after he arrived in Spain, he met Fr Thomas White, Rector of Salamanca, and by his advice entered the Society. Two of his fellow novices were Richard Walsh and John Lee

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Priestly education seems to have been provided mostly by an unknown Bishop uncle at Santiago and otherwise at Valladolid (according to Luis de Valdivia who wrote his obituary).
What seems certain is that members of White's family had settled in or near Santiago, e.g. Baiona. The year of Thomas's ordination cannot be determined but if we can trust all the details in the obituary notice it was the Bishop uncle who Ordained him. It was at Valladolid that White first conceived the idea of organising a regime of life for wandering Irish scholars who wished to study for the priesthood. But it was at Salamanca 22 August 1592 that his work was placed on a permanent basis by the generous foundation effected by the King of Spain. All this before Ent 11 June 1593 Villagarcía.

After First Vows the whole of his life as a Jesuit was to be devoted to the education of Priests for Ireland.
1596-1603 First Rector Irish College Salamanca
1604 He visited the General at Rome to discuss the future of Salamanca and ways and means of promoting the Jesuit mission in Ireland. It seems he also visited Ireland that year but his stay cannot have been for more than a few weeks
1606-1608 Rector Irish College Lisbon
1612 Acting Superior at Santiago
1619 Acting Superior at Santiago until his death there 07 May 1622

The foregoing summary of his periods of offices seems almost to indicate periods of enforced leisure after his extensive journeyings in quest of alms for the support of his students or for that matter of any needy Irish student who wished to pursue his Priestly studies. His success as an organiser was known to Dr. Christopher Cusack who repeatedly asked the General to send White to help him with his own work for Irish seminarians in Belgium.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
White, Thomas
by Terry Clavin

White, Thomas (1556–1622), Jesuit and founder of Irish colleges in Europe, was the son of Pierce White of Clonmel and was born into one of the most staunchly catholic families in Ireland. A younger brother Stephen (qv) was a celebrated Jesuit antiquarian. His uncle Peter ran a famous catholic school in Waterford, where Thomas White was probably first taught. By 1582 he was studying theology in Valladolid and in 1593 he became a Jesuit. The city had a small community of Irish scholars at the time, most of whom were in great want. White took them into his house, providing for them out of his own resources. In the summer of 1592 he brought the students before King Phillip II at the royal villa of St Laurence; the king granted them some money. However, White sought another audience with the king, petitioning that he endow the Irish with a college. On 2 August 1592 the first Irish college on the continent was established at Salamanca, with White as its vice-rector and spiritual director.

Thereafter White dedicated himself to organising and furthering Irish academic life in Spanish territory, being also greatly pre-occupied with the Irish colleges founded in Lisbon, Santiago and Seville, acting as rector for the latter two. His stewardship of the college in Salamanca provoked controversy in May 1602 when ‘Red’ Hugh O’Donnell (qv) and Florence Conroy (qv) petitioned on behalf of the provinces of Ulster and Connaught against him. The northerners won out and in 1605 a Spanish superior was appointed. But the new system was not a success and in 1613 White was reinstated as head of the college. Although he never returned to Ireland, he received a steady stream of reports from missionaries there, many of whom were educated in his colleges, who constantly drew attention to the persecution of Irish catholics. He died 28 May 1622 at Santiago.

John Coppinger, Mnemosynion to the catholics of Ireland (1608); Edmund Hogan, Distinguished Irishmen of the 17th century (1894), 48–70; Patrick Power, Waterford and Lismore (1937), 25; T. Corcoran, ‘Early Irish Jesuit educators’, Studies, xxix (1940), 545–60; William Burke, History of Clonmel (1983 ed.), 464–9

Note from Paul Sherlock (Sherlog) Entry
Like many of his contemporaries, he left Ireland for Spain, aged 16, to study at the Jesuit-run Irish College at Salamanca. He landed in Bilbao in May 1612 and reached Salamanca at the beginning of July. Together with Thomas Vitus (Wyse), a fellow-student from Waterford, he was admitted to the Society of Jesus at Salamanca on 30 September 1612

Note from Bl Dominic Collins Entry
He moved to Spain, where he met an Irish Jesuit, Fr Thomas White (qv), at Corunna and, experiencing a change of heart of truly Ignatian proportions, he applied to enter the Society of Jesus. Due to his age and previous career, he was initially refused but was finally accepted as a brother-novice at the Jesuit College at Santiago de Compostela in late 1598

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1I 1962
EARLY IRISH JESUIT EDUCATORS
Thomas White of Clonmel (1556-1622)

The outstanding figure in the constructive work for Irish Education, done by Irish Jesuits within the century 1540-1640 either within Ireland or abroad, was that of Father Thomas White of Clonmel. The two historians of his birthplace and of his diocese, Canon William Burke (History of Clonmel, 1907, pages 457-469) and Canon Patrick Power (Waterford and Lismore, 1937, page 24), following up the researches of Dr Edmond Hogan SJ, agree in giving the year of Thomas White's birth as 1556, the year of the death of St. Ignatius of Loyola. They also concur in stating that Thomas White and the more celebrated Father Stephen White SJ, (born 1574) were brothers, sons of Pierce White and brothers of James White, Vicar-Apostolic of Waterford; another brother, chief magistrate of Clonmel, was deposed from that civil office in 1606 as being a recusant Catholic. Near relatives, Patrick and Nicholas White, were heavily fined in Castle Chamber, at Dublin Castle, for refusal to attend Anglican services. In the entry lists (1601 1619) of the Irish College, Salamanca, more than one White is set down as a Waterford diocese student, coming from the school of Master John Flahy, who sent some fourteen students to the University of Salamanca in those years. In 1608 John Coppinger (Mnemosynion to the Catholics of Ireland) tells of how Father Thomas White, a Jesuit since 1593, devoted himself to the most practical academic service of organising Irish student life at Valladolid, Salamanca, Lisbon, Seville, and St. James of Compostella.
Was it not great charitie of Father Thomas White, naturall of Clonmel, seeing so many poor scholars of his nation in great miserie at Valladolid, having no means to continue their studie nor language to begge, having given over his private commoditie, did remcollect and reduce them to one place, which he maintained by his industrie and begging ?

Thomas White, as Canon Burke notes, was at Valladolid by 1582. Having in the summer of 1592 presented his assembled students to King Philip II at his Royal Villa of St. Laurence beside the city, he got from the King a large initial sum for housing, an annual grant for maintenance, and this Royal letter :

To the Rector, the Masters, and the Members of the University of Salamanca.

The young Irishmen who have been forming a kind of community in the city of Valladolid have decided to go to your city, in order to avail of the advantages there placed at their service for progress in Letters and Languages. A house has been prepared for them, in which they purpose to live under the direction of the Jesuit Fathers.

Besides providing for them a substantial annual grant, I desire them to deliver to you this letter, to charge you, as I now hereby do, to regard them as highly recommended to you. Favour and assist them to the utmost of your power. They have left their own country and all dear to them there for the service of God our Lord and for the preservation of the Catholic Faith; they declare their determination to return there to preach it and, if need be, to suffer martyrdom for it. They are to have in your University the good reception that they promise themselves. I am certain that you will see to this being done. With your aid and with what I feel sure of from the City of Salamanca (to which also I now write), these young Irishmen will be enabled to pursue their studies in content and freedom, and so will give full effect to their purpose.

Given at Valladolid, this second day of August 1592
Yo el Rey
Hieronimo de Cassell
A Secretis

Over the following thirty years (1592-1622) Thomas White laboured indefatigably at this great Catholic and national service. He was thus the initiator of the Irish Colleges in Spain, rapidly succeeded by those of France, Italy, Flanders, Bohemia. Always associated with the great Catholic Universities, they secured for our students, that fine university training, general and professional, which easily enabled them to outrank over all Europe, as at Paris, Louvain, Salamanca, Prague, the work essayed at the decadent Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and other heretical centres. The prestige thus everywhere achieved for Catholic Irish students, both in academic training and office, as well as through published works, on the lines initiated and on the foundations well laid by Thomas White or Clonmel and his Irish collaborators in Spain, was expanded and enhanced down to the destructive years of the French Revolution. Fr White's death at Santiago, on 28 May 1622, was thus most fittingly recorded by a Spanish pen “

This day, Sunday, at seven in the morning, Our Lord called to the reward of his labours and merits Father Thomas White. He died of fever, at the age of sixty-four and in the thirty-fourth year of his religious life. During that period he had worked with apostolic spirit in the service of God and of the Catholic faith, which, through the means of the Colleges which he had founded in Spain, has been preserved in Ireland. His life and virtues, so well known in the Society of Jesus, cannot receive full justice in this brief letter, His thoughts and desires were all for the glory of God and for the progress of the Colleges for which he toiled unceasingly. On the road and in the duties of an external character on which he was almost constantly engaged, Father White was a singularly recollected man, assiduous in prayer and meditation. Always resigned to the will of God, he never asked Him for anything (so he said shortly before his death) which was not accorded to him. God always blessed his petitions by moving the minds of Chapters, Prelates, and Princes with whom he was brought into contact to aid his work by their alms and gifts; they knew him well for a man of great zeal and rare virtue. He practised great mortification, and even in advanced years kept in use every day the hair shirt and discipline.

He was most simple both in dress and in manner; his usual food every day was a little bread and cheese, which he ate while journeying along the roads. To the lay fold whom he met he gave great edification; to his students he was a living model of piety. Through his efforts many religious institutes were filled with excellent members, and his native country received many holy priests and bishops, who acknowledge that under God they owe everything to Thomas White.

In his last illness he gave great evidence of the holiness of his life; and though death came unexpectedly while he was still organising this College of Santiago, he made very perfect acts of
conformity to God's will, bewailing his not having served Him more fervently. In the fifteen days of his illness he received Holy Communion three times and had Extreme Unction in good time. As we closed the commendation of his soul to God, he peacefully breathed his. last; his countenance retained all the appearance of life, All this gives us a special pledge of heaven; but we are greatly grieved for the loss to the Colleges of this Father, the Protector of his country. His death has caused a profound sensation in this City, where it is deeply lamented.

Father White's opening period of work for the new Irish College at Salamanca extended almost continuously from 1594 to 1605; it was often varied by his apostolic questings, described in this letter of Father de Castro SJ, composed and despatched from Santiago de Compostella on the very day of his holy and happy death. He was again Rector at Salamanca from 1617, and was constantly concerned with the sister Irish foundations : Lisbon stabilised by 1593, Santiago founded in 1612, Séville founded 1619. Midway in those three decades of unremitting toil, King Philip III had given its full formal rank as a foundation of the Spanish Crown to the “Royal College of Irish Nobles” (El Real Colegio de Nobles Irlandeses), the title borne to this day by this ancient and most fruitful foundation for our race and faith.

Timothy Corcoran SJ

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Thomas White 1558-1622
Fr Thomas White was born in 1558 of a family in Clonmel which gave many priests to the Church. His brother James was Vicar-Apostolic of Waterford, and another brother was the famous Fr Stephen White SJ. Thomas entered the Society when already a priest at 30 years of age.

His name should ever be held in benediction, for it was he who first started the idea of founding Colleges for the Irish on the Continent. In this way, he was instrumental in founding Valladolid, Salamanca, Lisbon, Seville and Santiago. It was he too who petitioned the General to establish the office of Procurator General for the Irish Mission, which post Fr James Archer was first to fill.

Fr Thomas died on Sunday May 28th 1622, 64 years of age after 34 spent as a Jesuit. In his obituary by Fr de Castro we read : “we are left overwhelmed with grief for what all the Colleges have lost in this Father and Protector of his country, and his death has created a profound sensation in this seminary and city, where it is bewailed with tears.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
WHITE, THOMAS.The only occasion that I find this Father mentioned is in a letter of the 22nd of August, 1607. He was then in Spain, with F. James Archer. I cross him again six weeks later. F. Fitzsimon, in the Preface to his Treatise on the Mass, printed in 1611, mentions him.

Born: 1654, Carrick-on-Suir, County Waterford
Entered: 03 April 1674, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1688/9, Lisbon, Portugal
Final Vows: 24 February 1692
Died: 08 March 1719, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Kehoe; Vitus

1678-1681 At Évora LUS studying Philosophy
1690-1719 At Funchal, Madeira has been teaching Grammar and Rhetoric before he went there. Concinator, Prefect of Studies and Admonitor there.
1696-1699 Rector of Funchal College (Francois Aunales??)
1705 Rector of Funchal College and Visitor of islands of Madeira and Terceira
1717 Adminitor and Preacher at Funchal

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1695-1699 rector of Madeira College
A man of extraordinary piety; Wonderful things are told of him in Franco’s “Annales”
Perhaps he was the Michael White acting as PP in Meath, 1704, who was Ordained in Lisbon 21 September 1679 (List of Registered Popish Priests, 1704)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1676-1690 After First Vows he was sent for studies at Évora where he graduated MA. he was then sent to Coimbra for Regency. After this he was sent to Lisbon for Theology and was Ordained there 1688/89. Like his namesake Mathias White also served as Minister at the Irish College Lisbon during his Theology.
1690-1700 He was sent to join Mathias White at Funchal, Madeira where he was Prefect of Studies and later Rector (1696-1700)
1700-1719 After he finished as Rector, he spent the rest of his life at Funchal and died there 08 March 1719. The exception to his life at Funchal was when he was appointed Visitor to the Portuguese Province (1700-1705)

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Michael White SJ 1654-1719
“The year 1917, of the Society 180, at the College of Madeira on the 8th of March, Father Michael White, an Irishman, departed this life. Having entered the Society in Portugal, he was sent on the completion of his studies to the island of Madeira, where he passed the rest of his life.

Unassuming and gentle, the archetype of a religious man, he engaged much in contemplating divine things. Whenever the many English ships arrived at the island for the purpose of trading, it can scarcely be expressed how useful he proved, not only to the secret Catholics, but also those alien to our Faith, who he brought back to the Church. By his example he won over externs as well as Ours to the love of virtue. Everyone looked up to him as a man very dear to God”.

He was Rector of the College of Madeira for many years.

Born: 1650, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Entered: 01 April 1669, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1678, Lisbon, Portugal
Final Vows: 15 August 1686
Died: 18 November 1700, Évora, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

1678-1683 At Irish College Lisbon, Minister
1685-1693 At Funchal, Madeira. Good Preacher with sufficient talent for the Sciences/
1696-1700 At Oporto, Minister and Consultor of Rector

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had done some studies at Irish College Lisbon before Ent 01 April 1669 Lisbon
1671-1683 After First Vows he was sent for Philosophy to Évora and then for Theology to Lisbon where he was Ordained by 1678. During his Theology and up to 1683 he served as Minister at the Irish College in Lisbon, and continued in that post after formation.
1683-1693 He was then sent to Funchal in Madeira as Operarius and later Rector, and was there for 10/12 years
1693-1700 He was then sent as Minister to Porto.
1700 He was sent to Évora and died there 18 November 1700

Born: 1608, Lisbon, Portugal
Entered: 1625, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)
Ordained: c 1637, Évora, Portugal
Died: 22 December 1642, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)

1633 Teaching Latin at Coimbra
1636 At Évora studying Theology
1637 Catalogue “Joan Vitus receuter venit”

◆ Francis Finegan SJ :
1627-1637 After First Vows he was sent for studies at Coimbra where he graduated MA. He was then sent of Regency to San Miguel in the Azores. he was then sent to Évora for Theology and Ordained there c 1637.
1637-1642 He had been sent to Coimbra to teach Classics when he died there 22 December 1642
In the 1629 LUS Catalogue he was reckoned as an Irishman, and so a potential member of the Irish Mission

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
WHITE JOHN. This Father is mentioned by F. Robert Nugent in his letter dated “ex Hibernia, 1 Octobris,1640”.

Born: 16 March 1611, Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 14 September 1634, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1645, Coimbra, Portugal
Final Vows: 28 March 1655
Died: 17 November 1697, Waterford Residence, Waterford City, County Waterford - Romanae Province (ROM)

Superior of Mission 1666
Novice Master Lusitania Province 1665

1639 At Coimbra studying Philosophy
1642 Teaching Greek and Hebrew (at Lisbon?)
1645 At Elvas Teaching Greek and Hebrew (a Hogan slip has Elvas crossed out and Coimbra). Age 31 Soc 11
1649 At Irish College Lisbon teaching Moral Theology
1650 At Alentejo LUS
1658 At Irish College Lisbon Minister and Procurator. Is an M Phil
1661 At Professed House Lisbon, Socius to Provincial
1665 At Novitiate House Lisbon Age 50 Soc 34 (Superior is Francis Uhel?)
1670 Superior of Ireland (Arch Ir Coll Rom I 85,87)
Several of his books in Waterford have “Resid Waterford SJ, Martinus Franciscus Vittus”

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1665-1669 Was for Master of Novices in Portugal, and Rector of the Novitiate - one of his Novices was John de Britto (Franco’s “Annales”)
Was Socius to the LUS Provincial
Superior of the Irish Mission
A good linguist
By his zeal, charity and prudence he gave great satisfaction while he was with the Spanish (should be Portuguese) Ambassador in England; Pleased the Irish gentry; had great influence with the Queen and her household.
A letter of William St Leger, Irish Mission Superior, 16 January 1663, speaks highly of him and earnestly asks that he be sent to the Mission,
A letter of Francis, Kilkenny 19 December 1668, shows that he was then Superior of the Mission
(cf Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had previously begun studies at the Irish College Lisbon before Ent 14 September 1634 Lisbon
1636-1647 After First Vows he was sent for studies to Coimbra, where he graduated MA, ad he also taught Greek and Hebrew there. He was also Ordained there 1645
1647-1660 Sent as Minister at Irish College Lisbon and also taught Moral Theology
1660-1662 Appointed Socius to Provincial in Lisbon
1662-1666 Rector and Master of Novices at Lisbon - one of his Novices was John de Britto
1666 He was sent to Ireland as Superior of the Mission. He was the first to detect the frauds of James Taaffe OSF who posed as a Nuncio with extensive powers from the Pope.
When he finished as Mission Superior he went to Waterford, and spent the rest of his life there until his death 17 November 1697

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1 1962
Francis White (1666-1669)

Francis White was born at Waterford on 16th March, 1617. He went to Lisbon to complete his studies, and entered the Novitiate of the Society there on 14th September, 1634. At the end of it he proceeded to Coimbra, where he studied philosophy and theology, took out his degree of Master of Arts, and taught Greek and Hebrew. In 1647 he became Minister of the Irish College at Lisbon, and lectured on Moral Theology. He made his solemn profession of four vows on 28th March, 1655. In 1660 he was appointed Socius of the Provincial, and two years later he became Rector and Master of Novices. One of the novices trained by him was the future martyr, Blessed John de Britto. Early in 1666 he returned to Ireland, and was appointed Superior of the Irish Mission. He was the first to detect the frauds of the friar, James Taffe, OSF, who claimed legatine powers over the clergy, secular and regular, of Ireland. When his term of office came to an end he laboured as a missioner for many years at Waterford, where he died on 17th November, 1697.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Francis White 1617-1697
Francis White was born of one of the leading families of Waterford on March 18th 1617. He spent a great deal of his early life in Lisbon, where he did his studies and entered the Society.

He taught Greek and Hebrew. In 1647 he went to the Irish College at Lisbon, where he was first Minister, then Rector and Master of Novices. He spent some time in London where he was attached to the Portuguese Ambassador, and had great influence with the Queen and her household.

In 1666 he came to Ireland and was made Superior of the Mission. He was the first to detect the frauds of the friar James Taafe OSF, who claimed legitimate power over the clergy of Ireland.

When his term of office was complete he retired to Waterford, where he laboured for many years and where he died on November 17th 1697.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
WHITE, FRANCIS, of one of the best families in Waterford, for many years resided in Portugal, where he was Master of Novices. F. William St. Leger, in a letter dated the 16th of January, 1663, says of him, “It is time that he should serve the Society and the Church of God in his own country. This is expedient and almost necessary; he is eminently qualified by virtue, and abilities, and method; he has filled several offices in the Order. Whilst in England with the Portuguese Ambassador, he gave the highest satisfaction by his zeal and charity; he is known and welcome to the English and Irish Gentry; is well acquainted with languages, and conversant with the world; has considerable influence with the Queen and her Household” &c. A letter of F. Francis White, dated Kilkenny, the 19th of December, 1668, shews that he was then Superior of the Irish Mission. He died at Waterford, on the 17th of November, 1697, at. 87. He had a brother Patrick, a worthy Priest, who nobly did his duty during the Plague at Waterford* in 1650.

• See p 571 of that invaluable work “Hibernia Dominicana”.

Born: 1587, Waterford
Entered: 1609, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: c 1619, Mexico
Final Vows: 12 April 1626
Died: 12 December 1644, College of SS Pedro and Pablo, Mexico City, Mexico

Alias Godinez

Son of Thomas and his 1st wife Mary née Walsh. Brother of Walter and Peter. Half Brother of Luke and Thomas. 1st Cousin of Ambrose and Luke OFM

William Browne was his cousin and possibly Ignatius Browne as well (acc to Edmund Hogan)
1614 Has finished Philosophy and is in Mexico. Has taught Grammar in College of Mexico. Strong constitution.
1617 In Mexico Age 26 Soc 8

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Went to Mexico 1605; Professor of Rhetoric, Philosophy, Theology and Scripture; Missioner in Cinaloa; Rector of various Colleges; Writer on Mystical Theology; An extempore Latin Poet; A Spiritual Director of many souls eminent for sanctity.
A Priest of extraordinary holiness.
(In pen) By 1614 was in College of Mexico, had finished Philosophy, taught Grammar for two years and was strong.
1617 Was at Mechelen (Irish Ecclesiastical Record August 1874; de Backer “Biblioth. des Écrivains SJ”) (cf Dr P Powers Waterford Saints pp32-38)

◆ Fr John McErlean SJ :
1610 Set sail for Mexico as a Novice, and once there adopted the name “Godinez”
1619-1626 Worked as a missioner in the remote Province of Sinaloa, with as many as 5,400 Indians under his care
1626 Ordered by Fr General to recuperate, and was appointed Rector successively of the S Geronimo College at La Puebla de los Angeles (Puebla), S Ildefonso at Mexico City, Guatemala College, Mexico (now Guatemala), Oaxaca, Mexico and S Ildefonso at La Puebla de los Angeles (Puebla).
Zealous missioner and successful administrator, but also a saintly man demonstrated in his celebrated work on Mystical Theology

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Thomas and his 1st wife Mary née Walsh. Brother of Walter and Peter. Half Brother of Luke and Thomas. 1st Cousin of Ambrose and Luke OFM
A year after Entry at Villagarcía he set sail as a Novice for Mexico. Once he arrived in Mexico, he adopted the Spanish name “Godinez” for his surname.
1619-1626 After Ordination c 1618 he was sent to Sinaloa, northwest Mexico, where he had as many as 5,400 Christian Indians under his care.
1626 Worn out by his labours, he was recalled by order of the General in 1626 to recuperate his strength
Later he was appointed Rector of S Geronimo at La Puebla de los Angeles, then S Ildefonso at Mexico City, then Guatemala College, Mexico (now Guatemala), and Oaxaca College, Mexico.
Finally he died at the College of San Pedro and San Pablo Mexico City 1644
A successful missionary and administrator, he wrote a celebrated treatise on Mystical Theology

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Wadding, Michael
by Terry Clavin

Wadding, Michael (1591–1644), catholic missionary and mystic, was the son of Thomas Wadding of Waterford city and his wife, Mary Walsh. Thomas was a successful lawyer who served as chief justice of Tipperary and as mayor of Waterford in 1596, and provided legal advice to Sir George Carew (qv), lord president of Munster. He was a staunch catholic and his houses in Waterford city and in King's Meadow, Co. Waterford, acted as sanctuaries for priests. Inspired by the suffering and labours of these priests, Michael appears to have been set from an early age on a career in the clergy. About 1605 Michael went to the Irish college at Lisbon where he studied for two years, before joining the Irish seminary at Salamanca in September 1607. However, he left the seminary to join the Society of Jesus at Villagarcia on 15 April 1609. There he became a disciple of the renowned theologian and mystic Father Suarez. Wadding quickly decided he wanted to become a missionary in Mexico. On 15 May 1610 he was granted permission to do so, and he travelled to Mexico later the same year. He changed his name to Miguel Godinez, most likely for the convenience of his Spanish colleagues.

In Mexico he continued his studies and in 1612 he became professor in the college of Mexico. In 1618 he was sent on the mission to Sinaloa, a province on the extreme western coast of Mexico, facing the Gulf of California. Over the next eight years he endured an extremely harsh environment and the hostility to Christianity of many of the local tribes. On two occasions he had to flee for his life and he witnessed the death of two Jesuit colleagues and his own servant boy at the hands of the natives. After 1624 a plague wreaked havoc in the region and the missionaries were preoccupied mainly with tending to the sick and dying. He was particularly impressed by the spirituality of his fellow missionaries, and how many of them had ecstatic spiritual experiences during their period in the wilderness. Despite all the difficulties, he enjoyed some success and is credited with converting the Basiroas tribe. He was recalled from the mission soon after making his final profession of the four vows at Jepotzolan in Sinaloa on 12 April 1626.

By the year's end he was acting as professor of philosophy in the seminary at St Ildefonso at Puebla de los Angeles. Thereafter he appears as rector of the Jesuit college of Guatemala (1638) and as rector of the college of Puebla de los Angelus (1640). While he was teaching theology, he compiled his Treatise on mystic theology, which was based mainly on his experiences in Sinaloa. In Mexico he was widely regarded as a holy man and was distinguished for his knowledge of mystic theology. His Treatise was eventually published in 1681 and went through ten editions. Wadding died in Mexico 18 December 1644.

Edmund Hogan, ‘Worthies of Waterford and Tipperary’ in Waterford ASJ, no. 4 (1898), 73–82; Catholic Encyclopaedia (1913), xv, 524–5; P. Power, Waterford saints and scholars (1920), 32-8

◆ Irish Province News
Irish Province News 2nd Year No 1 1926

Three centuries ago (1626) Fr Michael Wadding took the vows of the Society in Mexico. He was born in Waterford, and was a cousin of the famous Franciscan, Fr. Luke Wadding. He had two brothers Jesuits who won lasting reputations in some of the leading Universities of Europe.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Michael Wadding 1587-1644
Michael Wadding was one of the celebrated Wadding family of Waterford. He is better known by his Spanish name, Michael Godinez. In fulfillment of his father’s dying wish, he set out with his brothers Ambrose and Luke for the continent, where he entered the Irish College at Lisbon. He became a Jesuit in 1609.

After eleven months noviceship at Villagarcia, where he became acquainted with the great Suarez, he volunteered for the then most arduous Mission, the Indians of Mexico. Here he laboured with zeal, amid incredible hardships, crossing the mountains by perilous paths, trudging with knap-sack on back, and parched with thirst over burning plains, swimming rivers, encountering wild beasts and wilder men, the saintly Jesuit carried the Gospel to the barbarian tribes. He saw two of his companions transfixed with arrows and a third clubbed to death.

His efforts met with miraculous success. |There was no single year in my time” he says, “in which the number of baptised pagans was less than 5,000. Some years it was over 10,000, and in the year 1624, the whole Province contained 62,000, and some time after 120,000 converts to Christianity”.

It was the sun baked solitude of blistering plains, in the gorges of might mountains and in the gloom of forests, where the feet of a European had never trodden, that Michael thought out the material which later he embodied in his “Theologica Mystica”. This book, which was written in Spanish, almost equalled the Imitation in popularity. It went into numberless editions, was translated into Latin and other European tongues, and for two centuries enjoyed a great reputation as a standard work on the spiritual life.

In 1616 he became Professor of Philosophy at the Seminary of St Idelfonso at Pueblo de los Angeles, in 1638 the Rector of the College of Guatemala, in 1640 Rector of Pueblo de los Angeles.

On September 12th 1644 he died in Mexico, with the reputation of a great saint and a great mystic.

Born: 1593, Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 05 April 1610, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: c 1618, Salamanca, Spain
Final Vows: 16 October 1626
Died: 10 January 1652, Imperial College, Madrid, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

Alias Gaudin

Son of Thomas and his 2nd wife Anastatia née Devereux. Brother of Thomas, half-Brother of Walter, Michael and Peter. 1st Cousin of Ambrose and Luke OFM

1619 at Monforte College teaching Latin
1625 At Valladolid Age 32 Soc 15. Teaching Grammar and Philosophy. Talent very good for teaching. Would be a good Superior
1626 In Spain. Prof 4 Vows. Talent, judgement and proficiency very good. A talent for teaching and government. Taught Philosophy and Theology
1633 At Salamanca Age 39 Soc 22 teaching Theology
1636-1639 At Valladolid teaching Philosophy and Theology
1642-1645 At Salamanca teaching Theology. Possesses excellent talent and judgement with much character and piety. Highly qualified to teach Theology. Has a talent for giving advice and transacting business. I believe a very good man to be a Superior. by 1645 has been Prefect of Studies.
1649 At Imperial College Madrid. Teaching Moral and “los estudios Reales”
In Waterford College there is a “Tirinus” with “Es de la Mission de Irlanda applicole con licencia de NP Geberal et Lucas Guadin SJ”

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
A Writer; One of the Wadding brothers SJ; Rector of Burgos; Prefect of Irish Mission; Professor of Theology at Salamanca, Valladolid and Madrid; A most distinguished man “quem summis aequiparare possis” (Litt Anuae Prov of Toledo); Ninve Volumes of his Theological MSS are preserved at Salamanca (Foley’s "Collectanea")
1617 In CAST (Irish Ecclesiastical Record, August 1874)
1642 At Salamanca, and Robert Nugent Irish Mission Superior in a letter of 24 April 1642 asks General Vitelleschi for his and his brother Peter’s services in Ireland, and again in another letter of 28 February 1643 (Oliver Stonyhurst MSS).
RIP 31 December 1650 or 01 January 1651. His death is alluded to in a letter or report of Fr Christopher Mendoza, Madrid 1675, as having occurred at St George’s College Madrid, but without date (cf Richard Cardwell’s transcripts of MSS SJ in the “Archives de l’État”, Brussels, Stonyhurst MSS)
“The Supreme Council of Ireland, to Fr Luke Wadding, of the Society of Jesus in Spain 28 June 1643 : Reverend Father, wee have sent back Father Talbot into Spain, to render humble and hearty thanks to his Catholicke Majesty fr the great affection he bears to our cause and nacion; and wee have authorised you as by our severall commissions you will finde to agitat our affairs as well at Courte as with the Prelates and Clergie of Spaine. We know your zeal to the cause and the care you have of your countrye” (Hogan)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Thomas and his 2nd wife Anastatia née Devereux. Brother of Thomas, half-Brother of Walter Michael and Peter. 1st Cousin of Ambrose and Luke OFM
Apparently he left Ireland as a young boy, and he had already studied Humanities at St Patrick’s Lisbon, and he had started Priestly studies at Salamanca 15 September 1608 before Ent 06 April 1610 Villagarcía the same day as his brother Thomas
1612-1619 After First Vows 06 April 1612 he was sent for studies to Royal College Salamanca and was Ordained there c 1618
1619-1622 He then taught Classics and later Philosophy and Theology for three years at Monforte
1622-1624 Taught Philosophy at Compostela
1625-1640 First teacher of Theology at St Ambrose, Valladolid
1640-1647 Teaching Theology at Royal College Salamanca
1647-1652 Teaching Theology at Imperial College Madrid (TOLE) where he died 10 January 1652
The Superior of the Irish Mission wanted to have Luke sent back to Ireland but the Spaniards refused to part with a scholar of his brilliance. Luke himself never lost interest in the Mission and was able to assist it with alms from friends in Spain
On the outbreak of the war in Ireland in 1641, he was able to counter the misrepresentations of the origin of the war circulated at the Spanish court by the English Jesuit, Thomas Babthorpe
He was also a Writer.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Note from Paul Sherlock (Sherlog) Entry
In April 1642 and again in February 1643, Robert Nugent, superior of the Jesuits in Ireland, wrote to the general of the order, Viteilleshi, requesting the return to Ireland of Sherlock and another Irish Jesuit, Luke Wadding (a professor at Salamanca and cousin of the Franciscan Luke Wadding (qv) (1588–1657)), declaring both priests to be ‘absolutely necessary to this mission’ (Grogan, 94). Neither priest returned.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Luke Wadding 1593-1651
Fr Luke Wadding was a cousin of Fr Ambrose Wadding SJ, and of Luke, the glory of the Franciscan order. The Jesuit Luke Wadding was born in Waterford in 1593, of which city his father, Thomas Wadding, was Mayor in 1596. In 1610 Luke Wadding entered the Jesuit noviciate at Villagarcia Spain, joining his younger brother Michael, who had entered the year before, and was followed the year after by his brother Thomas.

Fr Luke spent all his life in Spain, teaching Humanities and professing Philosophy and Theology in the various Colleges and Universities. In spite of repeated appeals by the Mission Superior Robert Nugent, he was never allowed back to work in Ireland. However, like his celebrated cousin, the Franciscan, he worked on behalf of the Irish cause on the continent. According to Richard Bellings “Fr James Talbot OSA and Fr Luke Wadding SJ, Professor of Divinity at Salamanca, procured 20,000 crowns for the Irish cause”.

He died in Madrid on 30th December 1651. In 1648 he had acted as Prefect of the Irish Mission, having under his charge the Irish Jesuit Colleges in Spain and Portugal, and in general to transact the business of the Jesuits in Ireland.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
WADDING, LUKE, (brother to F. Peter Wadding ) was a native of Waterford, and of a Family fruitful in great men. F. Luke was living at Salamanca, and his brother Peter in Bohemia, in the year 1642. On the 24th of April, that year, the Superior of the Irish Mission, F. Robert Nugent, applied to the General Vitelleschi for the benefit of their services at home. In a letter of the 28th of February, 1643, he repeated his anxious wish for their return, “in Missione hac omnino neccssarii sunt”; but it is certain that the petition could not be granted.

Born: 1610, Carton, County Kildare
Entered: 1625 - Lusitanae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1636, Évora, Portugal
Final Vows: 06 May 1656
Died: 18 November 1667, Dublin Residence, Dublin City, County Dublin

Older brother of Peter Talbot - LEFT 1659 (Archbishop of Dublin 1669; RIP November 15, 1680

Foley’s "Collectanea" :
I think there were three John Talbot SJs as follows :
(1) John Talbot DOB 1609; Ent 1626 Portugal;
(2) John Talbot DOB 1611 Kildare; Ent 1632; Irish Mission 1638 Preacher, Confessor and Professor of Humanities; RIP after 1666
(3) John Talbot DOB 1619; Ent c 1637; - had been at St Alban’s Valladolid before Ent Belgium 1637. Not traced in ANG Catalogues
One of these was a brother of Peter, the two others were probably an uncle and cousin of his

1628 Age 18 Soc 3 studying at Coimbra LUS
1634 At Valladolid
1636 At St Anthony’s College Lisbon
1649 CAT Given at Cork (30 after his name)
1650 CAT Teaching, Confessor and Concinator. Came to Mission in 1639 is Age 39.
1666 CAT Consultor of Mission living at Dublin, Catechising and Administering the Sacraments. On the Mission 26 years
“Peter Walsh said when Fr J Talbot died ‘There is one honest Jesuit’”
“Wilson’s Friar Disciplined” p 93 printed in 1694 says Fr J Talbot had influence with General Preston

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Son of William 1st Baron of Carton and Alison née Netterville. Brother of Richard, first Duke of Tyrconnell by James II and Viceroy of Ireland. Brother of Dr Peter Talbot, formerly SJ and Archbishop of Dublin. Brother of Robert 2nd Baron of Carton. (HIB Catalogues and Dr Peter Talbot’s “Friar Disciplined”) Cousins of the Netterville’s SJ.
Early years in the Society were at Évora, Portugal, and he studied Theology for three years in the Society. He knew Irish, English, French and Latin.
He taught lower schools for three years and was a Preacher and Confessor for eight years. (HIB CAT 1650 - ARSI)
1666 Consultor of Irish Mission and living in Dublin. He was engaged in administering the Sacraments and had been on the Mission twenty-six years. (HIB CAT 1666 - ARSI)
Esteemed good Preacher; like most of his Irish contemporaries, he spoke Irish, English and one or more of the continental languages.
Dr Peter Talbot in his “Haersis Blackloiana” says “Évora gave many orthodox Theologians to the Catholic faith, and among others, my brother John Talbot, a distinguished defender of the faith”. (cf Foley’s Collectanea, which also states that the HIB CAT 1650 says that he is a native of Kilkenny, born 1611 and Ent 1629)
Dr Peter Talbot in his “Friar Disciplined” says to the famous Peter Walsh “Mr Walsh, Father John Talbot, of whom you said when he died (as if it were a rarity of kind of miracle) ‘There lies a honest Jesuit’ assured me, that, after his brother Sir Robert Talbot Had...”
Dr Peter Talbot in his “Haeresis Blackloiana” p 250 says that he himself had studied in Rome with such gifted Jesuits (orbis miracula) as Tirrell, Maurus, Telin (an Irishman - Teeling?), and the younger Palavicino, and was appointed to teach Philosophy at Évora, which has given so many outstanding Theologians to England and Ireland, and amongst others, Father John Talbot, my brother, a distinguished defender of the Roman Faith”
He is probably the Jesuit named by Mercure Verdiere, Visitor to the Irish Province, in a letter 24 June 1649, as John James Talbot, then thirty years of age, and residing with his mother, “in oedibus nobilium” (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Sir William of Carton and Alison nee Netterville (daughter of John Netterville of Castletown, Co. Meath) Brother of Peter (later Archbishop of Dublin).
1627-1636 After First Vows (unclear if Noviceship was at Lisbon or Coimbra) he was sent for studies to Coimbra and then Évora where he was Ordained 1636
1636-1640 Had been teaching Latin at St Anthony’s, Lisbon, but very keen to be sent to Ireland.
1640-1652 Sent to Ireland where he worked from his mother’s house. He spoke Irish as well as English
1652-1654 Sent back to Europe and was in the company of his brother Peter (later Archbishop of Dublin), who was visiting various European courts to solicit help for Charles II
1655 Sent back to Ireland and he worked initially near Galway and then Dublin alternately, and ended at the Dublin Residence as a Consultor of the Mission (1664), where he died 18 November 1667

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
TALBOT, JOHN JAMES. This Father is mentioned in Pere Verdier’s Report of the 24th of June, 1649, as being 30 years old, of a robust constitution, but living with his mother, “in oedibus nobitium” without office.

N.B. There was another F. Talbot, whom I meet with in the town of Galway, early in 1649 : he is described as being about 40 years old, Professed of the Four Vows, and then teaching Grammar.

Died: 20 May 1734, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

◆ In Chronological Catalogue Sheet
◆ CATSJ I-Y has “Esteves or Stephens”; RIP 20 May 1734 Lisbon

Born: 1564, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Entered: 1584, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1597, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 17 April 1641, Clonmel, County Tipperary

Alias Shine

1587: At Coimbra Age 24 Soc 3.25. Studied Humanities
1593: At Angra College, Terceira, Azores teaching Grammar
1597: At Coimbra in 4th year Theology
1603: At Irish College, Lisbon?
1621: Catalogue Age 63 Soc 37 Prof 3 Vows. Talent and judgement good, not sufficiently circumspect. An enthusiastic Operarius
1622: In East Munster
1626: In Ireland. Good in all prudence middling

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica”:
“Of great abilities; had seen a great deal “multa vidit”; came to Ireland c 1607. In Ireland 1617 (Irish Ecclesiastical Record August 1874). Names in a letter of Thomas Lawndry 04 November 1611 (published in Irish Ecclesiastical Record) as then helping Nicholas Lynach in West part of Southern Province. Oliver of Stonyhurst MSS, states that he reached Ireland with Fr Everard before the end of 1607.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ:
He had already done studies in Humanities for five years at Lisbon before Ent 1584 Coimbra.
1586-1591 After First Vows he was sent for Philosophy to Coimbra.
1591-1593 He was sent for Regency to Angra in the Azores.
1593-1597 Sent again to Coimbra for Theology and was Ordained there 1597.
1597-1605 He was sent as Operarius to St Anthony’s Lisbon and Spiritual Director and Confessor at the Irish College.
1605-1609 He was sent as Operarius successively at Faro and Évora.
1609 Sent to Ireland and spent the rest of his life at Clonmel - not least because his travel was restricted due to poor eyesight. He died at Clonmel 17 April 1641.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
SHINE, THOMAS, reached Ireland from Spain with F. Everard before the end of 1607.

Born: 1530, County Wexford
Entered: the Society 05 December 1564, Professed House, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Final Vows: 1575
Died: 19 June 1588, at Sea in The Armada - “in classe quel ibat in Angliam” - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

1567: He is being sent by Fr Borgia to Canisius “as he is one of the most talented of the pupils of Fr Pereira, Prof Philosophy at the Roman College, and advanced in virtue” (Letters of Borgia Vol III p510).
1567: “Robertus or Rochford Hibernus” at Dillingen in November (Richard Fleming there at the same time) - his talent at Rome having been noteworthy
1576: At Paris College Age 30.
1587: At St Anthony’s College Lisbon, Age 44, Soc 22, teaching Latin and Catechism. Said to be teaching Ireland under the Bishop of Cork -Tanner, an ex Jesuit) VAT Arch Inghilterra 1.308)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica”
Probably a brother of Charles - who only gets mentioned as being in Youghal 1588.
He was a great linguist; Prisoner; Missioner.
His name often appears in the Anglo-Irish State Papers.
He died on board a Spanish man-of-war; “a Martyr of Charity”; Had taught school in Youghal in 1575.
It is probably he of whom Stanihurst describes “born in the county of Wexford, is a proper divine, an exact philosopher and very good antiquary”.
In 1581 Matthew Lamport of Waterford and Matthias Lamport a Dublin PP were hanged for harbouring Fr Rochford; Robert Meiler, Edeard Cheevers, John O’Lahy and two sailors were hanged, drawn and quartered for bringing him from Belgium to Ireland; Richard French, A Wexford Priest, for harbouring him, was imprisoned in Dublin and died of misery in prison (IbIg).
Mentioned in a letter of Edmund Tanner, Cork 11 October 1577, as keeping a school at Youghall with Charles, spreading on every side the good odour of the Society of Jesus (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS).
Highly spoken of in a letter from Henry Fitzsimon in a letter in Irish Ecclesiastical Record, March 1873 p 262, and is frequently mentioned in "Hibernia Ignatiana".
We know of his death 19 June 1588 from an entry in “Bibl. de Bourg. MS n 6397, liber primus defunctorum SJ in variis provinciis, Brussels” : “Balthazar de Almeida (died) in a ship which was proceeding to England, 17 June 1588. P Robertus Rocheford (died) on the same ship, 19/06/1588”. They were probably Chaplains in the Spanish Armada.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Robert Rochfort 1530-1588
After the departure of Fr David Wolfe from Ireland, there were two Jesuits left there, Frs Charles Leae and Robert Rochfort. The latter was born in Wexford in 1530 and entered the Society at Rome in 1564. St Peter Canisius was his Professor at Dilingen in 1567.

Having come to the Irish Mission, he succeeded in maintaining a school in Youghal, in spite of continual persecution until 1575, with the aid of Fr Leae. This school was highly praised by Edmund Tanner, Bishop of Cork and former Jesuit.

Fr Rochfort was closely associated with Viscount Baltinglass in the rebellion of 1581. On his account many people suffered imprisonment and death for harbouring him. The English seem to have had a great dread of him and his name is constantly mentioned in State Papers of the time. Finally, seeing how dangerous it was for people to harbour him, he withdrew to Lisbon in 1532.

In Lisbon he laboured for some years to the great spiritual advantage of Catholics from Ireland and England and other nations, and whom his skill in many languages enabled him to instruct and assist. According to common report, he died in Lisbon in 1588. However, in a list of Defuncti of the Society we find the following “Balthazar Almeida died in a ship which was proceeding to England June 17th 1588. P Robert Rochford died in the same ship, June 19th 1588. He had been a prisoner for the faith and died a victim of charity”. It would seem that he had been a chaplain to one of the ships of the Spanish Armada

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
ROCHFORD, ROBERT, is mentioned with honour in the Epistle Dedicatory of Father Fitzsimon’s Treatise on the mass, printed in 1611. In a letter of Father Edmund Tanner, dated Cork, the 11th of October, 1577, I read, “Rev. Father Charles and Master Robert Rochford spread on every side the sweetest odour of the Institute of the Society of Jesus. They keep a school in the town of Youghall, in the Dioceses of Cork, Munster : their auditors and the townspeople are daily trained in the Christian doctrine, and the frequentation of the Sacraments and good Morals, as well as the miserable circumstances of the times will permit, but not without molestation; yet God gives them perseverance and great benefit to their Hearers”.

Born: 1571, Kilfenora, County Clare
Entered: 1601, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: pre Entry
Final vows: 06 January 1629
Died: 06 June 1629, Galway Residence - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Carrick

Studied 2 years Arts before entry
1603 In Philosophy at Coimbra (LUS)
1606 Hearing Confessions and helping Fr White at Madrid
1611 Minister at Professed House in Villaviciosa, Asturias, Spain, The Minister at Irish College, Lisbon, Age 43 Soc 10 has studied Philosophy and Theology
1614 Has been Rector at Irish College Lisbon for 5 years and still there in 1622 (Rector 9 years)
1617 In Portugal Age 49 Soc 19
1626 In Portugal

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Called “Tuamensis and Toumensis”
Praised by Father Fitzsimon as a benefactor of Irish education; Was of Thomond or Tuam Diocese
1617 In Portugal (IER August 1874)
Drew’s “Fasti SJ” records a death of a man of this name in Cadurci (Cahors), France 1633. He is described as most devout to the Blessed Eucharist, and when a youth, being reduced to death’s door by a dangerous sickness, he earnestly desired to receive Holy Communion, not so much by way of viaticum as of medicine, and, having partaken of the heavenly Food, he was instantly restored to health, to the amazement of the medical men. He was so inflamed with the love of God, that, when speaking of the Divine things, sparks were seen issuing from his mouth, inflaming the hearts of his auditors with the same affection.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had studied Humanities and Philosophy at Irish College Lisbon and was already Ordained before Ent 1601 Lisbon.
After First Vows he completed his studies at Coimbra.
1604-1606 Confessor at Irish College Lisbon
1606-1609 Minister at Vila Viçosa
1609-1620 Rector Irish College Lisbon
1620-1626 Procurator Irish College Lisbon
1629 Sent to Ireland in the Summer and to the Connaught Residence until he died June 1629

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Cornelius Roche SJ 1575-1633
Cornelius Roche was born in Tuam in 1575. He entered the Society in 1596 and was in Portugal in 1617, where his name was written as De Rocha. It is recorded in the “Fasti Breviores” that he died at Carduci in (Cahors) France in 1633. He was most devout to the Blessed Sacrament.

When a youth being reduced to death’s door by sickness, he earnestly desire to receive Holy Communion, not so much by way of viaticum but as medicine, and having received, he was instantly restored to health, to the amazement of the doctors.

The “Fasti Breviores” says of him “He was so inflamed with the love of God that when speaking of heavenly things, sparks were seen issuing from his mouth”.

His name also appears in the Irish version as Cornelius Carrig.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CARRICK, CORNELIUS. I meet him at Madrid in August, 1607. He is mentioned with honor in F. Fitzsimmon’s Treatise on the Mass, 1611

ROCHE, CORNELIUS. All that I ferret out, is his existence in the early part of the 17th century in Spain.

Born: 1584, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 1604, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae province (LUS)
Ordained: c 1617, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 21 October 1629, Dublin Residence, Dublin City, County Dublin

Alias Cotinho

1606 & 1611 At Coimbra College
1609 LUS CAT suggests Coutenho and Queitrott are not the same person :
Robert Queitrotus Dublin Age 20 in Society 4 years
Robert Coutinus Dublin Age 23 in Society 5 years
1611 CAT in Portugal studying Philosophy
1614 Teaching Greek & Hebrew at Coimbra
1617 in Portugal
1619 Had been at Coimbra 6 years
1622 at Santarem College teaching Greek and Hebrew
Son of Nichilas Queytrot Mayor of Dublin c1515??

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ
Had studied at Irish College Lisbon before Ent 1604 Lisbon
1606-1613 After First Vows he was sent to Coimbra for studies in Latin, Philosophy and one year of Theology
1613-1619 He was then sent to teach Hebrew and Greek also at Coimbra for six years. He seems to have been Ordained priest by 1617 without having completed the usual studies
1619-1622 Sent to studies at Coimbra again, and was still doing them while also an Operarius at Santarém 1621-1622
1622-1623 Made Tertianship at Lisbon
1623 He was sent to Ireland and the Dublin Residence. he was teaching Humanities at the school in Back Lane and working as an Operarius when he died October 1629

Born: 1594, Muskerry, County Cork
Entered: 17 March 1621, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 21 December 1619, Seville, Spain - pre Entry
Final vows: 16 August 1636
Died: 28 February 1656, Professed House, Lisbon, Portugal - - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Cornelio de San Patricio

Had studied 3 years Theology at Seville before Ent
1625 At Irish College Lisbon, Prefect of Theologians and Philosophers
21628 Teaches Theology at College of St Miguel, Azores
1633-1636 A Master of Arts, now teaching Casus at Évora
1639 At Irish College Lisbon teaching Moral and Scholastic Theology
1642-1656 At Professed House Lisbon, Confessor, Concinator, Teaching Moral and Special Theology
Published “Disputatio de Regno Apologetica Hibernia”. This was republished by Trinity College to incite odium against Catholics and prevent their emancipation (Foley 476)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Writer; Professor of Theology at Évora and elsewhere; described as very brave and pious; was a great light in Moral Theology in Lisbon (“Annales” Franco). A celebrated man of his day.
He rendered great service during an earthquake and eruption in San Miguel, Angra, Azores
Harris “Writers of Ireland”, where he mentions that he published under the name Constantine Marullus “Disputatio apologetica et manifestiva de jure Regni Hibern : pro Catholicis Hibernis adversarus haereticos Anglos”, quarto, Frankfort, 1645. Book 1, p 121. Harris was bitter against him, and gravely asserts that Gregory XIII, who had then been dead and buried for fifty-seven years, granted a Bull in 1642 to Owen Roe
(cf Gilbert’s “History of Affairs in Ireland” part ii pp 668 and 739; Foley’s Collectanea - where he is called Constantine or Conon O’Mahony )

Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had studied and was Ordained at Irish College Seville 21 December 1619 before Ent 17 March 1621 Portugal (While he was still engaged in his studies he was expelled from the College but received back after he had expressed repentance for his fault) Then he Entered a year later in Portugal.
Once he Entered in Portugal he used the name “Cornelio de San Patricio”
After First Vows Sent as Prefect of Studies to Irish College Lisbon
1626 Sent to the Azores as Professor of Moral Theology at San Miguel, Angra, quickly establishing a high reputation throughout Portugal. During the 1630 earthquake at San Miguel, he showed resourcefulness and courage in bringing help and consolation to those rendered homeless by the disaster.
1633-1639 Sent to Évora to teach Moral Theology. He had graduated MA - but unclear if this was in Spain or Portugal.
1639-1642 Sent to Irish College Lisbon to teach Moral Theology
1642 Operarius at the Professed House in Lisbon, where he died 28 February 1656
His celebrated book “Disputatio Apologetica et Manifestativa de Iure Regni Hiberniae pro Catholicia Hibernis adversus Haereticos Anglos ” possibly makes him considered as the first Irish “separatist” of modern times. This book was circulated in Lisbon, but bears the name of a non existent publisher in Frankfurt. The book was denounced by João IV of Portugal, an ally of England. O’Mahony proposed that the solution to Irelands problems might be the election of a King of old Irish stock, and also urged war to the death of all English Protestants in the country. The thesis of the book was used by the Confederation of Kilkenny to attack the position of Eoin Ruadh. It was a century and a half later, with Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen before this thesis was proposed again. O’Mahony’s book was reissued in Dublin in 1826 by those who wished to raise anger against the Catholic Church and the Emancipation movement.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
O'Mahony, Conor
by Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin

O'Mahony, Conor (1594–1656), Jesuit academic and author, was a native of Muskerry, west Co. Cork. Little of his early life is known until his entrance into the Irish College at Seville, probably in 1614, where he studied philosophy and theology for three and four years respectively, ultimately graduating as master of arts and doctor of divinity. He was admitted to minor orders on 7 June 1618 and was ordained a priest on 21 December 1619. The following year he was almost expelled from the college for unspecified misdemeanours. In 1621 he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in Lisbon and took the name ‘Cornelius a Sancto Patricio’. In and around 1626 he went to the college of San Miguel in the Azores, where he was to spend seven years as professor of moral theology. He is also recorded as having performed great service to the victims of an earthquake and eruption at Ponta Delgada in 1630. O'Mahony held the chair of moral theology at the university of Evora (1633–5), and in 1636, the year of his final profession as a Jesuit, was transferred to Lisbon, where he became professor of dogmatic theology for five years.

The experience of living in Portugal during the Braganza revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs and, almost certainly, personal acquaintance with several of the Jesuit scholars who provided intellectual justification for the Braganza position, were of critical importance in conditioning his own reaction to rebellion in Ireland and the formation of the Confederate Catholic Association in 1642. In 1645 he published in Lisbon the text on which his historical reputation rests, the Disputatio apologetica de iure regni Hiberniae pro catholicis Hibernis adversus haereticos Anglos, a two-part work consisting of a ‘disputatio’ and an ‘exhortatio’.

O'Mahony's purpose was to demonstrate that the ‘Hiberni’, a generic term which he used to denote all the catholics of the island, had the right to reject the authority of the monarchs of England over Ireland. In the ‘disputatio’ he first rehearsed a series of arguments which might be advanced to legitimise English authority, and then proceeded to attack them. His arguments were intensely legalistic and the historical underpinning was somewhat weak. The second part of the ‘disputatio’ was relatively stronger. It adapted the work of Bellarmine, Suarez, and Molina to build a case that, even if English monarchs had once legitimately ruled over Ireland, the Irish retained the right to eliminate their authority because of the lapse into heresy of Charles I and his two predecessors. The ‘exhortatio’ that followed, drawing heavily on biblical example, urged the Irish people to choose a new catholic and native monarch and to eliminate all the remaining heretics in the island.

Although emotional resonances with O'Mahony's book can be detected in some manuscript material produced after the rebellion of 1641, it received almost no public support among the audience for which it was avowedly written, the Confederate Catholics of Ireland. The book ran counter to the dominant current in Irish catholic political ideology, which stressed the legitimacy of Stuart rule. In 1645, the year of its publication, even the clerical convocation, the most militant group within the association, dismissed out of hand the idea that Charles was not the confederates’ legitimate king. Radical catholics within the association opted to refer to the confederate oath of association to justify their objectives, rather than to O'Mahony's dangerously divisive argumentation. Moreover, the frank approbation in the ‘exhortatio’ for the killing of 150,000 protestants since the initial rebellion was particularly unwelcome to the great mass of the Confederate Catholic leadership, who wished to avoid any link to the alleged massacres of 1641. The confederate executive ordered that copies of the book should be burned by the common hangman, and evidence has survived that the city of Galway independently expressed its abhorrence for the book and its author. Peter Walsh (qv) is also said to have preached nine sermons against the book in Kilkenny.

Although it attracted little support in Ireland, O'Mahony's text did contribute to the divisions that racked the confederate association in the later years of the decade. It was feared in some quarters that his book was intended to provide the theoretical underpinning to an attempt by Owen Roe O'Neill (qv) to wrest the sovereignty of Ireland from the Stuart monarchy. O'Mahony's work also increased the difficulties of the papal nuncio Rinuccini (qv), who was suspected of plotting to establish papal suzerainty over Ireland and who was accused in Rome by Sir Kenelm Digby of tolerating the Disputatio apologetica. Rinuccini may also have refused to hand John Bane, a parish priest in Athlone, over to secular justice after he was discovered with a copy of the book in his possession. For his part the papal nuncio related some of the hysteria evoked by the text to the fears of secular landowners that O'Mahony's arguments might be used to delegitimise their continued possession of former monastic property. The divisive effect of the book seems to have been heightened by the general lack of knowledge concerning the true identity of its author. This may well have been a conscious decision on the part of O'Mahony, as the title page of the book gave a bogus place of publication. Alternatively, the reference to Frankfurt as the place of publication in the title imprint may have been a device to escape the attentions of the Portuguese censor.

As it transpired, the efforts of the English ambassador, Sir Henry Compton, resulted in two separate condemnations of the text in Portugal on 6 April and 5 December 1647, although no action seems to have been taken against O'Mahony. In the post-confederate period the Irish Jesuit did reveal himself as the text's author to Patrick Plunkett (qv), bishop of Ardagh. Having been in good health, he died suddenly 28 February 1656 at the Jesuit House in Lisbon.

After his decease, copies of the Disputatio were never common: the authors of the Commentarius Rinuccinianus, for instance, had never seen the text but it did enter into later Irish protestant mythology. In 1689 Richard Cox (qv) described it as ‘a most treasonable and scandalous book’ and observed that it was not publicly condemned by the congregation of catholic clergy in Dublin in 1666. A small number of copies of the work were reprinted, apparently in 1826, probably as part of the campaign against catholic emancipation.

Peter Walsh, The history and vindication of the loyal formulary of Irish remonstrance (1674); Edward Borlase, The history of the Irish rebellion (1680); Richard Cox, Hibernia Anglicana: or the history of Ireland from the conquest thereof by the English to the present time (1689); G. Aiazzi, Nunziatura in Irlanda di Monsignor Gio. Baptista Rinuccini arcivescovo di Fermo negli anni 1645 à 1649 (1844); Records of the English province of the Society of Jesus, vii, pt ii (1883); Stanislaus Kavanagh (ed.), Commentarius Rinuccianus, de sedis apostolicae legatione ad foederatos Hiberniae catholicos per annos 1645–9 (6 vols, 1932–49); J. P. Conlon, ‘Some notes on the Disputatio apologetica’, Bibliog. Soc. Ire., vi, no. 5 (1955), 66–77; P. Ó Fionnagáin, ‘Conor O'Mahony, S.J. (1594–1656): separatist’, O'Mahony Journal, xvi (1993), 3–15; Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, ‘ “Though hereticks and politicians should misinterpret their goode zeal”: political ideology and catholicism in early modern Ireland’, Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Political thought in seventeenth-century Ireland: kingdom or colony (2000), 155–75

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Cornelius O’Mahony SJ 1594-1656
Constantine O’Mahony was born at Muskerry County Cork and became a Jesuit in 1621. When his formation was complete, he professed Philosophy at Lisbon.

In 1645 he published his “Disputatio Apologetica et Manifestiva de Iure Regni Hiberniae pro Catolicis Hibernis Adversus Hereticos Angles”. It was published under the pen name Constantine Marillus. The thesis of the book was that the supreme authority of a nation lies in the representatives of the people, the teaching of St Robert Bellarmine and Suarez. The book gave great offence to the Supreme Council at Kilkenny, and had the distinction of being publicly burnt in the market place of the same town. It was reprinted in Dublin in 1827, 100 copies. The book is singled out for special mention and attack by Hector McPherson in his book called “England’s Fight with the Papacy” in the chapter entitled “The Jesuits in History”. McPherson says that O’Mahony was regarded as “a great light in moral Theology in Lisbon, according to Roman Catholic circles”. Harris in his “Writers of Ireland (p121) describes O’Mahony as “a Jesuit of most virulent temper”. However, we are warned by Oliver and his colleagues, that Harris’ opinion of the author and his work must be received with caution – “much is heavily grounded on hearsay evidence”.

Fr O’Mahony was often called Cornelius a Santo Patricio. He was alive in 1650 at Lisbon, though very old

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
MAHONY, CONSTANTINE, born at Muskerry, in the County of Cork,and often called “Cornelius a Sancto Patritio” Harris, p. 121, Book I, of the writers of Ireland, describes him as “a Jesuit of a most virulent temper”, and says that he published a book under the feigned name of Constantine Marullus, entitled, “Disputatio Apologetica et Manifestiva de Jure Regni Hiberniae pro Catolicis Hibernis adversus Haereticos Anglos”, 4to. Frankfort, 1645. Harris’s character of the work and of its author must be read with caution : much is evidently grounded on the hearsay of enemies. One assertion, that Pope Gregory XIII, had granted to Owen Rowe O’Neil a Bull in 1642, “whereby all the actors in the bloody massacre of the foregoing year are blessed”, is the compound of the vilest absurdity and most atrocious falsehood. That good old Pope had been honestly dead and buried 57 years before the appearance of this Irish Bull. F. Mahony was still living in 1650, at Lisbon, but far advanced in years.

Born: 1603, County Galway
Entered: 15 April 1623, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 25 July 1632, Évora, Portugal
Final Vows: 11 February 1646
Died: 31 March 1664, Irish College, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Catalogus Defuncti 1641-1740 has Edmund Kelly (Chelli, Guellus, Quelly) RIP 31/03/1664 Lisbon (HS48 37r Hibern. et Transtag,)

Catalogus Defuncti 1640-1670 says Edmund Kelly (Chelli, Guellus, Quelly) RIP 31/03/1664 Ulyssipone (HS48 37r Hibern et Transtag)

Born: 1593, Pallas, County Longford
Entered: 1611, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)
Died: 09 August 1615, Irish College, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)

Alias O’Feril

1614 at Irish College Lisbon, a Lay Brother

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1611 Was in Irish College Lisbon

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
After his First Vows he was sent to Irish College Lisbon, and nothing further is known

Born: 1604, Galway City County Galway
Entered: 02 February 1619, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1633, Coimbra, Portugal
Final Vows: 01 November 1640
Died: 01 January 1642, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

1622 At Évora studying Rhetoric;
1625 At Coimbra 3rd year Arts
1636 In Tertianship at St Anthony’s Lisbon
1639 At St Anthony's College, Lisbon teaching Latin (or Grammar) and Mathematics

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1626 Sent to Bragança College for Regency and demonstrated exceptional ability as a Mathematician
1631 Returned to Coimbra for Theology, qualified with an MA and was Ordained there in 1633
After studies he was appointed to teach Mathematics at St Anthony’s Lisbon regarded as one of the most outstanding mathematicians in that kingdom.
1641 He was named Royal Engineer but did not long enjoy his distinction as he died in Lisbon 01 January 1642

Born: 21 September 1703, Lisbon, Portugal
Entered: 13 September 1720, Bordeaux, France - Aquitaniae Province (AQUIT)
Ordained: 1730, Bordeaux, France
Final Vows: 1737
Died: 15 September 1739, Irish College, Poitiers, France - Aquitaniae Province (AQUIT)

1733-1737 At Irish College Poitiers teaching Humanities and Rhetoric
of Irish parentage

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Early education in Philosophy was at Irish College Poitiers
1722-1728 After First Vows he spent six years Regency and Périgueux and La Rochelle.
1728-1732 He then was set for Theology at Bordeaux and was Ordained 1730
1732-1733 He was sent teaching at Agen for a year
1733 Sent to Irish College Poitiers as Procurator, where he worked until he died 15 September 1739. He was regarded by his contemporaries as a man of deeply religious virtue
Ignatius Kelly and his successor, Thomas Hennessy both tried to have Matthew assigned to the Irish Mission. This is but one of many instances where Irish Jesuits regarded Jesuits born abroad of Irish parents as belonging potentially to their Mission in Ireland.

Born; County Galway City, County Galway
Entered: 25 April 1600, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1611/2, Evora, Portugal
Died: 16 August 1617, Bragança, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Andreas Nolan

1603 At Coimbra studying Age 21 Soc 3.5
Rest of time “In Portugal” probably mostly Coimbra : 4th year Arts; 4 years Theology; Taught Latin at Coimbra studying Theology and Philosophy
In 4th Year Theology his name appears as “Fr Andrea O’Nolan”

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
In Portugal 1617

◆ Fr Francis Finegan :
Had studied at Irish College Lisbon before Ent 25 April 1600 Coimbra
1602-1606 After First Vows he remained in Coimbra for Philosophy.
1606-1608 He was then sent for two years Regency at Bragança.
1608-1612 He was sent to Évora for theology and he was Ordained there 1611/12
1612-1614 When formation was completed he was again sent to Coimbra to teach Latin
1614 He was sent back to Bragança where he died suddenly during the plague 16 August 1617
An impressive obituary notice of him has survived.
He had volunteered for the Irish Mission, but he was such valued in Portugal, both in the classroom and the pulpit, as well as being recognised as an eminent Spiritual Director.

Born: 23 May 1726, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 31 July 1747, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: pre 1754
Died: 29 June 1795, Killaloe, County Clare

Son of Elinor Nihill née Hackett

Nihill or Nihell is a variant of O’Neill

1757-1759 Prefect of Boarders at Irish College Poitiers

There were three other Nihell’s SJ. One was the brother of the Bishop, and John and Edward who was born at Antigua, and entered the Society at Ghent in 1768 and 1769. Edward died a victim of charity attending negroes at Trinidad in 1826 (cf Foley’s Collectanea). His Nephew was Father McShee SJ.
Ferrar’s “Limerick” :
Of a very ancient and respectable family names O’Neill. He was a near relative of Baron Harrold, Colonel of the Regiment of Königsfelt, of Colonel Nihell, of Dillon’s Regiment at Fontenoy, and of Brigadier-General in Naples, and Colonel of the Regiment of Limerick. He was also a brother to Dr James Nihell, a medical writer, and a nephew of Sir John Higgins, first physician to the King of Spain.”
1770 He published a work on “Rational Self Love”.
1778 The Archbishop of Dublin tried to get him made Bishop of Limerick, while the Bishop of Cashel and his friends supported Thomas Butler (later Lord Cahir), another ex-Jesuit.
1784 He was made Bishop of Kilfenora
1787 He was completing and preparing for press his brother James’ “Life and Doctrines of Christ” and was engaged in writing a “History of the Redemption of Man”. (These MSS are in the Milltown Park Library).
J Roche, author of “Memoirs of an Octogenarian” says “Dr Nihell was a cousin of my father’s, at whose table I well recollect him as a most welcome guest, for he was distinguished as a Priest, a scholar and a gentleman. I was present at his consecration in Limerick in 1784, when Mr Kirwan OsF was Preacher, and Lord Dunboyne, Bishop of Cork, one of the assisting prelates. Kirwan preached on apostasy, and he and Dunboyne later apostasised!” (cf O’Renehan’s “Collections” p 370)
His tomb is in the old Cathedral of Kilfenora.
Brother of Bishop Nihell. The Nihill’s were related to the Harolds, Arthurs, Macghees, McNamaras, Butlers, Woulfes and Calcutts of Limerick and Clare (in pen)
After the Suppression he was PP of Rathkeale. As he was of decided literary tastes, he resigned his parish and lived in Limerick. He died there some time post 1780. (Father Denis Murphy’s Collections)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Laurence Nihell and Alice née Arthur
His early life in the Society is hard to determine. he is mentioned only once in the LUS Catalogue 1749, which tells nothing of his studies before Entry. It seems certain that after First Vows he was sent to Coimbra for studies.
1752 In the Spring of 1752 he wrote to Fr General for permission to study Mathematics and Theology before he should return to Ireland. The General in his reply, dated 30 May, informed him that the permission asked for would be granted only if Superiors decided that such studies were necessary
1754 It is also uncertain if he was Ordained when he arrived at the Irish College Poitiers 15 December 1754 - there is no record of him in the AQUIT Catalogues of 1754 and 1758. His name at Poitiers has survived only in the Procurator's books down to 1758 when he left the Society.
1758 LEFT the Society and returned to Ireland where he was incardinated in Limerick, and succeeded Fr David Burke as PP of Rathkeale in 1762.
1767 Moved to St Mary’s Limerick as senior Curate
1783 Ordained Bishop of Kilfenora, and he died 29 June 1795 and was buried in the chancel of the old Cathedral Church of his Diocese

Born: 05 July 1626 County Cork
Entered: 14 October 1655, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Provine (LUS)
Ordained: 1655, Lisbon, Portugal - pre Entry
Died: 01 August 1676, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal - Lusitaniae Provine (LUS)

1638 Confessor at the country house of St Ignatius College Oporto
1661 At Irish College Lisbon - Minister and Procurator
1665-1676 At Funchal College, Madeira

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1670 The Irish Mission Superior repeatedly asked to have him sent to Ireland from the Madeira Mission
(cf Boulaye Le Gouz, about a Cork family of this name; and Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
He was already Ordained and had completed most of his studies before Ent 14 October 1655 Lisbon
After First Vows he was sent to Évora for studies, but fell seriously ill there and was sent as Operarius at Porto
1660 He was sent as Minister and Procurator at the Irish College Lisbon.
1661 For reasons of health he was sent as Procurator to Funchal, Madeira, and for the next 10 years appealed to be sent to Ireland (including a letter he wrote to the General 30 April
1662), and his request had the backing of the Superiors of the Irish Mission. In that letter he explained that during his serious illness at Évora, he had made a vow to Francis Xavier to ask if he could be sent to Ireland, were he restored to full health, and he attributed his restored health to his promise. Nothing came of his letter, or the requests from the Irish Mission. But it was decided that his frail health could only deteriorate rapidly in Ireland while his Portuguese Superiors were unwilling to part with him. The matter came up again in 1670, and a similar decision was made.
He was Procurator of the Funchal Residence up to the time of his death August 1576 but was also highly regarded as a man of prudence and good judgement in his work, as well as a capacity to be a zealous Operarius.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
NEVILLE, ROBERT. All that I can learn of him is contained in a letter of F. Richard Burke, dated from Galway, 4th of April, 1670, in which he repeats his petition that F. Robert may be recalled from the Mission at Madeira, to serve his native country.

Born: 23 October 1583. County Meath
Entered: 23 October 1604, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM) & Naples, Italy - Neapolitan Province (NAP)
Ordained: 1610, Naples, Italy
Final vows: 1624
Died: 17 July 1644, Drogheda, County Louth - Described as "Martyr"

Uncle of Nicholas Nettweville, RIP 1697 and Christopher Netterville, RIP 1651

Originally received into Society by Fr Bernard Olivier on 30 August 1604. Then received 23 October 1604 at Novitiate in Rome , and after 1st Probation 22 November 1604 went to Naples to continue Aged 22
1606-1611 In Naples College studying Logic, 3 years Philosophy and 3 Theology
1617 In Meath Age 35 Soc 13
1621 CAT In Meath Age 38 Soc 17 Mission 7. Strength middling. Good talent and judgement. Not very circumspect. Sanguineus and rather lazy. A Preacher
1625 At Irish College Lisbon
1622-1637 In Dublin district
Master of Arts, Minister 3 years, Irish Mission 12

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He was Minister in Naples
1615 Came to Ireland from Sicily
1621 In Kildare
Dragged from his bed by the rebel Parliamentary soldiers at Drogheda 15 June 1649, cruelly beaten with clubs, causing his death four days layer aged 67. (cf Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS, IER. Tanner’s “Martyr SJ” and Drew’s “Fasti SJ”)
A most meritorious Missioner (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1606-1612 After First Vows he studied at Naples where he was Ordained 1610, ad then he did for two further years of study at Naples.
1613-1614 Made Tertianship at the College of Massa.
1614-1615 He was sent to Ireland with John Shee, but illness kept him at Bordeaux until 1615
1615-1623 Arrived in Ireland and the Dublin Residence, exercising Ministry in the surrounding Counties of Kildare and Meath.
1623-1625 He set out for Spain bringing a group of Irish Seminarians for the Irish Colleges. On arrival he secured interviews with the Ambassador of England and the secretary of the Prince of Wales for whom negotiations were in progress to conclude a marriage agreement with one of the Spanish Infantas. In these interviews he received reassurances that religious persecution would cease in Ireland as soon as the royal match was made. In August of that same year he went to the Irish College, Lisbon, and during his stay there was accused by the Archbishop of Cashel/Dublin of failing in impartiality with regard to the admission of students from the four provinces of Ireland to the Irish Colleges of the Peninsula. One outcome was that he was called back to Ireland in the Spring of 1625
1625-1641 Returned to Ireland and Dublin until the City was controlled by the Puritans
1641 He was based in North Leinster. He was captured and put to death by Scots Covenanters under Munroe who made an incursion as far as North Westmeath in June and July 1644.
The correct Date of Death is 17 July 1644. Some Jesuit writers gave his year of death at 1649 to coincide with the massacre at Drogheda. It is probable that the Roman necrologist mistook Netterville for Robert Bathe, who died in Kilkenny 1649

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Robert Netterville SJ 1583-1649
Robert Netterville was born in Meath in 1583, brother of Viscount Netterville and uncle of Frs Nicholas and Christopher Netterville. He became a Jesuit in 1604 in Italy.

For the rest of his life he was stationed at our Residence in Drogheda. When that city was besieged by Cromwell, Fr Robert was now an old man and confined to bed with his infirmities. But old age and infirmity did not save him from the fury of the Cromwellians. He was dragged from his bed and trailed along the ground, being violently knocked against each obstacle that presented itself on the way. Then he was beaten with clubs, and when many of his bones were broken he was cast on the highway. Catholics came during the night, bore him away and hid him somewhere. Four days after, having fought the good fight, he departed as we would expect to receive the martyr’s crown.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
NETTERVILLE, ROBERT. This venerable old man, rich in labors and merits, was dragged from his bed by the Parliamentary soldiers at Drogheda, on the 15th of June, 1619, and so unmercifully beaten with clubs, that he died four days later “Per domum raptatus, tum fustibus contusus, effractisque ad collum et humcros ossibus (15 Junii, 1649) relictus est semivivus, et quarto post die abiit è vita”.
Ex libro Collectancorum signato F. olim in Archiv, Coll. Angl. Romae. - See Tanner , Drews.

Born: 1581, Fethard, County Tipperary
Entered: 01 September 1609, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: Salamanca pre entry
Final Vows: 1628
Died: 27 August 1649, Irish College, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Peter Naishe, by 1626 under the name Peter Ignatius (cf Foley’s Collectanea)
DOB 1582 Fethard; Ent 1608 Portugal; RIP post 1626 Portugal
In Lisbon : 1609; 1611; 1617; 1626

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ
DOB 1581 Fethard; Ent 01 September 1607 Portugal; Ord pre Ent Salamanca; RIP between 1649 and 1650 Lisbon
Son of William and Elena née Mulrony. He was probably a nephew of Andrew Mulrony and uncle of Nicholas Nash

Had already studied Humanities at irish College Lisbon and was briefly at Irish College Salamanca and was already Ordained before Ent 1609 Portugal without having completed the usual course of studies.

After First Vows he was sent to initially to Irish College Lisbon, where the LUS CAT states that he had completed Philosophy but only half a year of Theology. He was then sent to Évora, where he studied Theology for another year and a half.
1613/14 Sent to Irish College Lisbon and served positions of Minister and Procurator up to his death there between 1649 and 1654

Up to 1621 he was regarded as destined for the Irish Mission, but when his success in administration became recognised, he was left in Portugal to serve the interest of the students who would return as priests to Ireland.

◆ In Old/15 (1), Old/16 and Chronological Catalogue Sheet

◆ CATSJ I-Y has
1608 At Coimbra Age 26
1610 1649 At Irish College Lisbon - Minister and studying Philosophy and Theology

Born: 29 September 1680, Balrothery, County Dublin
Entered: 11 April 1703, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: c 1712, Coimbra, Portugal
Final Vows 14 February 1736
Died: 12 July 1736, Dublin Residence, Dublin City, County Dublin

Nephew of Edward Murphy, Archbishop of Dublin

1705-1711 At Coimbra studying Philosophy and Theology. Teaching Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Progress very good
1716 Came to Ireland
1736 Superior in Dublin
“Good disposition, learned, inclined to work. Modest, humble, meek and always docile to Superiors directions. Esteemed by people and clergy. Has an uncle a Bishop. Now in Dublin and helping PP. Is exposed to dangers in these duties. Has a harsh voice and weak chest, consequently not fit for preaching.

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Much esteemed by priests and people, and his Superior. His uncle who was a learned and pious Bishop had a high opinion of him. Of solid judgements, modest, mild and humble. Learned and hardworking.
Studied four years Philosophy and four Theology after First Vows.
1717 Ran great risk by instructing the young in the chief town of the region where lived. Was teaching Latin and Greek fo over five years at the time.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
He was an nephew of Edward Murphy, Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, and later Archbishop of Dublin
Unclear where he did his Noviceship, but it is most likely at Coimbra.
After First Vows he was sent to Coimbra for Philosophy, and then spent two years Regency teaching Hebrew and Greek.
1709-1712 He then returned to Coimbra for Theology and he was Ordained there c 1712
1713 Sent to Ireland, he he re-established with Fr. Milo Byrne the Dublin Jesuit school - which had been in abeyance since the 1690s - and for the next quarter of a century worked at Mary's Lane Chapel. He also worked closely with Canon John Harold preparing young men for seminaries in Europe. A Consultor of the Mission and Superior of the Dublin Residence, he was frequently recommended for the Superiorship of the Mission itself and was a valued adviser of the General on matters concerning the Mission. He died in Dublin 12 July 1736
He was one of five Jesuits arrested and tried in Dublin, November 1718 on the information of a Portuguese Jew Garcia, who had come to Ireland hoping to earn a living priest-hunting. However, Murphy was set free

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Michael Murphy SJ 1679-1757
Michael Murphy was a Dublin man born in 1679. He became a Jesuit in 1702.

His studies completed, he ran a most successful school in Dublin. One of the most brilliant pupils was Peadar Neachtan, afterwards a Jesuit, son of the poet Seán Ó Neachtain.

Fr Murphy was highly praised by Blessed Oliver Plunkett as being a good theologian, a learned and hardworking man, an excellent religious, possessed of great talent and an eloquent preacher in the Irish language. He was so esteemed by the people and the secular priests, as well as by his Superiors, for his solid judgement, his gentle disposition, and his courage in exposing himself to great risks to instruct the young during those days of the Penal Laws. Judging from Archbishop Plunkett’s commendation, Fr Murphy must have taught schools in Drogheda.

He died in 1757.

Born: 16 January 1833, Scarteen, County Cork
Entered: 26 October 1848, Dôle France - Lugdunensis Province (LUGD)
Ordained: 1862
Final vows: 02 February 1869
Died: 18 May 1896, University College, Dublin

by 1849 in Vals, France (LUGD) studying
by 1859 at Bonn, Germany (GER) studying Philosophy
by 1860 at Paderborn, Germany (GER) studying Theology
by 1861 at St Beuno’s, Wales (ANG) studying Theology 3
by 1867 at Manresa, Spain (ARA) making Tertianship

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
When he was five years old the family moved to Kanturk, where he had his early education before going to Clongowes.

1852-1858 After First Vows and some studies he was sent for Regency to Clongowes as a Teacher of all years.
1859 He studied his Second Year of Philosophy at Bonn.
1860-1863 He began his Theology at Paderborn, but after one year was transferred to St Beuno’s.
Returning to Ireland he taught Humanities and Rhetoric as well as Logic at Clongowes.
1867 he made Tertianship at Manresa, Spain
1868 He was sent to Tullabeg teaching Rhetoric.
1869-1874 He was sent to teach at Crescent Limerick.
1874-1882 he was attached to the Missionary Staff, and was Superior of that Staff for seven years.
1883-1888 He taught at UCD
1888 he was sent to Milltown to teach Canon Law.
1892-1896 He was back at UCD, mainly as a Writer. He died unexpectedly during the night of 17 May 1896 in his 64th year and 48th in Religious Life.

Ten years before he died he had been appointed by the Bishops of Ireland as promoter of the Causes of those who had died for their faith during the Penal Times. His last work as entitled “Our Martyrs” which was not published until after his death, though he had seen the last sheet through the press!
His other works include : “The Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell”; The History of Holy Cross Abbey”; “School History of Ireland”

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Murphy, Denis
by David Murphy

Murphy, Denis (1833–96), priest and historian, was born 12 January 1833 at Scarteen, near Newmarket, Co. Cork, the eldest son of Timothy Murphy and his wife Joanna (née O'Connell). He was educated at Mr Curran's school in Kanturk before attending Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare. Entering the Society of Jesus on 26 October 1848, he made his noviceship at Dôle and then returned to Clongowes and taught history and literature (1852–8). He undertook further philosophical and theological studies in Bonn, Paderborn, and St. Beuno's in Wales and, returning to Ireland in 1863, taught rhetoric and logic at Clongowes (1863–7). In 1867 he made his tertianship at Manresa in Spain and later taught at St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, and the College of the Sacred Heart, Limerick. In 1874 he was attached to the society's missionary staff. He established a reputation as an excellent conductor of religious retreats and was appointed superior of the missionary staff in 1873. He began teaching French language and literature in 1883 at University College, St Stephen's Green, Dublin, and, in 1888, was appointed to teach moral theology, and later canon law, at Milltown Park. In 1892 he returned to his teaching duties at University College and also served as an examiner in Spanish for the RUI.

Best known for his historical researches and writings, Murphy was a prominent member of several learned societies including the Kildare Archaeological Society, the RSAI, and the RIA (1884), and contributed to their journals. His articles in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland include ‘Mungret Abbey’ (1894), ‘The castle of Roscommon’ (1891), ‘The ornamentation of the Lough Erne shrine’ (1892), and ‘The Irish Franciscans at Louvain’ (1893). His best known historical work is Cromwell in Ireland (1883), a scholarly and balanced account of the military campaign of 1649–51 written to refute the many myths associated with Oliver Cromwell (qv); new editions were published in 1885 and 1897. Murphy gave credit to Cromwell for his courage and military effectiveness, but condemned his religious bigotry and cruelty, and agreed with the 1st earl of Clarendon's saying ‘that he was a great, bad man’ (Cromwell in Ireland, p. ix). In 1893 Murphy translated into English and published Lughaidh Ó Cléirigh's (qv) manuscript life of Red Hugh O'Donnell (qv) with an extensive historical introduction and parallel bilingual text (The life of Hugh Roe O'Donnell (1893)). The translation, however, was severely criticised by some Irish scholars for its lack of precision. His widely used School history of Ireland (1894) gave a concise bird's eye view of Irish history from the arrival in Ireland in the 3rd century BC of Ceasair, granddaughter of Noah, ‘forty days before the deluge’, up to his own day.

At the request of the Irish bishops, in 1886 Murphy began researching a history of the martyrdom of Irish catholics since the reign of Henry VIII. He carried out extensive researches in the Vatican and other continental archives for over a decade, the result of which was the posthumously published Our martyrs: a record of those who suffered for the catholic faith under the penal laws in Ireland (1896) which he completed only days before his death. His edition of The annals of Clonmacnoise (1896), based on the translation of Conall Mageoghegan (qv), was also published posthumously.

He was elected to the RIA's committee of polite literature and antiquities (1891) and became vice-president of the RSAI (1894) and editor of the Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society. He received an honorary doctorate from the RUI in recognition of his historical research. A kindly and cheerful man, he enjoyed playing the bass violin to relax from his scholarly pursuits. He died suddenly 18 May 1896 in his rooms at University College, and was buried in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin cemetery. There is a substantial collection of his papers in the Jesuit archives in Dublin which includes research notes for Our martyrs and lists of Irish manuscripts in archives in Rome and Spain.

Times, 25 May 1896; Irish Catholic, 23 May 1896; RSAI Jn. (1896); Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society, ii (1896), 81–3; Irish Monthly, xxiv (1896), 328–31; DNB; Boase, supp. iii; Cork Hist. Soc. Jn., xv (1909), 90–92; Beathaisnéis 1882–1982, i, 90; papers of Denis Murphy, Jesuit Archives, Dublin

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Denis Murphy 1833-1896
Fr Denis Murphy was born at Scarteen County Cork on the 16th January 1833. Having received his education at Clongowes, he entered the Society in 1848, making his novitiate in Dôle, France.

After his ordination and tertianship he taught in our Colleges, Clongowes, Crescent and Tullabeg. From 1874-1882 he was attached to the Mission Staff. From 1883-1896 he taught at University College, St Stephen’s Green, wit a break in between as Professor ar Milltown Park.

He had been appointed by the Bishops of Ireland as Promoter of the Causes of the Irish Martyrs. This led to his book “Our Irish Martyrs”. His other published works are “The Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell”, “The History of Holy Cross Abbey”, “Cromwell in Ireland” and “The Annals of Clonmacnoise”.

He died rather suddenly on May 17th 1896, being 64 years of age and 48 years a Jesuit.

◆ The Clongownian, 1896

Obituary

Father Denis Murphy SJ

Clongowes was still lamenting the loss of one of her most distinguished sons, Dr William J Fitzpatrick, when another, of those who have won fame for their Alma Mater in the world of letters was called away to his account. Born at Newmarket, County Cork, in 1833; Denis. Murphy went first to school at Kanturk; and then came to Clongowes, so young and so clever, that he is said to have finished the class of rhetoric at the earliest age recorded except in the case of Chief Baron Palles. Before his sixteenth birthday he had entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, and after spending some years in England and on the Continent returned to Clongowes as professor of classics.

As a writer and a lecturer; Father Murphy soon made a name for himself; as an antiquary he stood in the foremost rank in this country, and in recognition of his great services to Irish literature and history, the Royal University conferred upon him the honorary degree of LLD.

Many noble tributes were paid to his memory by the Press, and we cannot do better than give our readers the notice which the “Independent” gave of his life and labours :-

The announcement of the death of the distinguished Jesuit, Father Denis Murphy, will come with tragic suddenness on his numerous friends in Ireland. Father Murphy had not been strong for some time past, but there was no premonition of the approach of his death. Last week he might have been met working among, as was his wont, the manuscript materials in the Royal Irish Academy. On Sunday, as usual, he performed his sacerdotal duties, and in the evening, apparently in the best of health, beguiled the time revising the final proofs of his “History of the Irish Martyrs”, which was promised from the printing press next month. On Monday morning he was found dead in his bed, evidently having passed quietly away in his sleep a few hours previously. By the death of the Rev Denis Murphy, Ireland is deprived of the services of an untiring, faithful-hearted son, who loved her with love “far brought from out the storied past”, used in the present and transfused for future times; and the Jesuits lose a useful member, whose work has added lustre to the Irish Province, for his name will be placed on the bead-roll with that of the Blessed Edmund Campion SJ, and those of the Bollandist Fathers.

Father Murphy was born in 1833; and shortly after the Famine Year joined the Society. He was educated: in England, Spain, and Germany, as well as at the Irish houses belonging to his Order. The little town of Newmarket, County Cork, where he was born, is famous as the birthplace of John Philpot Curran, and is hallowed by the memory that there too Thomas Davis spent much of his boyhood's years. It lies in the heart of one of the most historically interesting and romantic districts in that county which Sir Walter Scott estimated contained more romance than all Scotland. Not very far from Father Murphy's early home the brave MacAlistrum had fallen in fight against Murragh-au Theathaun, as the peasants still call the Cromwellian commander, and Phelix O’Sullivan, the vindicator of the Irish Catholics, had broken battle with the English in the Raven's Gleng, and crossed the Blackwater by dint of his long spears; in his historic march into Connaught. Such and similar surroundings possibly first formed the historic faculty which, in later years, developed and trained as it became, distinguished Father Murphy's career. Besides, lectures on side-lights of history, feuilletons and fugitive, magazine articles innumerable, he published several volumes of rare value as contributions to the history of Ireland, although dealing with periods and individual persons. His life of Hugh. O'Donnell deserves a place in every Irish home. It is a bilingual text, and side by side wish the Gaelic original of the pious Scribe O'Clery, we have an English translation copiously imitated. By this scholarly book probably Father Denis Murphy will “be best known to the future students of our country's history. The story of Red Hugh, the bright brand foretold of Fanult, is. a revelation of purity of motive and single-hearted. I purpose which teaches mighty lessons to all Irishmen, and its publication as such. apart from its historic value, was a most important event. Nothing in drama or epic of any age or country can exceed the pathos and tragedy contained in this simple record of facts which Father. Murphy was the first to render into the English tongue. Sir William Wilde used to lament that Cromwell's campaignings in Ireland were the most defective portion of modern Irish history. To remedy this Father Murphy set himself to work, and did so effectually in his book “Cromwell in Ireland”, which gives in detail an account of that memorable campaign which began in August, 1648, and ended in May, 1649. He follows Cromwell step by step in his progress through the country, and traces his march with a blood-red line upon the map. He is even at pains to rescue Cromwell's memory from some things set down in malice, but he musters facts enough to show him the great bad man Clarendon maintained he was. Among his other substantial works are his “History of Holy Cross Abbey”, “The Annals of Clonmacnoise”, and his compendium of Irish history, The work he was engaged on when death took him to his reward is entitled “Our Martyrs”, and is a detailed account of those who died for the Faith in the different religious persecutions in Ireland from the period which is styled the Reformation. This book was the carrying out of part of the work he under took a few years ago at the suggestion of the Irish bishops - viz, the promotion of the claims to canonization of those Irishmen and women who had suffered death for religion's sake. “The School History of Ireland”, which was published in 1893, fulfils a useful work, This little book, which was brought up to date from the earliest periods, contains on its last page a graceful allusion to Mr Parnell's honoured name, and the services he rendered Ireland, which is, perhaps, remarkable when we remember the position of the writer and how high party seeling ran at the year of the publication of the book. Besides faithfully discharging the duties of a missionary priest, and a teacher in several schools and colleges, Father Murphy managed to make time in his busy life to fill with credit to himself positions of responsibility in many learned societies. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a Vice-President of the Royal Academy and a Council member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, and of the National Literary Society. He was editor of the “Kildare Archaeological Journal”, and took a particular interest in similar publications in Cork, Waterford, and Belfast. Such are Father Murphy's services as a historical researcher and a reliable interpreter of records difficult of access as to cause abiding regret that his books are so few. His place as an Irish scholar will not easily be filled ; his place as a thoughtful, ever faithful friend never can”.

His funeral was attended by a large number of clergymen and other citizens of Dublin, the coffin being covered with numerous beautiful wreaths. One in particular calls for our notice. The staff at the establishment of Father Murphy's printers (Messrs Sealy, Bryers, and Walker), subscribed for and forwarded a costly wreath to be laid on his coffin. The gift was accompanied by a large card bearing the imprint of an open book, the left hand page of which bore the following inscription :

IN MEMORIAM.
REV DENIS MURPHY SJ, LLD,
Died May 18th, 1896
Aged 63
RIP

A Tribute of great Respect
and Affection
From the Staff of his Printers,
Messrs SEALY, BRYERS, and WALKER,
Middle Abbey Street.

The other page contained the following :

The concluding sentences of a corrected proof found at his death-bedside addressed to the Printer -

“But he chose the better part, he finished his course, and kept the faith. As to the rest, there was laid up for him a crown of justice which the just Judge gave him, and will give to all that love His coming”.

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959
Bonum Certamen ... A Biographical Index of Former Members of the Limerick Jesuit Community

Father Denis Murphy (1833-1896)

Was born at Scarteen, Newmarket, Co Cork. He was educated at Clongowes and, on being admitted to the Society, was sent to France for his noviceship. He pursued his higher studies at Bonn, and Paderborn, and was ordained at St Beuno's, in Wales in 1862. On his return to Ireland he was appointed to the teaching staff at Clongowes where he remained until 1867 when he set out for Spain to make his tertianship at Manresa. On his return from Spain, Father Murphy began his long association with the Crescent. From 1868 to 1874 he was a member of the teaching staff while he was also minister of the house, and in charge of the church choir. In 1874 he joined the mission staff then resident in Limerick and remained a member of it until 1883. During his years in Limerick, Father Murphy was held in the deepest respect and affection by all who knew him. He was known and appreciated as a man of versatile intellectual qualities. But this incident shows something of his very practical bent. During his years at the Crescent, it came to his notice that the widowed mother of two Crescent boys was having trouble with a leaking roof. She had seen better days and was in receipt of an annuity just enough to cover up the poverty of herself and children. She told Father Murphy that the estimates for repairs were beyond her resources short of going deeply into debt. Father Murphy, to calm her anxiety, went off to the builders, bought the wood at wholesale and with the help of the elder son of the widow, carried out the repairs on the roof with such skill that the next repairs became necessary only some forty years after Father Murphy's death.

In 1883, Father Murphy was transferred to University College, Dublin, where he was appointed to the post of bursar and librarian. His new post gave him enough spare time to work on his historical notes, the results of his researches during his scholastic days. For during his early years, he had travelled extensively in Europe to collect historical data on the persecutions for the Faith in Ireland. His researches brought him to the archives of cities so widely separated as Madrid, Lisbon, Douai, Louvain, Paris, Vienna and Prague. In his generation, Father Murphy was probably Ireland's most informed historian. After some five years at University College, Father Murphy was transferred to Milltown Park to take over the chair of moral theology. Fortunately, for Irish historical scholarship he was released from his post and returned to University College where he spent the last four years of his life. His monumental work entitled Our Martyrs was just finished in the press, but not yet published, the day before his death. For the last ten years of his life, he held from the Irish hierarchy the post of official Postulator of the Cause of the Irish Martyrs.

Entered: 1698
Died: 28 May 1759, Porto, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
DOB probably Ireland; Ent c 1698
1719 Rector of St Francis Xavier College Lisbon (Franco)
Gualter Murcote seems to be Walter Murphy

◆ In Old/15 (1) and Chronological Catalogue Sheet

Born: 1564: Clonmel, County Tipperary
Entered: 1585: Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: by 1597: Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 13 April 1621, Galway Residence, Galway City, County Galway

1587-1593: At Coimbra Studying Arts and Theology
1593: At San Roque College Studying Arts and Theology (or Helping Fr Manoel de Gaes?)
1597: At Coimbra Finishes Arts and Theology, now a Confessor at S Fins.
1616: Catalogue Age 50 Soc 30 Mission 16. Was prefect at Connaught Residence. Minister and Consultor. Some years in Spain. Weak health, phlegmatic, very edifying, prudent and fit to be Superior. Learned in Scholastic Theology, Controversy and Moral Cases of Conscience. “Stays too much in room reading his Examen”. Was expected from Portugal but did not come.
1617: Catalogue Age 63 Soc 31. Is in Ireland.
1626: Catalogue there is an Andrew Morony Junior - ArcLed asks if he is the same as Nich Morony.

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica” :
Had been a Minister and Consultor in Spain; Was a good Theologian and controversialist; Very fond of study; “doctus et gravis” and most edifying. Came to Ireland about 1600 and stationed in West Munster for many years. His learning and virtue was well known to General Aquaviva, says Holiwood (alias Lawndry, so he probably studied in Rome (Lawndrey’s Litterae 1611) - Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica”.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Probably an uncle of “Francis” Mulroney, as in the 1626 list of Irish Mission there is an “Andreas Mulrony Junior”
Had studied Humanities at Lisbon before Ent 1585 Coimbra
After First Vows he stayed in Coimbra for studies. Unclear where he completed his Theology and was Ordained
1593 He was then appointed to assist Father Manuel de Gois in preparing his “Cursis Conimbricensis” for printing at the Casa San Roque
1597 Was Minister and Priest at Braga Residence, and Operarius at St Fins in Northern Portugal by 1598
1598 Fr Holywood was recruiting Irish Jesuits for Ireland and asked for Mulrony because of his fluency in Irish.
1601 Sent to Ireland, initially in Dublin, and then with Nicholas Leynach in Munster and Connaught (1605), and then conducted a Mission with Walter Wale in Ulster (probably means North Leinster and South Ulster) 1607.
1610 First Superior of Galway Residence and Consultor of Mission (he was mentioned as a possible Rector for Irish College Lisbon too, 1613). He spent the rest of his life in Galway, where he died 13 April 1621. Some five months before his death, the General advised Father Holywood to instruct Mulrony in the government of the mission in case death or other circumstances should make it impossible or Holywood to carry his duties

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Andrew Moroney SJ 1554-1620
On August 14th 1604, the Lord President of Munster, Brouncker, issued a decree that all Jesuits depart from the Kingdom before the last day of September. A reward was offered : £40 for the body of a Jesuit, £6.3.4 for every seminary priest, and £5 for every Massing priest. None were brought in, but some months later a spy sent in a list of all the priests still in Munster. Prominent among these was the name of Andrew Moroney SJ. His name is also given as Mulroney.

He was born in Clonmel in 1554 and became a Jesuit in 1591. He came on the Irish Mission in 1601, having been highly recommended for the work by Fr Henry Fitzsimon. He certainly lived up to his reputation, being over the next twenty years, one of the outstanding missioners in the country.

He came to Ireland along with Fr Nicholas Leynich, who was his constant companion on the Mission. Later he was transferred to Connaught where he was Superior of the Connaught Residence. Carrick-on-Suir also received a great deal of his ministrations.

Towards the end of his life he worked in Dublin. The early letters of his Superiors to Rome are loud of their praise of him as a virtuous and reliable man. He died some time after 1620.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
MORONY, ANDREW. As early as the 7th of September, 1599, F. Fitzsimon recommended him as a fit person to be employed as a Missionary in the south of Ireland. That he was so employed, is evident from F. Field s letter of the 25th of February, 1603. Four years later I meet him still at Munster.

Born: 1582, Duleek, County Meath
Entered: 25/04/1600, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: c 1611, Coimbra, Portugal
Final Vows: 1624
Died: 11 August 1652, Galway Residence, Galway City, County Galway

Alias De Moura

1642 At Drogheda, and subsequently appointed Chaplain to Sir Richard Blake (Oranmore, Co Galway, Mayor of Galway twice and Parliamentarian)
1649 Superior Galway Residence
in 1650 Catalogue
He was a very learned, charitable and humble man; Superior in Connaught; Forty years on the Irish Mission, and imprisoned for the Catholic faith.
Peter Walsh in his “Remonstrance” calls him “an old venerable Jesuit and skilful exorcist” (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1642 At Drogheda, and subsequently appointed Chaplain to Sir Richard Blake (Oranmore, Co Galway, Mayor of Galway twice and Parliamentarian)
1649 Superior Galway Residence
in 1650 Catalogue
He was a very learned, charitable and humble man; Superior in Connaught; Forty years on the Irish Mission, and imprisoned for the Catholic faith.
Peter Walsh in his “Remonstrance” calls him “an old venerable Jesuit and skilful exorcist” (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had studied Humanities at the Irish College Lisbon before Ent 25 April 1600 Coimbra
After First Vows - which he completed at Braga College - he was sent for studies to Coimbra (1602-1605), did regency as Minister at Irish College Lisbon companioning Thomas White, and returned to Coimbra for Theology and was Ordained there c1611
1612-1613 Spiritual Father and Confessor at Irish College Lisbon
1613/14 Sent to Ireland and Connaught Residence.
1625 He was sent to Dublin Residence to act as Master of Novices for the four priest candidates. He was later at Drogheda, but had to leave there when it fell to the Puritans in 1642
1649 His whereabouts after Drogheda are unknown, but he was Superior of the Galway residence in 1649, and he died there 11 August 1652

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
MORE, JOHN. He was living at Drogheda, in 1642, but in October that year, succeeded in escaping thence from Puritanical fury. Subsequently he was appointed Chaplain to Sir Richard Blake. When Pere Verdier visited him in the early part of the year 1649, he found him Superior of his Brethren at Galway, and reported him as being a Septuagenarian, as a man of consummate probity, and conspicuous for charity and humility. I fear it will be nearly impossible to ascertain the date of his death.

Born: 29 September 1633, Kinsale, County Cork
Entered: 24 December 1654, Nancy, France - Campaniae Province (CAMP)
Ordained: 1664, Pont-à-Mousson, France
Final Vows: 15 August 1681
Died: 29 May 1704, St Anthony’s College, Lisbon, Portugal - Campaniae Province (CAMP)

1656-1658 At Pont-à-Mousson studying Logic and Physics
1658-1659 At Verdun teaching Grammar - capable of teaching and doing missionary work and many other things in due time
1659-1661 At Charleville teaching Grammar
1661-1664 At Pont-à-Mousson studying Theology and Prefect of Physicists in Boarding School and Rhetoricians
1664-1665 Went to FLA-BELG
Taught 3 years in CAMP. On Irish Mission 33 years (4 months in prison). Driven into exile to Lisbon

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1671 On the Irish Mission for may years; Imprisoned for eight months and deported; Zealous Preacher; Died of old age (Franco’s “Synopsis”)
1691 Preaching in Cork and Kinsale
1694 On Parochial duty in Cork, in great poverty
1714 In reporting his death, his Superior calls him “impiger concionator” (Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Educated by the Jesuits at Tournai before Ent 24 December 1654 CAMP
1656-1658 After First Vows at Nancy he studied Philosophy at Pont-à-Mousson
1658-1661 He was then sent for Regency at Verdun and Charleville
1661-1665 He was sent to Pont-à-Mousson for Theology and he was Ordained there 1664, and then did a further year of Theology at Douai.
1665-1666 In the Summer of 1665 the General wanted him to go to the ANG Tertianship at Ghent, in order to improve his proficiency in English, and therefore be more available for the Irish Mission. There was no space at Ghent, so he made his tertianship at Lierre instead.
1666-1669 He was sent as Operarius at Cambrai
1669 Sent to Ireland and Cork where he worked for the next 30 years. His command of Irish was put to good use there, and he was an able Preacher and undaunted by the poverty and hardship of his mission. In the mass arrests and enforced exile of the regular clergy of 1697/98 he was captured, imprisoned for eight months and then put on board ship bound for Portugal. He found temporary refuge at Irish College Lisbon, but on the General's orders he was received at the College of Évora. As there was nobody there to speak with him in Irish or French, he was allowed to settle at the College of St Anthony in Lisbon, a city which then had a sizeable population of Irish refugees. He died there 29 May 1704.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
MEAD, ROBERT. The first time that I meet with him is in the Lent of 1671, when he gave Evening Instructions twice each week at Cork, and twice also at Kinsale. In a letter dated Waterford, the 25th of November, 1694, he is described as well acquainted with the Irish language, living in a very desolate part of the country, and in great poverty; but zealous and fruitfully engaged in the work of the Ministry. He died abroad, an exile for the Faith, and in advanced years, as I find by a letter written in 1714, and he is said to have been “impiger concionator”.

Born: 1591, Burgess, Doon, County Tipperary
Entered: 1605, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1616, Évora, Portugal
Final Vows: 1638
Died: 01 November 1651, Limerick Residence, Limerick City, County Limerick

Alias Da Cruz

1606 Age 16 in Soc 1 year
1609 4 years in Society
1611 In Coimbra College studying Philosophy 12 years in Soc
1614 at Évora (LUS) 1st year Theology
1619 Teacher In Seminary
1622 Teacher Arts 3 years and Theology 3 years
1625 Tertianship at Lisbon
1628 Came to Mission; Superior in different residences over many years;
1637 Catalogue “Is good in everything, capable of teaching Theology and Philosophy
Was Rector of Irish College at Lisbon
1649 Cashel

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
McCrach or Magrah or Magrath or Da Cruz (Portugal)
Rector in Lisbon and Professor of Philosophy and Theology
1628 Came to Ireland; Superior in Cashel (1640 aged 70) and other Residences
A man of great virtue and learning; A good Preacher.
“Vir sane primarius et egregius concionator” (Mercure Verdier) (cf Foley’s Collectanea, Magrath)
William De L Cruce or Cross (alias Chroch)
1634 Professor of Theology at Lisbon
Became Bishop of Cashel (Irish Ecclesiastical Record August 1874)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1607-1613 Before First Vows he was sent to study Rhetoric at Lisbon and Philosophy at Coimbra. He then had one year Regency at a LUS College
1613-1616 Theology at Évora where he was Ordained c 1616
1616-1622 Taught Philosophy and Theology at Irish College Lisbon
1622-1625 Rector at Irish College Lisbon. he was the last Irish Rector during the Spanish domination, which did not allow foreigners to hold positions of authority in Portugal.
1625 After Tertianship he was sent to Ireland, but it is unclear if he got there before 1629
1629 He became Superior of the Limerick Residence in the 1630's. The General instructed the Mission Superior - Robert Nugent - to receive William’s Final Vows, but this was seemingly ignored, and it was not until 1638, eight years later that this happened. It probably had more to do with the Old-Irish/Anglo-Irish issue, rather than his ability and standing in the Society.
1640 became Superior of the Cashel Residence. He was a supporter of the Nuncio Rinuccini, and publicly defended the observance of the censures. In his 1649 Report to the General, the Visitor Mercure Verdier recommended that William be appointed a Consultor of the Mission.
On the approach of the Cromwellian forces he withdrew to Limerick where he died 01 November 1651

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
MAG RATH, WILLIAM. This Professed Father had taught Theology for many years in Lisbon. He was Superior at Cashel, in 1649; and though nearly 70 years of age, was of a robust constitution, renowned for virtue and learning, and an admirable preacher.

Born: 01 January 1681, Derry City, County Derry
Entered: 18 August 1703, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1712/3, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 15 January 1752, Clonmel, County Tipperary

Was younger brother of John Manby - RIP 1748

Studied in Soc Philosophy and Theology
1717 Catalogue Approved Scholastic came to Mission 3 months ago and in the country with a private family. I have not been able to get to him and there are no socii near him who could give information. Came here from Portugal and their Catalogue will give necessary info
1732 At Poitiers operarius
“The Considerations” by Peter Manby said to be at Clongowes

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Son of Dean, and grandson of Colonel Manby (Harris “Irish Writers”) Younger brother of John.
Imprisoned for the faith before Entry.
Writer; Studied at Coimbra (Franco “Annales Lusitaniae”)
1717 On Irish Mission (HIB Catalogue 1717)
Third Entry : No Ch Name Manby
DOB Leinster; Ent 1703.
Brother of Peter (Harris)
(This seems to be the same Entry, and perhaps should read brother of John??)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Peter (Dean of Derry an afterwards received into the Church). Younger brother of John Manby
After First Vows he studied at Coimbra where he was Ordained 1712/13
1716 Sent to Ireland. He lived near Dublin at the house of a nobleman, exercising the ministries of Chaplain, Schoolmaster and assistant Priest for the local clergy. He worked later at the Dublin Jesuit school before he returned to Poitiers in 1730
1730-1733 Minister of Irish College Poitiers
1733 Sent back to Ireland. For a time he was tutor to the family of Lord Dunboyne, but then moved to Clonmel where he died 15 January 1752

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Peter Manby SJ 1681-1752
Peter Manby was born in Ireland in 1680, the son of a Protestant Clergyman, Robert Manby. His father however was converted himself and became a friar, his two sons, John and Peter, becoming Jesuits.
Peter was educated in Portugal and entered the Society in 1703. In 1714 he applied for the Irish Mission.
He published a book in Dublin in 1724 entitled “Remarks on Dr Lloyd’s Translation of the Montpelier Catechism”. His contention was that it was marred by Jansenism.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
MANBY, PETER, was in Portugal in the spring of 1714, and had applied, as I find by F. Anthony Knoles’s letter, dated from Ross, the 6th of April, that year, to come over to serve the Irish Mission.

Born: 1685, County Galway
Entered: 21 November 1709 - Braziliae Province (BRA)
Final Vows: 15 August 1722
Died: 16 February 1761, Rome, Italy - Braziliae Province (BRA)

Provincial Braziliae Province (BRA)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica”
A relative of Br William Lynch - RIP 1774 - probably
1738 In Brazil (in pen)
“The celebrated Father Thomas Lynch, ex-Provincial of Brazil, and greatly esteemed for learning, sanctity and apostolic labours, was imprisoned with his brethren of Bahia, put on board a man-of-war and their own ship (a fine vessel built by order of Father Lynch under the direction of a Scotch Temporal Coadjutor, an excellent mariner”. So says Father Thorpe in a letter from Rome, August 6. He met Father Lynch in Rome and heard from him all the horrors through which he and 260 Jesuits passed on their way to Europe. They were stowed away under deck and otherwise treated like Guinea slaves. (Father Thorpe’s letter at Stonyhurst and a contemporary copy at Milltown Park)

◆ Fr John MacErlean SJ :
Early studies in Lisbon
Very distinguished career as Professor at Pernambuco and Bahia
1733-1740 Socius to 2 Provincials
1741-1746 Rector of Olinda College (near Recife)
1746-1750 Rector of Rio de Janeiro College
1750-1754 Provincial of Brazil
1759 Pombal ordered expulsion of Jesuits and travelled to Rome arriving in 1760

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Thomas Lynch SJ 1685-1761
Father Thomas Lynch was born in Galway in 1685 and did his early studies in Lisbon.

In 1709 he entered the Society for the Brazilian Province. He had a very distinguished career as a professor at Pernambuco and Bahia. He acted as Socius to two Provincials, 1733-1740, then became Rector of the College of Olinda and also Rio de Janeiro. Drom 1750 to 1754 he was Provincial of Brazil. When by order of Pombal the Jesuits were expelled from Brazil in 1759, Fr Thomas shared the sufferings of his brothers. He survived the almost incredible hardships of the voyage and landed in Italy in 1760, but died the following year in Rome.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
LYNCH, THOMAS, one of the 260 Jesuits, and victims of Portuguese tyrannical iniquity, who arrived at Civita Vecchia, from the Brazils, in the summer of 1760. In a letter of F. John Thorpe, dated Rome, the 6th of August, that year, he mentions the arrival of 20 of these Confessors of Christ, the evening before, in the Eternal City, and says, “I found one, who spoke English. He proved to be the celebrated F. Thomas Lynch, formerly a Provincial in the Brazils, and greatly esteemed for learning, sanctity and apostolical labours amongst the English there, as well as the Indians. He is 75 years old, and had retired to the College of Bahia, where he was spiritual Father, when he was suddenly seized with his brethren, by the Portuguese Government, and hurried on board a ship, bound to Lisbon:. They were all kept under the hatches during the voyage, like so many Guinea slaves!

Born: 1567, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Entered: 1586, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: c 1594, Lisbon, Portugal
Professed: 1616
Died: 27 January 1624, Clonmel, County Tipperary

Alias Leinagh

1590-1592: Studying Theology at Funchal College, Madeira (LUS) Age 21 Soc 3.
1597: At St Anthony’s College Lisbon, Minister and Confessor there since 1594.
1600: Came to Mission Was Superior in West Munster, ie Limerick, Waterford and Clonmel.
1616: Catalogue Prefect of Ours in Residence of Munster some years. Was Consultor some years in Spain. Delicate in health a good Moral Theologian. Prudent though sometimes choleric, though inclined to meekness. Governs with tact, esteemed by the people.
1621: Catalogue Better suited for practical than speculative subjects.
1622: Catalogue Consultor in East Munster.
ARSI “A man of great prudence, circumspect, zealous and energetic. Had special credit and authority. There was a Nicholas Lynach at Newgate Prison 1598 or 1599.

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica” :
He wrote from St Anthony’s College Lisbon, Portugal, 25 September 1598, begging to be sent to the “holy and happy Irish Mission”.
He was assigned to Munster with Andrew Morony, and known to be in Ireland 1617.
In a letter from Fr Lawndry (vere Holywood) to Richard Conway 14 November 1611 (Irish Ecclesiastical Record April 1874) he says “Of the west part of the Southern Province Nicholas Lynach hath care, assisted only by Thomas Shine and Thomas Bourke, save what help he hath from Andrew Morony” (cf "Hibernia Ignatiana for several more letters).
Alive in 1622.
He was a man of talent; a great Preacher; “hath” says the Attorney General “special credit and authority” (State Papers); “Circumspect, zealous and energetic” (Holywood)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1588-1590: After First Vows he spent two years Regency at Évora and Funchal, Madeira.
1590-1594: His studies were limited to a course in Moral Theology in Lisbon and he was Ordained there c 1594.
1594-1601: Operarius at Irish College, Lisbon and Minister for a while.
1601: Sent to Ireland in February. Most of his work was done in Munster, though he did visit many parts of Connacht during his first decade back in the country with Andrew Mulrony
1610: Consultor of Mission.
1621: Stationed at Clonmel where he died 27 January 1624 and is buried at St Mary’s Church, Clonmel

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Nicholas Leynich SJ 1567-1624
The names of Fr Walter Wale and Fr Barnaby O’Kearney are always linked together for many reasons, so also the names of Nicholas Leynich and Andrew Morony. Both were born in Clonmel around the same time, entered the Society within a few years of each other, and finally come to Ireland together in 1601, and laboured both outstandingly in Munster.

Nicholas Leynich was born in the 60’s of the sixteenth century in Clonmel, entering the Society in Spain in 1586. In a letter dated 25th September 1598, from St Antony’s College, Lisbon, he pleaded with the General to be sent on the Irish Mission. He got his request, and worked with such great profit of souls, that he was marked out by the authorities as one of their greatest enemies. The Superior at the time, Christopher Holywood entrusted him with a great deal of the governance of the province of Munster and Connaught.

He was engaged for a few years in the educational work in Dublin along with Frs Field and Wale. His death occurred some time after 1622.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
LYNCH,NICHOLAS, (sometimes called Leynach) applied from St. Anthony College, Lisbon, 25th September, 1598, “to be named, though an unworthy and useless servant, amongst the labourers in the holy and happy mission of Ireland”. His earnest petition was granted. Minister was assigned to him and his colleague, F. Andrew Morony, as a field for Apostolic labor : and this Province had cause to say in the words of the Acts xvi. 17. “These men are servants of the High God, who declare the way of salvation”. In a letter dated, “ex desertis Hyberniae”, the 3rd of April, 1605, “he recommends that none be sent over to this Mission, but men that are ripe and sedate, conversant with the Institute of the Society, interior, solid, and mortified men; for such are truly required for this new plantation; not indiscreet young men, conceited in their own judgment”. F. Nicholas was still living in February, 1622.

Born: 1589, Galway City, County Galway
Entered: 27/08/1661, Rennes, France (”in articulo mortis”)
Ordained: 1614, Cashel, Co Tipperary
Died: 27 August 1661, Rennes, France

Parents Matthew and Juliana Lynch both from distinguished families.
Received early education from his uncle Fr Arthur Lynch. Higher education at Lisbon
1614 Ordained by AB Kearney of Cashel
1618 At Dieppe College teaching Philosophy
1620 Appointed VG by DR Conry AB of Tuam and later by AB Malachy O’Queely
1645 Consecrated Bishop of Killala at Paris 07 May 1645. Member of Supreme Council of Kilkenny. Opposed to Nuncio on Censures, but later publicly renounced opposition.
1649-1652 Worked zealously and had to evade capture,, by hiding in cellars of friends home in Galway 14 months.
1655 Exiled with AB of Tuam and others till death. Lived mostly at Nantes in poverty and prayer, Wrote that the Society had always been loved by him. His funeral was described as more like a canonisation than a funeral. A Jesuit delivered the homily and he is buried in Society grave at Rennes. Reputed to be a “saint”, and miracles attributed to him (Fr General.
Left monies in Ireland for the purchase of a Residence/School for the Society

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Bishop of Killala
His life was written by Dr Lynch “Pii Antistitis Icon”
1660 Father Quin writes to Father General “Dr Kirwan is reputed a saint here”. Miracles were performed by him.
The saintly Father Yong says his obsequies were more like a canonisation than a funeral.
Received into the Society by General Vitelleschi pro articulo mortis 15 January 1640, since he could not be received otherwise at that time.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Matthew and Julia née Lynch
Early studies under an uncle Arthur Lynch and later priestly studies at the Irish College Lisbon.
Ordained in Ireland by Archbishop Kearney of Cashel 1614
1614-1620 Teaching Philosophy in France and spent some time in Louvain, before being appointed Vicar General of Tuam by the exiled Bishop. e exercised this ministry assiduously, visiting many priests and regularly accompanied by various Jesuits, as he was very attached to the Society.
1645 Became Bishop of Killala 06 February 1645.
Exiled under the “Commonwealth” he found refuge with the Jesuits at Rennes. Before or on his death (”in articulo mortis”) he was received into the Society. He died at Rennes and was buried in the Jesuit church of that city

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Kirwan, Francis
by Terry Clavin

Kirwan, Francis (1589–1661), catholic bishop of Killala, was the son of Matthew Kirwan and his wife, Juliana Lynch, both of Galway city. He was taught at Galway by his maternal uncle, Arthur Lynch, who was a priest, and subsequently studied at Lisbon. In 1614 he was ordained a priest by David Kearney (qv), archbishop of Cashel, before travelling to France where he was teaching philosophy at Rouen by 1618. Subsequently, his uncle William Lynch removed Kirwan (against his wishes) to Louvain in the Spanish Netherlands. There he impressed Florence Conry (qv), archbishop of Tuam, who sent Kirwan back to Ireland in 1620 to act as vicar general of the archdiocese of Tuam.

Kirwan was indefatigable in attending to his duties as vicar general and effective head of the catholic church in Connacht, travelling to the most remote areas of the archdiocese. His ascetic lifestyle and modest demeanour earned him the respect and awe of the catholic laity, although he was criticised for his tendency to favour the hospitality of wealthy catholics. He worked particularly hard to ensure that his clergy met strict counter-reformation standards, stipulating that each priest could have only one parish, and supervising those training to become priests. Generally the local authorities turned a blind eye to his activities and Kirwan seems to have been on friendly terms with William Daniel (qv), the protestant archbishop of Tuam. Indeed, his main opposition came from his own clergy, many of whom preferred a more lax brand of catholicism.

Conry died in 1629, but his successor as archbishop of Tuam, Malachy O'Queely (qv), retained Kirwan as vicar general. About 1637 he decided to depart for France to preside over the education of a group of Irish youths there. They settled at Caen and were maintained for several years by funds sent from Ireland. However, the beginning of a long period of warfare in Ireland in 1641 meant that this revenue source was cut off. Kirwan's scholars dispersed and he travelled again to France, where he attempted unsuccessfully to gather together the Irish students under his leadership and tried to organise the sending of arms to the catholics in Ireland. During this period he also befriended Vincent de Paul.

As early as 1625 Kirwan had been recommended for a bishopric, and on 7 May 1645 he was consecrated bishop of Killala at the church of St Lazarus in Paris. He travelled to Ireland and, after being warmly received by the supreme council of the Catholic Confederation at Kilkenny, took possession of his see in October 1646. The most powerful local lord was Ulick Burke (qv), marquess of Clanricard, a strong royalist with whom Kirwan became close. As well as attending to his pastoral duties, he frequently travelled to Kilkenny and Waterford to participate in the confederate assemblies.

In June 1646, along with the rest of the catholic hierarchy, Kirwan supported the decision of the papal nuncio GianBattista Rinuccini (qv) to excommunicate those who adhered to the alliance between the Catholic Confederation and the protestant royalists. However, his association with Clanricard put him on the moderate wing of the church and increasingly at odds with the nuncio. In May 1648 he was among the minority of bishops who opposed Rinuccini's excommunication of those who supported the truce between the confederates and Murrough O'Brien (qv), Lord Inchiquin, the commander of the protestant forces in Munster. Later that year he helped Archbishop John Bourke (qv) of Tuam celebrate mass at the collegiate church in Galway, in defiance of the nuncio's interdict. His stance was vociferously opposed by his own diocesan clergy, who complained against him to Rinuccini.

From 1649 to 1652 he was active in the last struggles of the confederates and strongly supported Clanricard, who became royalist lord deputy of Ireland in 1650, against the more hard-line members of the hierarchy. He was also involved in efforts to persuade the duke of Lorraine to intervene in Ireland on behalf of the catholics. After the Cromwellian forces had completed their conquest of Connacht in the summer of 1652, he spent nearly two years in hiding, constantly pursued by the authorities. Weary and in poor health, he gave himself up in Galway in 1654, before being freed in December that year on condition that he left Ireland within two months. In the event, he sailed into Nantes with other exiled catholic clergy in August 1655. He spent two years there before settling in Brittany. Virtually destitute on his arrival in Nantes, he was maintained by grants from the French clergy and by the patronage of noblewomen. He also repented of his past opposition to Rinuccini, and in 1655 appealed to Rome for absolution, which he received two years later. He died 27 August 1661 at Rennes and was buried in the Jesuit church there. Long an admirer of the Jesuits, he was admitted as a member of their order on his deathbed.

Laurence Renehan, Collections on Irish church history (1861), i, 397–8; G. Aiazzi, The embassy in Ireland of Monsignor G. B. Rinuccini, trans. A. Hutton (1873), 468; J. T. Gilbert, A contemporary history of affairs in Ireland. . . (3 vols, 1879), i, 653; ii, 141, 191; iii, 124, 178; John Lynch, The portrait of a pious bishop; or the life and death of Francis Kirwan (1884), passim; J. T. Gilbert, History of the Irish confederation. . . (7 vols, 1882–91), iii, 183; vi, 211–12, 226; vii, 58, 213; Comment. Rinucc., vi, 126, 191–2; Patrick Corish, ‘Rinuccini's censure of 27 May 1648’, Ir. Theol. Quart., xviii, no. 4 (Oct. 1951), 322–37; Peter Beresford-Ellis, Hell or Connaught (1988), 106–8; T. Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic reformation in Ireland (2002), 238

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
Francis Kirwan, Bishop of Killala (his Lordship had obtained to be admitted into the Society “pro bona mortis”, and was buried in the Jesuits Church at Rennes)

Born: 04 June 1600, Kilmallock, County Limerick
Entered: 15 April 1623, Lisbon, Portugal - Lisitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: c 1636, Évora, Portugal
Died: 24 June 1682, Kilmallock, County Limerick - Romanae Province (ROM)

Alias O’Hurley
Superior of the Irish Mission 1649

1633-1636 At Évora studying Theology
1639 Came to Mission and was at Limerick in 1649 as Superior, Preacher, Confessor and teaching Humanities
1655-1661 Catalogue At Irish College Lisbon teaching Theology. 4 vows. Talent for letters and public affairs good.
1666 ROM Catalogue Residing with some noblemen 20 miles from Limerick, administering sacraments. Was 20 years on Mission before being exiled to Portugal

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Studied four years each of Philosophy and Theology. knew Portuguese, Irish, English and Latin.

1639 Sent to Irish Mission; Superior of Limerick Residence for three years (HIB CAT 1650 - ARSI)
1649 Superior of the Irish Mission (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)
1666 Chaplain to a nobleman - probably a relative - about twenty miles from Limerick and acting as Missioner at that time, which he had done for thirty six years, six of the in exile. (HIB Catalogue 1666- ARSI) (cf Foley’s Collectanea)
Described as a sincerely good and observant of religious discipline, and united by blood or friendship with many gentlemen of the County Limerick. Learned, charitable and humble.
Mercure Verdier - Visitor to Irish Mission - says he came from an ancient Irish noble family.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had studied at and received Minor Orders (24/02/1623) Irish College Lisbon before Ent 15 April 1623 Lisbon
After First Vows he studied Philosophy at Évora and then spent a period of Regency also at Évora, and remained there for Theology where he was Ordained c 1636. He then went to Coimbra.
1638 Sent to Ireland
1646-1649 Rector at Limerick. During the crisis over the Nuncio's censures, O'Hurley, in common with all the clergy of Limerick, (the Bishop alone excepted) observed the interdict at the Jesuit church. The Superior of the Mission, William Malone, insisted that the Jesuit church be opened but Father O'Hurley withdrew to his relatives in the country. The Visitor Mercure Verdier reported of him “William Hurley, Superior at Limerick is solemnly professed; a deep lover of the religious life, learned and outstanding in the virtues of charity and humility. He is aged about fifty and is in delicate health. He governs according to the mind of the Society. He comes of a noble old Irish family. Father Malone was hostile to him because he observed the interdict. Malone also kept saying that he had no talent for government but I found that the very opposite was the truth and no one has complained about him. At the time of the poor harvest he provided, thanks to his relatives and friends, the food for the community what scarcely anyone else could have done.”
Under the “Commonwealth” he was arrested and deported .
1655-1664/65 Arriving in Lisbon was appointed Professor of Moral Theology at the Irish College
1664/65 Sent to Ireland and worked between Limerick and Cork, using his brother's residence as his Mission centre. He died there 24 June 1682

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
HURLEY, WILLIAM, of a noble stock and family of the ancient Irish. In 1649,he was Superior of his brethren at Limerick, he is described as being a Professed Father, aged about 50, a devout and learned religious, and eminent for charity and humility.

Born: 17 January 1627, Athlone, County Westmeath
Entered: 31 December 1648, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1654, Évora, Portugal
Final Vows: 02 February 1665, London, England
Died: 19 August 1705, Irish College, Poitiers, France - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Hugo Hues; Hugo Cullen

Confessor to Queen of England, Catherine of Braganza, for 27 years

“Colan” - called “Cullenam” by Fr Knowles; signs himself as “Colano”; also separate entry has “Hugo Colano alias Hues” as he signs himself in a letter from Paris 13 November 1682
1651 In Philosophy teacher of Mathematics at Lisbon for 4 years
1655 Teacher of Mathematics at Elvas College Lisbon for 4 years
1661 at Évora College
1685 Returned to Ireland from Paris
1690-1696 at Irish College Poitiers and 1697-1703, then Procurator there 1703-1705
RIP Poitiers 19/08/1705 or 1704

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Confused two Entries (1) Heys or Hayes and (2) Hughes or Hues
(1) Heys or Hayes (cf below)
DOB c 1626 Ireland; Ent c 1647;
This Irish Jesuit is described by Father Conn in 1669 as “capellano effectivo della Regina e missionario legittimo” (Battersby “Jesuits” p 79)
Perhaps he is the same as Father Hughes of Hugo Colan
(2) Hughes or Hues
DOB Ireland; Ent c 1671; RIP 19/08/1709 Poitiers (in pencil)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Began his studies (in Portugal?) before Ent at Lisbon 31 December 1648
After First Vows he seems to have made all his studies at Évora and was Ordained there by 1654
He taught Mathematics at Elvas - though his Superiors thought he was better suited to literary subjects.
1661/2 Sent to London and made Final Vows there 02 February 1665
1671 He was Chaplain to Queen Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II and a Court Preacher in England. There he received from here some generous donations for a new Irish College or Novitiate at Athlone, but this money was actually used to found the new Irish College at Poitiers, until the Athlone project could be realised. This Athlone project never got off the ground, even though the thinking was that it could be disestablished in France and moved to Athlone..
During the Titus Oates Plot Cullen was a refugee in France and was acting as Procurator of the Irish Mission. Afterwards he returned to London and was again Chaplain to Queen Catherine. He was later envoy-extraordinary of James II to the court of Lisbon in order to solicit help from Portugal against William of Orange. This mission proved fruitless. He then came to Saint-Germain-en-Laye in service of the exiled James II, and he lived there until at least 1693.
1693 Took up residence as Procurator at the Irish College Poitiers, which he had done so much to found, and he died there 19/08/1705.
In his lifetime he was acknowledged by the General as “bene meritus” of the Society
Though the Athlone project was never realised, at the Suppression of the Society, some considerable part of the foundation was rescued in time by a Scots Jesuit - Crookshank - from a Paris bank. This money later formed part of the purchase money of the Restored Society’s first house in Ireland, Clongowes Wood College.
It is impossible to decide if his name was various spellings of “Cullen” or “Hughes” (his father’s surname and which his mother’s?). This difficulty similarly arises with others such as “D’Arcy/Bermingham” and “Thaly/Johnston”

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father John Hughes 1630-1705
At Poitiers on August 30th 1705 died Fr John Hughes, who may be regarded as the founder of the fortunes of the resuscitated Society in Ireland. He was Chaplain to Catherine of Braganza, Consort of Charles II of England. Through this connection, he came into the possession of a vast sum of money, which he placed at the disposal of Fr General for the use of the Irish Mission.

In particular he wished to found a house of Ours at Athlone, a fact which leads us to suspect that he was born there in 1630. This house was to be a College with a noviceship attached, revenues being sufficient to support a College and 24 novices. A foundation of sorts was made, which lasted only a short while with five of our Fathers. The bulk of the money was used to found our House at Poitiers. What was left formed the nest=egg which our Fathers so wisely invested at the Suppression, and which was afterwards used to purchase Castle Brown. Clongowes.

Fr Hughes, whose name is found in Jesuit letters under various aliases - Hugh Collins; Hugh Cullenan or Colan – resided for 30 years in London, as he hmiself states in a letter dated 1st May 1684.

When he died at Poitiers in 1705, Fr Knowles referred to him as “insignis et praecipus huius missionis benefactor”.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CULLENAN, HUGH. This Rev, Father was a Chaplain to Catharine, Queen of Charles II. and was mainly instrumental by his influence with her Majesty in procuring a splendid sum towards the erection of the Seminary at Poitiers. For 30 years, as I find by his letter of the 1st of May, 1684, he had resided in London. He was so successful in collecting funds for that establishment as justly to merit the title as its second founder. To the Irish Mission also he proved a generous friend. The year of his death I cannot fix; but F. Knoles, in his letter of the 6th of April, 1714, enumerating , the Fathers who died in exile “tempore bellorum” mentions F. Hugh Cullenan “insignis et praecipuus hujus Missionis Benefactor”.

Born: 1543, Wexford Town, County Wexford
Entered: 1570, St Andrea, Rome, Italy (ROM) / Arona, Novara, Italy (MED)
Ordained: pre-Entry
Died: 07 March 1599, San Roque, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS). Described as a "Martyr of Charity".

1590-1599 At Casa San Roque Lisbon, Age 50, Society 7, Confessor

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ "Catalogica Chronolgica":
He was a Martyr of Charity; Founded the College of Lisbon; Writer; Very zealous; A good linguist.
He is much praised by Fitzsimon and Copinger (his contemporaries) [cf Foley “Collectanea”]

◆ Fr Francis Finagan SJ:
Was already Ordained before Ent 1583 Rome. Received into the Society by General Aquaviva.
Although he entered at Rome, as there was no room there he was sent to make his Noviceship at Arona (near Milan)'.
1585-1589 Seems to have been at Genoa studying'.
1589 Sent by the General to Lisbon to take the place of Father Robert Rochford in ministering to the sailors and merchants who frequented the port, and lived at the Residence and Church of San Roque. He met with poor students arriving from Ireland or already living precariously in the city, anxious to make their ecclesiastical studies and return as priests to work amongst their countrymen. His immediate problem was feeding and housing them. By questing for alms for the support of these poor Irishmen he was able to meet their immediate and most pressing needs; food; clothing and lodging adequate for study and prayer. But Royal recognition and support were necessary to assure stability to the work. Thanks to the good offices of a Jesuit Pedro Fonseca, the Royal approval was secured and the Irish College, Lisbon, came officially into being on 1 February, 1593. A wealthy nobleman, Antonio Fernando Ximenes, endowed the Chairs of Theology in the College. Howling himself never became Rector of the College he did so much to found. His preference was that his Mission amongst sailors, traders and the refugees from the Elizabethan persecution, would have been impossible if he had been tied down by the problems inseparable from government. He died a martyr of charity during an outbreak of plague in the city 07 march 1599 (though this seems to have been a common date of death for many Jesuits who died in the plague of the time in different parts of Europe). In his busy nine years in Portugal, Howling must have found little leisure for writing yet he can be fairly described as the the first of the modern Irish martyrologists from Bishop Rothe to Bruodin. His opusculum is entitled “Perbreve Compendium in quo contin- entur nonnulli eorum qui .. . in Hybernia, regnante IMPIA REGINA Elizatleth martyrium perpessi sunt”. (Spic.Ossor.l, pp 82 sqq.)

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Houling, (Howlin), John
by Judy Barry

Houling, (Howlin), John (1543/4–1599), Jesuit and martyrologist, was born in Wexford and entered the priesthood at an unknown date. He is first recorded in 1577 when he was at Alcala de Henares, Spain (where he was a friend of William Walsh (qv), the exiled bishop of Meath). He was in Galicia in 1580 and in Lisbon in February 1583. Towards the end of that year he entered the Society of Jesus in Rome and was sent to Milan for his noviciate. In September 1589 he set out for Spain and was directed to a Jesuit house in Lisbon to take the place of Robert Rochford who ministered to Irish sailors and catholic exiles who landed at that port. Many of the exiles were unaccompanied youths and Houling’s concern for their welfare led him to envisage founding a college to provide them with an education. In 1592, he assisted Thomas White (qv), who had encountered similar problems at Valladolid, to establish a college for Irish students at Salamanca, with a royal guarantee of admission to the university.

Shortly after, having raised sufficient money to buy a disused convent, Houling brought his plans for Lisbon to fruition: on 1 February 1593, with the aid of Father Pedro Fonseca, he established the Irish College of St Patrick with an initial enrolment of thirty students. For the next six years he taught in the college and administered its affairs, overcoming its initial financial difficulties with funds provided by the viceroy of Portugal and the assistance of a local nobleman, Antonio Fernando Ximenes, who established an endowment to support fourteen students. In October 1599 plague broke out in Lisbon, and Houling and three fellow Jesuits busied themselves with visiting the sick and distributing food. All four died of the plague. Houling died in Lisbon, but the date recorded (7 March 1599) is clearly notional, having been assigned also to the deaths of a number of Jesuits who died about this time in different parts of Europe.

About 1589, Houling compiled the first native Irish martyrology, ‘Perbreve compendium’, a biographical listing of forty-six Irish people who had suffered for their religion between 1578 and 1588, thirty-nine of whom had died. Almost all were from Munster and south Leinster and most were Anglo-Irish. Rather more than half were lay people. Some of these were people of note, including the 15th earl of Desmond (qv), his brothers James and John (qv) and the brothers of Lord Baltinglass (qv), but there were ordinary people as well, among them a Wexford baker, Matthew Lambert (qv). Two were women, Margaret Ball (qv) and Margery Barnewall, who had suffered persecution for their faith.

Houling, in effect, was ascribing martyrdom to those he believed to have died for their faith in the Desmond, Baltinglass and Nugent rebellions or who had suffered in the aftermath. It is unlikely that he was in Ireland during the decade but he was personally acquainted with some of those whose stories he recorded, including Barnewall whose confessor he had been in Galicia, and his work provides an insight into the way in which exiles perceived events at home. It is preserved in the archives of the Irish College of Salamanca and was printed by Cardinal P. F. Moran (qv) in Spicilegium Ossoriense, i (1874), 82–109.

Edmund Hogan, Distinguished Irishmen of the sixteenth century (1894), 29–47; Irish Jesuit Archives (Leeson St., Dublin), MacErlean transcripts; Proinsias Ó Fionnagáin, SJ, ‘A biographical dictionary of Irish Jesuits in the time of the Society's third mission, 1598–1773’ (unpublished MS, c.1970s); Colm Lennon, The lords of Dublin in the age of reformation (1989), 143, 156–8, 213–14; Alan Ford, ‘Martyrdom, history and memory in early modern Ireland’, Ian McBride (ed.), History and memory in modern Ireland (2001), 43–66

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father John Howling 1542-1599
The name of Fr John Howling deserved to be held in honour and benediction for two reasons : Firstly because he was the founder of the Irish College in Lisbon in 1593, which, in the words of Fr Edmond Hogan “was a momentous event in Irish history, determining in a very great measure, the Catholic future of the country”; Secondly, for his work as a historian. In the midst of his most arduous labours for the faith, he wrote a most valuable account of the Irish martyrs done to death between 1578 and 1588. It is the very first contribution to an Irish Martyrology.

Fr Howling was a Wexford man, born in 1542 and entering the Society in 1573. He was an able writer, and excellent linguist, a man of untiring zeal, and lastly, a Martyr himself, for he died nursing those sick from the plague in Lisbon, on December 13th 1599.

Fr Henry FitzSimon wrote of him : “Fr Howling, by his pains advanced the public good of his country to his greatest power, leaving his memory in continual benediction, and that by him, our sad country hath received many rare helps and supplies, to the gread advancement of God’s glory and the discomfiture of heretics”.

Fr Howling’s name is given by Oliver in his “Collectanea” as “Olongo” (CCXIII), where he refers to him as “This unaccountable name (Q Lynch) as given by Fr Matthioas Tanner, p 347 of “Confessors of the Society of Jesus”.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
HOULING, JOHN This Father is mentioned in the Preface to F. Fitzsimon’s “Treatise on the Mass"

OLINGO, JOHN. This unaccountable name (Q. Lynch ?) is given by F Matthias Tanner, p. 347, “Confessors of the Society of Jesus”, to an Irish Father who died a victim of charity in attending persons attacked with the plague of Lisbon, in the Month of January, 1599.

Born: 23 April 1656, Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 22 April 1681, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1689, Coimbra, Portugal
Final Vows: 15 August 1713
Died: 05 January 1733, Waterford City, County Waterford

Studied Philosophy 2 years - seems to have studied at Lisbon before entering
1685 Was Subminister of Novices at Coimbra
1689 “Popish” PP of St Olave’s in Waterford priested in 1689
1700 At St Anthony’s College Lisbon (LUS)
1708 Catalogue Studied 3 years Philosophy and 4 Theology, was an MA Portugal. Taught Moral. Is now a PP
1713 Is now weak and acting PP - Copy of book in Carlow College says John Higgin Resid Waterford
1717 Catalogue “Many years laboured in Waterford, Confessor and looking after poor. Esteemed by priests and people. Grave and modest, if a little obstinate, often not making use of advice from others. Perhaps easily deceived by the evil minded, to the disgust and pain of his friends and derision of his enemies.

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Graduated MA in Portugal
Ord 1689 by John, Lord Bishop of Coimbra and “Earl of Arganil” Coimbra (List of registered Popish Priests)
1694 Arrived in Ireland in December and became Socius to the Mission Superior, Anthony Knowles (cf Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)
1704 Acting PP of St Olaf’s, Waterford
1708 Was a Missioner in Ireland
“On the 5th of the present month, Our Lord took to Himself, as we hope, Father John Francis, full of years and merits, a truly apostolic man in zeal and charity, and universally lamented by all in this city. I beseech your Reverence to remember his good soul at the altar, and to make his death known to the students that they may recommend him to God in their prayers.” - Letter in Spanish of Ignatius Roche to James de Oranjo, dated Waterford January 17, 1722-3 (should read 1732-3?) (Irish Ecclesiastical Record March 1874 and Hogan’s Irish list)
He was a most worthy Priest in the opinion of his brethren; MA and Professor of Theology; Learned
Some letters of his are at Salamanca
(cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had already studied Philosophy at Lisbon before Ent 22 April 1681 Portugal
After First Vows he was sent to Coimbra to resume his studies and graduated MA in 1687 and Ordained there 1689
He then taught Moral Theology at Coimbra for one year
1694 Sent to Ireland and to Waterford, where he spent the rest of his life
1704 Registered at the Tholsel Waterford as PP of St Olav’s, to which were joined St Peter’s and St Patrick’s. He continued as PP of these three Parishes until his death there 05 January 1733
The Parish Register he kept for twenty five years at Waterford survived.
He was for many years Consultor and Secretary of the Irish mission

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father John Francis Higgins SJ 1656-1732
Fr John Francis Higgins was born in Waterford on April 23rd 1656. He was admitted into the Society in Portugal, and in the same country took his degree as Master of Arts.

Arriving in Ireland in 1694, with a great name among his brethren for worth and learning, he became Socius to the Superior, Fr Knoles, in Waterford. In 1708 he entered on missionary work and in succession to Fr Everard he became Parish Priest of St Patrick’s and St Olave’s in Waterford. He started the Parochial Register in the Parish which still survives in St John’s Church.

He died in 1732. The Superior, Fr Ignatius Roche wrote to Fr General of him as having “died full of years and merits, a a truly apostolic man in zeal and charity, and universally lamented by all in Waterford”.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
HIGGINS, JOHN FRANCIS, was admitted into the Order in Portugal, in April, 1681. He reached the Irish Mission in December, 1694, and it seems was socius at Waterford to the Superior Anthony Knoles. After the 13th of December, 1697, I lose sight of him.

Born: 1644, Ireland
Entered: 07 December 1664, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Died: 10 April 1673, At Sea in transit to Goa - - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Didacus Garcez

1664 Mentioned
1673 at Port Indes

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He went from Portugal to the Indies in 1673 (Franco’s “Hist of the Province of Portugal”)

◆ Fr John MacErlean SJ :
1673 After studies set sail for GOA with a large number of Jesuits. Twelve Jesuits died of sickness on the voyage and the first was James Grace. Buried at Sea

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father James Grace SJ 1644-1673
Fr James Grace was born in Ireland in 1644, and entered the Society at Lisbon in 1664.

After finishing his studies he set sail for Goa early in 1673 with a large number of Jesuit Fathers. Sickness broke out on the voyage, and twelve missioners died. The first to die was Fr Grace on April 10th 1673. He was buried at sea.

Born: 1598, Thomond, County Clare
Entered: 1617, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Died: 16 November 1619, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias de Amaral

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Two Entries : Gorman (1); Michael Amaraly (2)
Matthew Gorman
DOB Tuam or Thomond; Ent 1616 Portugal; RIP post 1617
Michael Amalary
DOB Ireland; Ent 1619 Lisbon; RIP 01 November 1619

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
He died at the Novitiate fifteen months after Ent in Lisbon 16 November 1619

Born: 25 July 1659, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 02 May 1677, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)
Ordained: 14 March 1691, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 04 August 1717, Dublin City, County Dublin

1704 Living at Grangegorman Dublin, PP of Kinsealy
1708 Catalogue Studied Philosophy 3 years and Theology 4 years. Taught Grammar for 6 years. Minister. Strong considering his age
1714 Catalogue A good Operarius. Was a PP but hindered by persecutors. Opened a school for boys but had to abandon that as well. Laboured then in secret. Learned and obedient to Superiors and loves the Society. He was accused through harsh words of giving offence to ours working in the city. He got mixed up in family affairs, but local Superior says he is modest and obedient.

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1694 Arrested on landing in Ireland and brought to Dublin, a distance of 100 miles, and examined by the Privy Council and then released. (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS and HIB Catalogue 1708 etc)
1697 I March he was lodging at Mr Elleston’s, Channel Row, Dublin (now North Brunswick St) and assisting at Channel Row Chapel (Spy’s Report)
1704 The List of Registered Popish Parish Priests (preserved at Clongowes) and gives his name as “Popish Priest’s name, James Gibbons; place of abode Grangegorman; Parish of which he pretends to be Parish Priest, Kinsaly; Received Popish Orders 14 March 1691 at Coimbra” etc
He was a learned and zealous Priest’ A Prisoner in 1695 (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
After First Vows he studied Philosophy at Coimbra and then was sent to Braga for Regency. He returned to Coimbra for Theology (1687) and was Ordained there 14 March 1691
1691-1694 He was teaching Rhetoric at Porto College when he was sent to Ireland in 1694
1694 Returned to Ireland and sent to Waterford. On his arrival there he was arrested, held in a Dublin prison and then released (the authorities were apparently unaware of his Jesuit identity).
1697 He was an Assistant Priest at Channel (sic) Row and his identity was still unrecognised as a Jesuit
1704-1714 He became PP at Kinsealy and living at Grangegorman. In 1714 following the Proclamation against the hierarchy and regular clergy, he relinquished that position, probably because his identity as a Jesuit was at last discovered.
1714 He then engaged in a furtive Ministry in the city and managed to conduct a school for a short period until he died there 04 August 1717

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
GIBBONS, JAMES. This Father was actually arrested in December, 1694, on landing; and conveyed to Dublin, a distance of 100 miles, and examined by the Privy Council on his reason for returning to Ireland. He was discharged from custody on the following February, He was living on the 15th of November, 1712.

Born: 06 April 1632, County Waterford
Entered: 14 October 1655, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1664, Évora, Portugal
Final Vows: 02 February 1676
Died: 21 December 1695, Residence of Faro, Faro, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Geraldine

1661 Had finished Philosophy
1665-1669 Minister of Irish College, Lisbon for 5 years
1678-81 At Angra College teaching Moral Theology

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
For many years Professor of Moral Theology in the Azores, and was dear to all for his amiability and virtue.
Returning to Ireland he was Chaplain in the Fleet which was sent against the French, and in which were many Irishmen.
After several escapes he was deported from Ireland, and in the College at Faro, looked after the interests of Irish people there (Franco “Annales”)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
After First Vows he studied at Évora and was Ordained c 1664
1664-1676 Sent as Minister to Irish College Lisbon
1676-1685 Sent to S Miguel Azores to teach Moral Theology
1685 Sent to Ireland and to Waterford, though he did not reach there until 1687. Along with Anthony Knoles he became a teacher at the Corporation or Free School, which was set up after James II had created by a new charter the Corporation of that city.
1692 Exiled to Portugal after the Williamite Conquest and sent to the Faro Residence, where he ministered to Irish and English sailors and merchants at the port there, until his death there 21 December 1695

Born: 1549, Limerick City, County Limerick
Entered: 06 October 1574, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Died: 07 July 1626, Asunción, Paraguay - Paraguayensis Province (PAR)

Alias Filde

Son of Dr Field and Genet Creagh
1569 There was a Thomas Field Penitentiary of English, Irish and Scots (is this he?)
1575 In April he and Fr Yates left Rome for Brazil arriving 1577. Fr Yates describes him in a letter as “Yrishe man”
1577 in Portugal ???

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica” :
Son of Dr Field and Genet (Janet) née Creagh (Creah)
In 1586 he was captured and “evil-handed” and manacled by English pirates, put out in an open boat with no rudder or oars and drifted away to Buenos Ayres.
He was one of the three first missioners of Paraguay; of great innocence of life and alone in Paraguay for years.
He is erroneously called a Scot by Charlevoix and an Italian by Franco
(cf Cordara “Hist Soc” AD 1626 and in Foley’s “Collectanea”, p253 there is an interesting letter about him in 1589 by Fr Yates)
Alias “Felie”
Humanities at Paris, Philosophy at Louvain, graduating MA before Entered 06/10/1574 Rome
28/04/1575 Went on pilgrimage with James Sale, an Englishman from Rome to Galicia, and from there to the Brazils without having taken First Vows.
He spent many years in Brazil with Joseph Anchieta (Apostle of Brazil, styled Thaumaturgus) and was his emulator. Ordered from Brazil to Paraguay. After incident above with pirates, he died in Asunçion, Paraguay. (cf "Hibernia Ignatiana" and Oliver, Irish Section, Stonyhurst MSS)
Letter from Fr John Vincent (vere Yates), a Missioner in Brazil, to Fr John Good, dated, St Anthony's Brazil, 02 January 1589 (British Museum Lansdown MSS). he calls him by the alias name of “Thomas Feile” :
“News of Father Thomas Feile are these. Since that I wrote your Reverence of him in my other letter, in 1586 he was sent from St Vincents with three others of our company into a country far from here, which they call Tumumâ, near unto Peru, at the petition of the Bishop of that place unto our Provincial of this Brazil land; and in his way by sea near unto the great River Plate, they were taken by an English pirate named Robert Waddington, and very evil handed by him, and robbed of all those things they carried with them. The which pirate afterwards, in the year of 1587, came roaming along this coast from thence, until he came unto this city, the which he put in great fear and danger, and had taken it that if these new Christians of which we have charge, had not resisted him, so that one hundred and fifty men that he brought with him, he left unto three score slain. On this matter in other letters, I doubt not but that your Reverence shall hear. To return now to the news of Father Thomas Feile, I do give you this knowledge of him that he was very unapt to learn this Brazil speech, but he did always edify us with his virtuous life and obedience to all those with whom he was conversant, unto whom I have sent the letter your Reverence did sent him, and with the same, I sent unto him his portion of the blessed grains and images which came unto my hands, as also the roll of countrymen that be of our company. Whilst he was in this Brazil land, he took not only the holy order of Priesthood, as I do hear he took in the same place where he is now resident, which is as far as Portugal from hence”
(cf IbIg; Oliver, Irish Section, "Stonyhurst MSS")
1574 Left Portugal for Brazil arriving at Bahi in 31 December 1577
Spent 10 years as scholastic living in Piratininga (São Paolo), often accompanying Fr Anchieta on his missionary tours among the Indians

◆ Fr John MacErlean SJ :
1587 Sent to Paraguay (escaped death by pirates after his ship was captured off Buenos Aires)
He spent time at the Mission of Córdoba de Tucuman (Argentina) and then went to Asunçion (Paraguay).
He and Fr Ortega evangelised Indians for hundreds of miles around Asunçion
1590-1599 Founded a Church in Villa Rica, Paraguay
1599 Recalled to Asunción, and the Missions at Villa Rica and Guayra were abandoned until the Province of Paraguay was formed in 1607, and he returned there then.
Eventually returned to Asunción ministering to the Indians until his death in 1626

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Field (Fehily), Thomas
by Patrick M. Geoghegan

Field (Fehily), Thomas (1546/9–1625), Jesuit priest and missionary, was born in Limerick, in 1546 or 1549, son of a catholic medical doctor, William Field (or Fehily), and his wife, Genet Field (née Creagh). Because of his religion he was sent for his education to Douai and then Louvain, in the Low Countries, and finally to Rome, where he entered the Society of Jesus on 6 October 1574. He trained for the priesthood before being sent on an important mission to Brazil. Travelling from Rome to Lisbon, he was forced to beg along the way, before beginning the long journey to South America in 1577.

In Brazil he worked with the Spanish Jesuit José de Anchieta (1534–97), who was credited with performing many miracles. In 1586 he was one of five Jesuits sent from Brazil on a mission to convert the peoples of La Plata province. During the voyage the group was captured by pirates, some of them Irish pirates who treated Field with utter contempt, despising his catholic zeal. In the end he was put into an open boat without rudder or oars and set adrift, but he survived and arrived safely in Argentina. He is believed to have been the first Irishman to set foot in Argentina and may also have been the first to go to Brazil.

When he arrived at Buenos Aires it had been in existence just seven years and comprised only a dozen houses. With Manuel Ortega as his superior he was sent on a further mission to Paraguay, where he baptised thousands, and was responsible for the conversion of many. He tended to the sick during the great fever epidemic in South America in 1588 and was respected for his hard work and dedication. A man of great piety and humility, as penance he denied himself the use of fruit on the trees. He died 15 April 1625 at Asuncion among the peoples of La Guira, Upper Paraguay.

Henry Foley, Records of the English province of the Society of Jesus (1877), i, 288; Edmund Hogan, Chronological catalogue of the Irish members of the Society of Jesus, 1550–1814 (1888), 5; Thomas Murray, The story of the Irish in Argentina (1919), 1–8; Aubrey Gwynn, ‘The first Irish priests in the new world’, Studies, xxi (1932), 212–14; ODNB

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Thomas Field SJ 1549-1626
Fr Thomas Field was born in Limerick in 1549 and entered the Society at Rome in 1574. He was attached to the Portuguese Province and from there left for Brazil, arriving at Bahia on 31st December 1577. He spent ten years as a scholastic in what is now known as Saõ Paolo, but made frequent journeys among the Indians with the Venerable Fr Anchieta during these years.

He was transferred to Paraguay in 1587, and on the voyage, narrowly escaped death at the hands of English pirates, who captured his ship off Buenos Aires. He proceeded,to Asuncion, where with Fr Ortega he evangelised the Indians for hundreds of miles around. In 1590 he built a Church at Villa Rica which became his headquarters for the next nine years.

In 1599 he was recalled to Asuncion, and the Mission at Villa Rica was abandoned until Paraguay was made a Province in 1607. He then returned to the scene of his former labours and worked among the Indians until his death in 1626.

◆ Interfuse

Interfuse No 45 : Christmas 1986

Portrait from the Past

FR THOMAS FILDE : 1548/9-1626

Edmund Hogan

The Limerick Jesuit who was one of the founders of “The Mission” - currently showing at Dublin's Adelphi Cinema.

“On the 6th of October, 1574, Thomas Phildius, a Limerick Irishman, twenty-five years of age, enters the Novitiate. His father, Willian, was a doctor of medicine and his mother was Genet Creah. Both his parents are dead. He studied humanities for three years at Paris and Douay, and philosophy for three years at Louvain, where he became Master of Arts... under his own hand - Thomas. Phildius”. So wrote Thomas Filde in the Roman Novice-Book.

Thomas was born at Limerick in the year 1548, or 1549, of Catholic parents, at whose house he most probably often saw the Nuncio, Father Woulfe, S.J., who resided at Limerick in those days. In order to preserve his faith, Thomas was sent to study at Paris, Douay and Louvain; and he was received into the Society in Rome by the General, Everard Mercurian. He showed such advancement and solidity in virtue, that, after six months in the Novitiate, he obtained leave to go on the Brazilian mission.

With four Jesuit companions, he set sail joyfully on the “Rio de Janeiro”, and, after a prosperous voyage, came in sight of South America. They were in the Rio de la Plata and felt free from all fear of the English sea-rovers, when they discovered two sails, which were those of the cruel corsair, Cavendish. The English boarded the Portuguese merchantman, treated the passengers and crew with some humanity, but wreaked all their fury on the Jesuits. The pirates confided them to the mercy of the waves in a boat without rudder, oars, or sails, and left them to be tossed about and die of hunger in these wide waters.

Against all human expectation they drifted into the port of Buenos Ayres. When it was heard at Cordova that they had reached Buenos Ayres, almost dead with hunger and cold, they were met by the Bishop of Paraguay, who pressed them to go to Asuncion, where their Brazilian speech was well understood. Filde, de Ortega (a Portuguese) and Saloni (a Neapolitan) held a consultation, in which, after fervent prayer, they resolved to go to Paraguay, the language of which they spoke. They travelled nine hundred miles partly by land, partly by the Argentine and Paraguay Rivers, evangelizing as they journeyed on, and on August 11th, 1588, they reached a place nine miles from the town of Asuncion. The Governor of the province and other gentlemen went out to meet and welcome them The Indians seeing the respect of the Spaniards for those priests, conceived a high opinion of them, which grew greater when they considered the sympathy which the Fathers showed for them, the zeal with which they instructed them, the courage with which they protected them from Spanish oppression, and the disinterestedness and devotedness with which they had come so far, and through so many dangers, for the sole purpose of saving their souls. The neighbouring Indians hearing of these three holy nen went to see them, and were delighted to hear them speak the Guarani language.

But as the Spaniards were in a sad state in and around the town, the Fathers set to work at once to reform them, preaching to them, catechizing, hearing confessions, often spending whole days and nights in the tribunals of mercy, and scarcely ever allowing themselves more than one or two hours' rest. They converted the whole town. Then they turned to the Indians in and around Asuncion; instructed them, administered the sacraments to them; on Sundays and feast-days they got them to walk in procession, singing pious Guarani hymns. They then visited two distant Indian villages, and evangelized them, and after that Fathers Filde and de Ortega went and preached the Gospel through all the Indian tribes from Asuncion to Ciudad Real del Guayra, and produced most abundant fruit.

At about ninety miles from the first Indian village lived a barbarous race, in almost impenetrable forests and among rocks almost inaccessible. They were brave and robust; but never worked, and spent their time dancing and singing The Fathers sent two Christian natives to them with presents, and with promises of good things if they came out of their fastnesses to them; and in the meantime they prayed fervently that God would draw these poor people towards them. Their prayers were heard, and the head cacique came, with some of his men, dressed in war-paint of various colours and wearing long flowing hair, which had never been cut, with a crown of high plumes on his head. These savages were at first very shy in presence of the two strangers, but were soon attracted to them by the kindness of their looks and actions: they were converted, and promised to lead a good life and to prevail on the rest of their tribe to do likewise. The cacique was induced to remain with the Fathers, while his attendants and forty Indians recently baptized were despatched to bring out the members of his tribe. At the end of a fortnight, they brought with them three hundred and fifty men, women and children, who seened on the verge of starvation. Many children died of hunger the day of their arrival, after receiving the Sacrament of Baptism; the survivors were formed into a pueblo, were baptized, and led a holy and happy life.

The Jesuits baptized many pagans, performed the ceremony of marriage for many Spaniards and many Indians who had been living in a state of concubinage; instructed those ignorant of religion, extinguished long-standing animosities, and put an end to many scandals. The townspeople were so edified by their virtues, that they pressed them to remain and wanted to found a house of the Society in that place. But Fathers Filde and de ortega did not wish to narrow their sphere of action, and, at the end of a month's mission there, they went forth again to pour the treasures of grace on other parts of the province; they evangelized the numerous tribes between Ciudad Real and Villa Rica, baptized all the infidels who dwell along the banks of the Rio Hiubay, banished drunkenness and polygamy from among them, protected them against the oppressions of the Spaniard; and after many hardships and labours reached Villa Rica, and were there received with great solemnity. Triumphal arches were put up and the most fragrant flowers of that delightful country were displayed to do them honour. With military music and singing and other demonstrations of joy and welcome, they were conducted in procession to the church, where they declared the object of their mission. They remained four months at Villa Rica, working with untiring zeal, instructing the Spaniards whom they found ignorant of the truths and practices of religion, and doing all in their power to put in the souls of the colonists sentiments of mercy and kindness towards the poor Indians whom they were accustomed to treat as slaves.

After their apostolic labours at Villa Rica, the two Fathers went forth and converted a nation of ten thousand Indian Warriors, Indios de guerra, called Ibirayaras, who for clothing were contented with a coat of war-paint, and delighted in feeding on the flesh of their fellow-man. The Fathers had the happiness of rescuing many prisoners from being fattened, cooked, and eaten by these cannibals. They then baptized three thousand four hundred of another tribe; but before the work of conversion, Filde's companion narrowly escaped being murdered, and thirty of their neophytes were put to death by some wicked caciques. The two missioners had been often deliberating about going back to Asuncion; but as the inhabitants of Villa Rica built a church and residence for
them, they remained there for seven years longer.

In 1593, Father Romero was sent as Superior of the mission of Tucuman; he brought nine missioners with him, ordered Fathers Filde and de Ortega to continue their work in the Guayra territory, and sent Fathers Saloni and de Lorenzana to their assistance. On the 3rd of November, 1594, these two started from Asuncion, and reached Fathers Filde and Ortega at Villa Rica on the feast of the Epiphany, 1595. In this journey of over five hundred miles, they narrowly escaped being drowned in the Parana, and had often to make their way by swimming, or by wading through marshes and flooded fields. Swimming seems to have been one of the useful, and even necessary, arts of these early missionaries. We are told it of three of them, but not of Filde, who, being born and brought up on the banks of the Shannon, was skilled in the art of natation, and of driving and directing a “cot” or canoe through the water.

Fr. Filde was the sole representative of the Society in the countries of Tucuman and Paraguay until 1605 when he was joined at the residence of Asuncion by Fathers Lorenzana and Cataldino. The former wrote to the Provincial of Peru: “We found in our house, to the great comfort and joy of his soul and of ours, good Father Filde, who in spite of his infirmities has gone on with his priestly work and by his religious spirit and his dove-like simplicity (simplicidad columbina), has edified the whole town very much for the last three years. His is never done thanking God for seeing his brethren again in this far-off land".

In 1610, two Italian Jesuits made their way to Villa Rica, and found there the sacred vessels and the library which belonged to Fathers de Ortega and Filde. In the month of February they went up the River Paranapane, or “River of Misfortune”, to the mouth of the Pirape; they knew from the cacique who guided them with what joy they would be received by the native neophytes of Filde and de Ortega, and the moment they entered the lands of the Guaranis, they were net and welcomed with effusion in the name of the two hundred families whom these first missionaries had evangelized, and to whom the new-comers were bringing the blessings of civilization and liberty. On the very place that witnessed this interesting interview, Fathers Macheta and Cataldino founded the first “Reduction” of Paraguay, which was the model of all those that were formed afterwards.

In 1611, there was a burst of popular indignation against the Jesuits on account of their efforts to abolish slavery. They were “boycotted”, and could not get for charity or money anything to eat. No one would sell them anything. A poor old Indian woman, knowing their wants and the implacable hatred the Spaniards bore them, brought them some little thing to eat every day; but the other Indians had been turned against their best friends by the calumnies of the Spaniards. The Fathers withdrew to a country house in the village of Tacumbu; yet not liking to abandon the place altogether, they left Brothers de Acosta and de Aragon to teach school and Father Filde to say Mass for them. Here the Limerickman spent the last fifteen years of his life.

In 1626, Thomas Filde died at Asuncion in the seventy-eight or eightieth years of his age, and the fifty-second of his religious life, during which he spent about ten years in Brazil and forty in the missions of Paraguay, of which he and de Ortega were the founders.

Born: 1575, Fethard-on-Sea, County Wexford
Entered: 1598, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1604, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 30 June 1647, Cashel Residence, County Tipperary

1603 At Coimbra (LUS) in 3rd year Theology
1606 Teaching Theology at Irish College Lisbon
1616 Catalogue Superior of Mission thinks he to fill Chair of Theology. Missioner
1617 Is in Ireland. Prudent and assiduous operarius, very hot tempered
1622 In Leinster
1626 Good in all, preaches well, not circumspect, choleric

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica” :
(cf Foley’s Collectanea and Fr Young’s sketch in “Spicilegium Ossorium, Vol ii)
1607 Sent to Irish Mission from Spain, at the time his brother John, a judge, quitted the bench for conscience sake.
He is named in the letter of Father Lawndry to the General 04/11/1611 as then labouring assiduously on the mission in his neighbourhood. He was employed at Cashel chiefly for forty years, and was a distinguished Preacher.
He is named in a Report of the Irish Mission 1641-1650 (Verdier?). His virtues are fully recorded in this Report.
His death is recorded at Cashel residence a few months before the destruction of the city and church.
Is said to have died on his knees on Good Friday 16/04/1647 (though Easter Sunday was 21 April 1647!)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Redmond Everard. Brother of Sir John Everard, Speaker of the House of Commons
Had studied Humanities at the Irish College Lisbon and Philosophy at Coimbra before Ent 1598 Portugal
After First Vows he resumed his studies at Coimbra and was Ordained there 1604
1604-1605 Sent to lecture Philosophy at Braga
1605-1608 Sent to lecture Philosophy at the Irish College Lisbon
1608 Sent to Ireland and was at Callan by May, and then sent to the Dublin Residence
1621-1631 Sent to Drogheda and with Robert Bathe established there the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin. he was also a Consultor of the Mission.
1631 Sent to Cashel residence. In spite of poor health he was zealous in Ministry until his death there 30 June 1646

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father James Everard SJ 1575-1647
Fr James Everard was born in Fethard in 1575. He entered the Society in Portugal in 1598, the year the irish Mission was founded, by the appointment of Fr Holywood as Superior.

After some years spent professing Theology in Portugal, Fr Everard succeeded in getting to the irish Mission in 1607. That same year, his brother, who was a judge, resigned his post rather than act against his conscience.

His talents as a preacher were remarkable, and for 40 years he laboured unceasingly as a missioner amid innumerable perils. Cashel was the scene of his apostolic labours, though his name appears in a State paper as being secretly kept by Archbishop Matthews in his hose in Dublin in 1611.

He was of delicate health and suffered a good deal during his life, but his ill health never made him less prompt for any call.

He was found dead on his knees on Good Friday morning, April 16th 1647, aged 72, of which 50 were spent in the Society.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
EVERARD, JAMES. This Rev. Father offered his services for the Irish Mission early in 1605, but could not be spared from Spain until the Autumn of 1607, at the very time that his brother John, an eminent lawyer and judge, quitted the Bench rather than betray his Conscience. At this period, intolerance, with the denial of civil rights, stalked abroad through his native Country, and the best men were seized for its victims, and the British Constitution was the by-word for injustice, oppression, and persecution to death for liberty of Conscience. During 40 years, F. Everard was reserved for Apostolic labor chiefly at Cashell. As a Preacher, he ranked in the first class : and though of a delicate constitution, and generally unwell, he was ever prompt and eager to fulfil the duties of his ministry. Severe to himself, he was all condescension and charity to his neighbours. On Good Friday, 16th of April, 1647, the venerable man was found dead on his knees.

Born: 25 November 1638, Craddockstown, County Kildare
Entered: 01 December 1658, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: 1669, Palermo, Sicily
Final Vows: 02 February 1676
Died: 30 January 1700, Irish College, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)

1675-1686 at Fermo College (ROM) teaching Philosophy and Grammar - and 1681 teaching Theology at Macerata College
1693-1700 At Irish College in Rome taught Theology, Philosophy and Humanities : Rector 1695-1698

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1692-1695 Rector at Rome. While there in 1692, he received letters from Fathers Relly and Wesly at Poitiers. He sought and procured for the “meritorious and afflicted Irish Mission” 50,000 reales from Fr Emmanuel de Sylva SJ, Lisbon. In 1693 he received a further letter from Father Relly, which was directed to the Greek College, Rome. On 05 February 1695, he received from Father Ininger of Ingolstadt, 500 scudi, or 1,000 florins for the Irish Mission.
In 1690 he was at Poitiers when his nephew William, a lieutenant Sir Maurice Eustace’s infantry writes to tell him that his brother has been killed at the siege of Limerick, “riding as a volunteer”. He also asks him to get him transferred into Tyrconnell’s Horse, in which regiment he would have less work and more pay.
1697 There is a petition against him by his sister-in-law, Mrs Eustace at Craddockstown.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of William and Jane née Whyte (daughter of Nicholas Whyte at Leixlip)
Had already studied Philosophy at Antwerp before Ent 02 December 1658 Rome
After First Vows he was sent for Regency at Fermo, and then studied Theology at Palermo where he was Ordained c 1669
1669-1671 Sent teaching at Ascoli
1671-1672 Tertianship at Florence
1672-1678 Taught Philosophy and Theology at Fermo, and also spent one year during that time as Penitentiary at Loreto
1679-1681 Sent to Macerata College to teach Philosophy
1681-1683 Sent to Irish College Rome as Prefect of Studies
1683-1684 Sent to Fermo College again to teach Dogmatic Theology
1684-1690 Sent to Ireland and was appointed Superior of the Dublin Residence and school, and was also made a Consultor of the Mission, and was though to be a very suitable candidate for Mission Superior. He remained there until the Williamite conquest, and the Mission Superior Lynch sent him to Rome as Procurator of the Irish Mission. On the way he spent a year at Poitiers to attend to urgent financial business of the Mission in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Dublin.
1691 Arrived in Rome and proved himself a tower of strength of the mission during the darkening years that preceded the penal times acting as procurator of the Irish Mission.
1694 Appointed Rector of Irish College Rome 10 October 1694 and died in office 30 January 1700.

Born: 1601, Fethard, County Tipperary
Entered: 1625, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1630, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 09 October 1636, Irish College, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

1624 in the Novitiate at Lisbon (LUS)
1628 Studying Theology at Lisbon
1633 Teaching at San Miguel, Azores (LUS)
1633 Teaching at Irish College in Lisbon

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
He had already studied Philosophy at Irish College Lisbon and received Minor Orders there 24 February 1623 before Ent 1625 Lisbon
After First Vows he was sent to Coimbra for studies and Ordained there c 1630
1633-1635 Professor of Moral Theology at the College of S Miguel in the Azores
1635 Professor of Dogmatic Theology at Irish College Lisbon until he died there 09 October 1636

Born: 1584, Ossory, County Kilkenny
Entered: 18 December 1603, Évora, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1612/3, Évora, Portugal
Died: 13 March 1642, Galway Residence, Galway City, County Galway

Alias Duigin

1606 Student at Évora and called “John Baptist Doulgar”
1614-19 Teaching Arts at Irish Seminary in Lisbon
Was Rector of Irish College at Lisbon
1626 Was in Ireland
1634 Reading Theology at Lisbon
“Often accompanied Dr Kirwan on his visitation of the Tuam Diocese. He was 20 years Superior of the Galway Residence”.
“So profound his learning, piety and judgement, his opinions and decisions were at all times considered as oracles of the best of the people (Lynch on Life of Dr Kirwan)”
Known to have forfeited his estates at Cloncoise Castle a slab of which is now in gardens of Mundrehid House, Co Laois

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Nephew of Peter Lombard, Archbishop of Armagh
He was Professor of Belles Lettres, Philosophy and Theology - his learning, prudence and piety are extolled by Dr Lynch.
1620-1642 He was a zealous Missioner in Connaught and Rector of Galway Residence (cf Foley’s Collectanea)
1607-1642 On Irish Mission. He was reported by the Mission Superior to have been “distinguished for the example of religious life, and for laborious industry during the many years he cultivated the vineyard” (Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS)
(cf “Pii Antistitis Icon, or Life of Bishop Kirwan)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had studied at the Irish College Lisbon before Ent 18 December 1603 Évora
After First Vows he completed Philosophy studies, did a short Regency and then studied at Évora where he was Ordained there 1612/1613
1613 Sent to Lisbon to teach Philosophy
1619-1622 Rector of Irish College Lisbon succeeding Cornelius Carrick, but was keen to be sent on the Irish Mission
1622 Sent to Ireland and to the Galway Residence.
1630-1641 Superior of Galway Residence for eleven years and died there 13 March 1642
In 1625 - three years after his return to Ireland - trouble broke out at the Irish College Lisbon because of the appointment of a Portuguese Rector to replace William McGrath. The Portuguese Provincial appealed to Fr General to have Fr Duggin returned and there is much correspondence between them in the succeeding four years. Fr Duggin in the end was not sent back because he was too valuable in Galway.
A great friend of Bishop Francis Kirwan of Killala, whom he accompanied on his first visitation of his Diocese
The Mission Superior Robert Nugent paid tribute in his notification of death to the General “ for his exemplary religious life and indefatigable labours in this vineyard for many years”

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
DUIGUIN, JOHN BAPTIST. From F. Robert Nugent’s letter, dated Ireland, 24th of April, 1642, I collect that his friend had died on the preceding 13th of March, religiosae vitae exemplo et multorum annorum exantlatis in hac vinea laboribits insignis.

Born: 05 January 1716, Edgeworthstown, County Longford
Entered: 26 July 1732, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1747/8, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 17 April 1758, Dublin, County Dublin - described as Martyr

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Taught Grammar, Humanities and Rhetoric in Lisbon.
1750-1758 In Dublin
In the 1755 HIB Catalogue is the date “17/04/1758” by a different hand, which is presumed to be the RIP date.

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1734-1737 After First Vows studied Philosophy at Coimbra
1737-1742 Sent on Regency at Lisbon teaching Rhetoric
1742-1749 Sent for Theology at Coimbra and Ordained there 1747/48
1749-1750 After Tertianship at Coimbra, he was sent as Minister at Irish College Lisbon
1750 Sent to Ireland working as an Operarius in Dublin, but was already in poor health, and he died there 17 April 1758

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
DORAN, EDMUND, of Leinster. He was born on the 5th of January, 1716, and entered the Society at Lisbon on the 26th of July, 1732. This Professed Father came to the Irish Mission in 1750; he was naturally of a weak constitution. Dublin was his usual residence, where it seems he died on the 17th of April, 1758.

Born: 1657, Fannystown, Duncormick, County Wexford
Entered: 11 June 1681, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: c.1693, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 12 July 1694, Porto, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Wareus

1693 Minister of Irish College Lisbon and working in Theology - Vereus was said to be Minister there in 1700

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Lived in Portugal and had been a merchant. Converted to religious life by seeing the ravage done by lightening. He was a pious, angelic, and affable Priest. (Franco)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had done studies at Coimbra before Ent 11 June 1681 in the same city
After First Vows he continued his studies at Coimbra and was Ordained there by 1693, though his health was poor.
1693 At the Irish College Lisbon as Minister, though still engaged in studies.
He was in delicate health and died 12 July 1694.

Born: 1546, Lisbon, Portugal
Entered: 28 April 1561, Lisbon Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Final Vows: December 1586, Lisbon, Portugal
Died: 17 June 1588, on ship in transit to England - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

◆ The English Jesuits 1650-1829 Geoffrey Holt SJ : Catholic Record Society 1984
Born c1546 Lisbon, Poerugal (Borja de Medina “Jesuitas en la Armada”)

◆Old/18 has “d’Almeida” RIP 19 June 1588 England

Born: 1657, Ireland
Entered: 1677, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1681, Évora, Portugal
Died: 22 July 1703, Tuticorin (Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu), India - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Colan

Nephew (?) of Hugh Hughes (Cullen) - RIP 1705

1681 Went to the Indies (Franco’s synopsis)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Possibly a nephew of Hugo Cullen (alias Hues, Hughs)
Had already begun Philosophy before Ent 1677 Lisbon
After First Vows he was sent to Évora for studies, but only remained until 1681 when he was Ordained and was heading for the Indian Mission
In India he worked at Travancore (Thiruvithamkoor) in Tamil Nadu and the Malabar Region, and he died in Tuticorin (Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu) 22 July 1703

Born: 1572, New Ross, County Wexford
Entered: 22 July 1592, Coimbra, Portugal - Lusitaniae province (LUS)
Ordained: 1600, Salamanca, Spain
Professed: 06 January 1613
Died: 01 December 1626, Irish College, Seville, Spain - Baeticae Province (BAE)

Uncle of John Conway SJ - DOB 1617, Ent 1627, LEFT July 8, 1631

Studied 3 years Arts and 2 of Theology at Coimbra before Entry
1603 At Salamanca has 3 years Philosophy and 4 years Theology and is a Confessor
1612 in Compostella where he wrote an account of O’Devaney’s in Ireland martyrdom from an eyewitness
1614 At Madrid College
1617 In Province of Castellanae
1622 Rector of Irish College Seville
1624 At Madrid, Prefect of College

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica”:
He was a Rector and a great promoter of the Irish Colleges in Spain; Writer;
He was zealous and pious.
He was tied to a tree by robbers and miraculously freed by the Blessed Virgin Mary and his Angel Guardian (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ:
Son of Patrick and his wife née White
Studied Humanities at Irish College Lisbon 1589/1590 before Ent 22 July 1592 at Coimbra
After First Vows was sent to Spain for studies, to Montforte for Philosophy and Royal College Salamanca for Theology and was Ordained there 1600.
From the completion of his studies until the end of his life he was destined to play an important part in the organisation and support of the Irish Colleges of Salamanca, Santiago, and Seville.
1600-1608 At Salamanca as Spiritual Father but frequently filled in as vice-Rector during the many absences of Thomas White, who was constantly travelling seeking alms for the College,
1608-1613 Rector Irish College Salamanca
1613-1618 Appointed Rector of Irish College Santiago
1619-1622 First Rector of new Irish College Seville - lent to BAE
1622-1625 Freed from Seville to organise the finances of the Irish Colleges from the procurator's office at Madrid.
1625 Appointed Rector of Seville again and died in Office 01 December 1626
Richard Conway, it can ·be justly claimed, was one of the most eminent of Irish Churchmen of the seventeenth century. Under his prudent guidance for over a quarter of a century the three Irish Colleges under the control of the Jesuits in Spain sent forth to the Mission in their home country an army of splendidly trained priests prepared with knowledge and animated by zeal to maintain the Catholic faith in all its purity amongst their countrymen.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Conway, Richard
by Terry Clavin

Conway, Richard (1572–1626), Jesuit, was born in New Ross, Co. Tipperary, son of Patrick Conway; nothing is known of his mother. In 1590 he travelled to Lisbon and studied humanities at the Irish college there. On 22 July 1592 he was received into the Jesuit noviciate at Coimbra. After completing his noviceship at Coimbra, he studied philosophy at Monterey in Spain (1595–8) and theology at Salamanca. Highly regarded by his superiors, he was ordained in 1600 at Salamanca and was preacher and confessor there (1600–08). From 1605 he was often acting rector of the college, as the rectors were frequently absent raising funds. Conway also went on fund-raising missions for the college and became close to influential figures at the royal court and elsewhere. His skill at tapping wealthy benefactors for money facilitated his appointment as rector of the Irish college at Salamanca on 6 May 1608.

By 1608 Conway had been made procurator of the Irish mission. This was an important but burdensome office, which involved variously arranging correspondence between the Jesuits in Ireland and Rome, providing travel expenses for Jesuit novices studying abroad, advising Irish exiles who went to Spain, and promoting the interests of the Irish seminaries at the royal court in Madrid. Further, in the years following the conclusion of the Nine Years War in Ireland in 1603, large numbers of Irish refugees began arriving in Spain, and Conway was heavily involved in providing for them. As a result of these administrative responsibilities, from 1608 he resided for part of each year at Madrid.

Despite his heavy workload, Conway kept in contact with his former pupils who had joined the Irish mission. Their dispatches from Ireland had left him keenly aware of the dangers that faced the catholic clergy there. In 1611 he began writing a book outlining the persecution suffered by Irish catholics at the hands of English protestants. However, his superiors dissuaded him from completing this work, for fear that it would anger the English government.

In 1611–13 he was heavily involved in negotiating the transfer to the Irish Jesuits of the Irish college at Salamanca, which had previously taught both the laity and candidates for the priesthood. The Jesuits intended to use the college exclusively to train priests, but this was strongly opposed by the existing students. In July 1613 Conway took possession of the college and informed all students there that they would be expected to become priests. Many students refused to accept this and were expelled. In 1614 the powerful exiled Irish catholic nobleman Domhnall O'Sullivan Beare (qv) protested at Conway's conduct, but his superiors stood by his actions and he remained rector at Salamanca until 1618. As before, he proved hugely successful at raising funds to maintain the college, which was soon able to support twenty-five students.

In 1618 he resigned his rectorship and moved to Madrid, where he focused on raising money for the Irish colleges in Spain and for the Jesuit mission in Ireland. However, in 1619 he was made rector of the Irish college at Seville. The college was in a miserable condition, but his ability to raise money brought about a rapid improvement. Such was his success that complaints were directed against him for depriving other Jesuit houses in the city of charity. In late 1623 he was replaced as rector in Seville and went to Madrid to resume his role as procurator. He returned to Seville to become rector again in late 1625 and died there 1 December 1626.

John McErlean, ‘Richard Conway S.J.’, Irish Monthly, no. 51 (1923); Francis Finegan, ‘Irish rectors at Seville, 1619–1687’, IER, 5th ser., cvi (July–Dec. 1966), 45–63

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1 1962

FR RICHARD CONWAY, SJ 1573-1626
(Abbreviated from the account published by Fr. John Mac Erlean, S.J. in the IRISH MONTHLY, 1923-24)

The preservation of the Catholic Faith in Ireland during three centuries of brutal persecution was largely due to the colleges and seminaries which patriotic Catholic Irishmen founded in several countries of Europe for the instruction of Irish youths and the education of Irish priests. Such signal service to the cause of God and Fatherland deserves to be remembered with everlasting gratitude. Their work was crowned with success. The most deadly efforts of the persecutors were gloriously defeated. One strange effect, however, of the long continuance of the persecution has been that the lives and works of those who commenced and carried on its triumphal resistance have been forgotten by those who even now are enjoying the fruits of their self-denying labours. To rescue their memory from oblivion is a pious and patriotic task.

Three Irish Jesuits stand out prominently as founders of Irish colleges in the Spanish peninsula: Fr John Howling, of Wexford, founder of the Irish College of Lisbon in 1590; Fr Thomas White, of Clonmel, founder of the Irish College of Salamanca in 1592; and Fr Richard Conway, of New Ross, who with Fr, Thomas White founded the Irish College of Santiago de Compostella in 1613, and that of Seville in 1619. Sketches of the careers of Fr. Flowling and Fr White were published by the late Fr. Edmund Hogan, S.J. in his Distinguished Irishmen of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1094). Fr. Conway is mentioned frequently by the Rev, William McDonald, then Rector of the Irish College of Salamanca, in his articles entitled Irish Colleges Since the Reformation, published in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in 1873, but a consecutive account of his career is well worth attempting for the light it throws upon the ecclesiastical history of the times.

The Conways were one of the leading families of New Ross in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The head of the family in the middle of the sixteenth century was Patrick Conway, who died in 1587, He married a Miss White, by whom he had two sons, George and Richard. Richard, the future Jesuit, was born at New Ross in 1572 or 1573. There is not much to record of his childhood or early years. He left Ireland for Spain when about sixteen or seventeen years of age, but, young as he was when he left his native land, he did not leave without personal experience of England's methods in Ireland, for his mother's house was raided on a forged warrant “to seize upon chalices, money and other things ... in respect of priests and Jesuits that were there harboured to say Masses”. In a note written in 1612 he sets forth clearly the reasons that forced him to seek abroad the education denied him at home. He says: “The greatest injury the English heretics have done, and one which has had the most serious consequences, has been the prohibition of all Catholic schools in our nation, naturally so inclined to learning, except an odd infant school in the principal cities and towns where reading, writing, and a little grammar are taught. Their object was to sink our people to degradation, or fill the universities of England with the children of those who had any means to educate them, where they might become more dependent on heretics and contaminated with their errors. They have also taken singular care that all children be taught English, and chastise them if they hear then speak their own native language. But all the efforts of these crafty heretics do not produce the desired effect. The natives not only did not go to England, but preferred rather to remain in ignorance than run the risk of their faith and religion by doing so, or they went secretly and quietly to many foreign parts, but particularly to Spain”.

It was in the year 1590, seemingly, that Richard Conway landed at Lisbon. There he met many other Irish students, who had come abroad for the same purpose, and whose interests and welfare were the object of the solicitous care of the Wexford Jesuit, Fr John Howling, then resident at the Jesuit house of S Roque, in that city. Fr Howling was at that very time engaged in founding a college for these Irish students, which was opened soon after'. During the next two years, 1590-1592, Richard Conway remained in the Irish College, studying humanities or classics. Then, as a Spanish writer says, “feeling that the end he had in view, the preservation of the faith and the conversion of heretics in Ireland, could be attained with greater security and perfection in a Religious Order, he offered himself to the Society of Jesus, and was received into it”. He entered the Novitiate of Coimbra on July 22nd, 1592.

After completing his two years! noviceship at Coimbra, and taking his vows as. a scholastic on August 20th, 15941, he was sent in the following year to the College of Monterrey in Spain, where he devoted himself to the study of philosophy for the next three years, 1595-1598, During this time he won the highest praise from the authorities of the College for his intellectual gifts, his prudence and skill in the management of affairs, and his progress in philosophy. He is described as being of gentle disposition, and even at this early date is said to be one who would be an excellent labourer in the vine yard of the Lord, and be suited for the office of Superior of his nation.

From Monterrey he passed, in 1598, to the Royal College of Salamanca, where he studied theology for the next four years, 1598-1562, though not without interruption, for, as our Spanish authority says: “The Superiors recognising his remarkable talent for looking after those of his nation, and the holy zeal that he had for their welfare, took him from his studies before he had completed them to employ him in this work, whereupon he began to aid the Irish seminaries”. The Irish Seminary, or College of Salamanca, founded by Fr Thomas White, had been put under the care of the Society of Jesus by King Philip, in 1592, in answer to a petition presented by the Irish gentlemen at the Spanish Court. From 1592 onwards, Fr White and Fr James Archer were in charge of it. As they were often absent on missionary labours, or seeking aims for the support of the College, the duty of loo!:ing after the Irish students devolved on Fr Richard Conway, especially after his ordination as priest in 1600, and though he had still to do two years of his theological course, he acted from time to time as Vice-Rector.

Thus began Fr Conway's work on behalf of the Irish seminaries. He was stationed at Salamanca as preacher and confessor from 1600 to 1608, and often acted as Vice-Rector, he had full charge of the Seminary of Salamanca as Rector from 1608 to 1613, then of that of Santiago, 1613-1618. In 1619 he became Rector of the newly-founded Irish College of Seville, a position he held until 1622, and to which he was again appointed in 1625, and which he continued to hold till his death in 1626. Nor did this exhaust his labours. During these same years he acted as Prefect of all the Irish colleges in Spain, and as Procurator of the Irish Mission, in which capacity he was called to attend to the financial and other affairs of the Irish Mission in countries so far apart as Rome, Germany, Spain, Flanders, France, and Ireland,

When first he took up these multifarious duties it was a time of extraordinary difficulty. The victory of the English arms in Ireland in 1603 not only cut off all hope of receiving alms from Ireland, such as Fr James Archer had collected for the colleges in 1596, but threw upon the shores of Spain in the succeeding years destitute crowds of Irish men, women, and children, fleeing in ever-increasing numbers from the cruelty of the English, while continuing the main work of providing for the necessities of the colleges, Fr Conway strove hard to relieve the distress of these helpless refugees. Of the religious and scholastic fervour of the Irish Seminary of Salamanca in these years the Annual Letters of the Province of Castile for the year 1604 bear : striking testimony. There were then four Jesuits living in the College, filling the offices of Rector, Confessor, Professor, and Spiritual Director respectively. The students numbered twenty-two, of whom eight were studying theology and four philosophy. Eight students had entered the Society of Jesus, and four had entered other Religious Orders. All students made a week's retreat, some even made two weeks, and all were assiduous in religious practices. The Bishop, the Magister Scholae, and other Doctors testified in laudatory terns to the doctrine, conduct, and training of the students.

But, meanwhile, those to whom was due whatever provision for Irish students existed were subject to a new and unexpected trial. The administration of the Irish Colleges was bitterly and unreasonably assailed. These institutions were so necessary, and the good they were doing for the preservation of the faith in Ireland was so striking, that some well-meaning persons forgot, no doubt unconsciously, the ceaseless efforts required to procure for them the limited and uncertain resources which they possessed; but the bitterest critics were those who had done nothing towards the founding of the Colleges, and had never contributed a penny towards their support. The history of the two centuries that followed offers many examples of similar attacks on the administration of the Irish Colleges in Spain and Rome. The motives in the main were provincial animosities, suspicions of partiality, and the interference of ill affected outsiders, who for their own ends fomented dissensions and encouraged insubordination within the college walls.

This agitation was begun in 1602, when a memorial against the continuance of the Irish Fathers of the Society af Jesus in control of the Seminary of Salamanca, drawn up in the names of O'Donnell and O'Neill, was presented to King Philip III, and demanded: (1.) that half the students of the Seminary should be selected from Ulster and Connaught; (2) that Fr Thomas White should be removed from the rectorship as being one who could not be trusted to carry out such a selection, or who would ill-treat those students whom he would be forced to receive; and (3) that a Spaniard, who would see to the punctual execution of this decree, should be appointed Rector.

The plot was skilfully conceived and vigorously carried out. The malcontents dared not go so far as to demand that the seminaries should be handed over to themselves, but yet they hoped by appealing to Spanish prejudices to oust the Irish Jesuits. The controversy continued for more than two years, memorials and replies alternating. In defence of the Irish Jesuits, the Irish nobles and gentlemen residing in Valladolid refuted the accusations and defended the existing administration; the Provincial of Castile denied that there was any preference against Northern students; the Bishop of the place testified to the good conduct of the students and the discipline observed in the government, and said he had never heard any complaints of the rule of the Irish Fathers. Finally, the Rector of the Royal College, to whose supervision the Irish College was subject, declared that all the charges made by the memoralists were false and wholly destitute of foundation.

In spite of these testimonies in favour of the Irish Fathers, the government of the Irish College was by order of the King taken from then and a Spanish Jesuit was appointed Rector. This royal order remained in force for only three years, 1605-1608. The arrangement was found by experience to be unsatisfactory both for the finances and the discipline of the College, Indeed, it would have proved ruinous to the College had not Fr William Bathe, Fr Richard Conway, and, later, also Fr Janes Comerton, who dwelt in it as confessors and preachers, exerted all their influence to keep things quiet, and in general to promote the interests of the College.

The efforts of the Irish Fathers to help the Irish students in the midst of numerous difficulties were fully appreciated by the Jesuit General, Fr Claudius Aquaviva, who on April 3rd, 1607, complimented Fr Conway on what he was doing for them. But the state of affairs brought about by the royal interference rendered all efforts well nigh futile. Soon the General came to see that if the Seminary was to do efficient work it would have to be committed to the charge of the Irish Fathers, and wrote to this effect to the Spanish Provincial on July 24th, , 1607. The Spanish Rectors themselves readily admitted their unsuitability for the position, and the last of the three who held office during those three years appealed to the Provincial to appoint Irish Rectors in future. Finally the King was requested to revoke his former order, which he did on March 24th, 1608. Fr Richard Convay was chosen as the person most fitted to take on the government of the College, and he entered upon his office as Rector on May 6th of the same year.

During the time of the Spanish Rectors, as well as during the whole of his subsequent career, Fr Conway continued his activity on behalf of the Irish students and refugees. In a contemporary account we read that he often went to the Court and other places to seek alms for the support of his seminarists and by his zeal, pleasant manners, and exemplary life succeeded in getting large contributions for their relief, many other students and priests, for whom the Seminaries had no room, he assisted by giving them enough to enable then to pursue their studies in Salamanca, Alcala, Valladolid, Granada, and Cordova. His zeal did not confine itself to students, ecclesiastical or lay, but extended itself to relieving a large number of Irish girls who fled from Ireland for religion's sake to Spain. He sought alms for them all, and settled them in good positions. Some entered convents, while for others he begged dowries, and left then honourably and virtuously married. In the matter of getting alms, he was greatly helped by the fact that he had easy access to the houses of the highest gentlemen at the Court, including even the King and Queen, and the Prelates and Chapters, all of thom he won over by his good example and by his conversation. Thile seeking to relieve the material necessities of his countrymen, he did not neglect their spiritual needs. He preached not only to his seminarists, but also to externs, gave them the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and sought their society only to win them and improve them spiritually.

His interest in the students did not cease when they left college, He followed then with paternal anxiety, and supported them by his advice when they had returned to their dangerous mission, and they on their part kept up a filial correspondence with him. Their letters shout the spirit with which they faced the danger's that surrounded them. The Rev Eugene O'Brien wrote to Fr Conway from Galway on September 30th, 1606, to tell him of the efforts made to take him when the persecutors found that he was an alumnus of the Spanish College. From Waterford the Rev John Wadding wrote in October of the same year, praising the constancy of the Mayor and Councillors of that city, several of whom had been taken prisoners by the heretics. Another former student, Rev Luke Bennett, a relative of his own, writing from Dunmore, in Leinster, in April, 1607, describes the persecution in his native New Ross, and tells how the faith is preserved in the district by the ministrations or four other priests from the Slamanca College, The Licentiate, Thomas Wise, who had gone from Salamanca to Rome, wrote to Fr Conway in June, 1607, telling hin of the barbarous cruelties inflicted on another former pupil. Thady Dimiran, because he refused to abjure the faith.

In 1611 the General wished Fr Conway to go to Rome and assist him with his advice in matters concerning the Irish Mission; but he yielded to representations made by Fr Thomas White and others, who explained how much his services were required in Spain.

In the year 1610 the Irish College of Salamanca was the recipient of several privileges and favours, A new building was presented to the Irish by the States of Castile, etc. A slab was placed over the door to commemorate the event. A new title, Colegio de Nobles Irlandeses (College of Irish Nobles), was given to the new establishment, which was formally made a royal college, and placed under the protection of the Kind, and, in addition to the ordinary annual alms given by the King to the College, Philip III undertook to pay every student his travelling expenses back to Ireland on the completion of his studies. These grants, largely due to Fr Conway's intercession, secured the future of the College.

But the government of the College, the begging of alms for its support, the solicitation of royal favours, did not exhaust the activities of Fr. Conway. Whilst engaged in these absorbing occupations, he compiled a work on English tyranny in Ireland, the publication of which was stopped lest the irritation of the King of England might endanger the lives of the Jesuits in Ireland and England and lead to a more violent persecution of the Catholic priests and laity in these countries. Whether the book was ever completed or not is not known, but certain short tracts, which may have been intended to form chapters of the complete work, have been preserved. Among these, his treatise on Irish saints marks him out as one of the pioneers of Irish hagiography.

During the last two years of Fr Conway's rectorship at Salamanca he was much occupied with the negotiations that transferred the Irish College at Santiago de Compostella to the care of the Irish Fathers or the Society of Jesus in Spain. This College had been founded in the year 1605 by the King of Spain, at a time when thousands of Irish exiles fled to that country to escape the persecution of the English heretics. £100 per annun was granted to the students by the King, and the Rev Eugene MacCarthy, a secular priest, was appointed Rector of the College. This arrangement did not work satisfactorily, and Philip III determined to entrust it to the Irish Fathers. He wrote to this effect to the Provincial of Castile, Fr Gaspar de Vegas, and the Governor of Galicia, D Luis Henriquez. Owing to the straitened circumstances of the Province of Castile the Provincial hesitated about accepting the additional burden. Fr Conway forwarded to the General a statement of the case, giving the reasons for and against acceptance. The General in his reply favoured acceptance. Meanwhile Fr Eugene MacCarthy undertook the defence of the existing arrangement, and in a letter to the Provincial accused the Irish Fathers of being actuated by motives of ambition and self-interest in attempting to capture the College. Fr William White, SJ, had no difficulty in refuting these charges; the Provincial's opposition weakened, and in April, 1613, the question was finally settled by an express order to the Provincial from the Duke de Lerma, on the part of the King, for the Fathers to take charge of the College.

In consequence of this order, Frs Thomas White, William White, and Richard Conway sent to Santiago and took possession of the College, and on the 16th July the General wrote to the Provincial to order Fr Conway to take up the government of the Seminary of Santiago.

Fr Conway occupied the position of Rector from 1613 to 1618, though his other office of Procurator of the Irish Mission often compelled him to be in Madrid, especially towards the end of his term. He threw llimself with characteristic energy into the work of establishing and developing the new Seminary. The royal allowance of £100 per annum sufficed for the support of a small number of students, but by alms which he succeeded in obtaining from the clergy and the faithful he was able to maintain as many as twenty-five. He drew up plans for linking up the Seminaries of Salamanca, Santiago, and Lisbon, to prevent overlapping, by having humanities taught in one, philosophy in another, and theology in the third. He looked after the spiritual interests of the Irish in Santiago, and as many of them were soldiers from France and the Low Countries, he arranged for the sending of Irish Jesuits who understood French and Flemish to minister to them. Another favourite idea of his was to unite the two Colleges of Salamanca and Santiago at the latter place. This would have economised on the staff and would have been beneficial to the health of the students; but no change was made.

Some disagreements and disputes arose during these years between O'Sullivan Beare and Fr Contay. In 1614 the former complained to the General of the expulsion of certain students from the Seminary, which, he said, had been established by the royal bounty, and with his consent transferred to the Society of Jesus. After full examination, however, Fr Conway's action was approved by his Superiors. Another complaint was in respect of a house granted him by the King, of which he had been deprived by Fr Conway. This dispute was brought into the courts, and the claim of O'Sullivan Beare was upheld. It was a curious example of a double grant. In the decree of the Royal Camera, dated 29th July, 1617, it is said that the Camera, when it granted the house in question to the Seminary, was not aware that a grant had previously been made of the same house to O'Sullivan Beare, and that consequently the house was adjudged to him. There is no imputation against the good faith of Fr Conway in this law suit,

During the progress of the case, O'Sullivan Beare petitioned the King to have the former semi-laical character of the College of Santiago continued, maintaining that there was greater need of Catholic gentlenen in Ireland than of priests. Fr Conway resisted this interference, and his action received the approval of the General, Fr. Mutius Vitelleschi, who succeeded Fr Aquaviva on the latter's death in 1615. In April, 1618, on the appointment of Fr James Comerfort as Rector of Santiago, Fr Conway was left free to act as Procurator of the Irish Mission in Madrid. He had been carrying on the duties of this position since 1608, and had to deal with many important matters concerning the welfare of the Irish seminaries in Spain. Between 1613 and 1624 he carried on a good deal of correspondence about what is termed “the Sicilian money” - a legacy of the late Queen, amounting to between 6,000 and 7,000 ducats, half of which was to be invested for the support of the Mission. The exhausted state of the Sicilian treasury caused the payment of this sum to be deferred, and finally all hope of receiving it was abandoned.

Another important affair entrusted to the care of Fr Conway was that of the pension of Archbishop David Kearney, of Cashel. As the Archbishop was for many years at the beginning of the seventeenth century the mainstay of ecclesiastical organisation in Ireland, Philip III of Spain, in order to enable him to promote the interests of the Church, assigned to hin a pension of 2,000 ducats on the Bishopric of Cadiz. With the approval oi the General, the Archbishop in 1611 appointed Fr Conway his agent to conduct the necessary negotiations. These negotiations continued until the Archbishop's death in 1621, and the subsequent arrangements to carry out the disposal of the money in accordance with his wishes, and to resist the claims of the English and Scotch Colleges in Spain, occupied the attention of Fr Conway till his death, two years later, and dragged on for four years after that time.

In 1619 Fr. Conway vas recalled from Madrid, and sent to take up the position of Rector of the Irish College of Seville, which in that year was handed over to the Irish Jesuits. Eight years previously the General had been asked by Don Felix de Guzman, a Sevillian nobleman, Archdeacon and Canon, to undertake the management of such a college, but the General was unwilling to do so, as an English College already existed in the same city, and he wrote to that effect to Fr Conway, who as then in Lisbon, on December 6th, 1622. In the following year the Apostolic Nuncio in Spain gave leave for the collecting of alms for the Irish students of Seville, but again in this year, and in the two succeeding years, the General expressed his unwillingness to have the Society associated with the projected College.

The College was duly opened, and for the next few years was governed by a succession of secular priests, of whom the first two were Irish and the next four Spaniards. As the numerous changes indicate, the arrangement did not prove satisfactory, and Don Felix de Guzman and Don Geronimo de Medina Ferragut renewed their exertions to induce the Jesuits to take over the government of the College. Don Felix offered to support the Fathers sent, and Don Geronimo offered to make over the house which the students occupied, on the sole condition that the College should be called the College of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mother of God and of the Holy Catholic Faith, which name it retained ever afterwards. Fr Conway was now in favour of the Society taking over the College, and the King wrote expressing his desire that this should be done. In April, 1619, the Provincial and his Consultors agreed to accept, notwithstanding the grave difficulties which presented themselves, and this decision was approved by the General on June 19th. On the same day he wrote to Fr Richard Conway telling him to proceed to Seville to take charge of the new College.

The Society took possession of the College on August 20th, 1619. Fr Conway and Fr Michael de Morales (Cantuell) drew up an inventory of its goods and a list of the students. The effects left by the preceding administration were valued at only £12, and several large debts had been incurred which had to be paid afterwards. Fr Conway mentions the names of six students. The names of six others are known, and another account says that there were in all fifteen.

In view of the necessities of the Irish Seminary of Seville, the Holy See on September 9th, 1619, granted, in answer to a petition of Fr Conway, permission to the fishernien of Andalusia to fish on șix Sundays and holidays in the year, on the understanding that “the fruit of their toil should be given freely and without condition to the Irish College of Seville for the support of the Rector and students and persons employed in their services”.

To raise funds for the Irish Seminaries, all of which, but especially that of Seville, were in great need, Fr Conway proposed that some Irish Fathers should be sent from Spain to the Indies, that is, to Mexico and South America, with a view to collecting alms. When that proposal was not favourably entertained, he begged the General to write to the Provincials of the Indies to ask then to do whatever they could, and he suggested that the Provincial of Mexico should be requested to set aside Fr Michael Godinez (Wadding) for that work. The first part of the proposal was agreed to, but what the ultimate success of the project was we do not know.

During the years 1622-1623 complaints were made to the General of the way in which Fr Conway was running the College. The matters complained of were not of serious import. He is said to have admitted more students than the revenues of the institution could support, and to have allowed confessions to be heard in the church of the Seminary instead of sending the penitents to the Casa Professa, according to the regulations already laid down. Another complaint was that “the students of the Irish College went one day during the summer months in their collegiate gowns to bathe in the river, and returned home two hours after nightfall”. The real reason underlying all the complaints were seemingly Fr Conway's zeal in collecting alms, and new regulations were made with regard to requesting support for the College in the city. Fr Conway's alms-questing was not without some exciting experiences, for at least on one occasion, when going along the road for this purpose, he was set upon by robbers, who deprived him of everything he had, beat hin severely, and left him with his hands tied at the foot of an olive tree, where he lay for some time before he was able to free himself and make his way to a neighbouring village.

Towards the end of the year 1623, Fr Luis Ramirez was appointed Rector of the Irish College of Seville, and Fr Conway returned to his forner office of Procurator of the Irish Mission at the court of Madrid. On the 22nd December of that year he laid before the General a new plan for increasing the provision made for the education of the Irish secular clergy. This was to petition the Holy See to allow the Chapters of the Churches of Spain to receive tho Irish students each for the Irish Missions into the seminaries founded by order of the Council of Trent, notwithstanding the decree of that Council that the seminarists should be natives of the dioceses. The General deferred the consideration of this suggestion until the approval of the Chapters should have been obtained.

Another prospect for the development of colleges for the Irish secular clergy opened when towards the end of 1623 the Grand Prior of England of the Order of St. John set aside 2,000 ducats as a beginning of a foundation of an Irish College in Rome. Fr Conway was directed to forward the sum to Rome, so that it might be used to buy a site or be allowed to lie at interest until there would be enough for the end intended. In the following year, 1625, the General announced to him that the foundation of an Irish Seminary in Rome by Cardinal Ludovisi was taking shape slowly, but that it was not known when it would be put into execution.

On June 2nd, 1624, Fr Conway informed the General that the King and Council, recognising that the Irish Seminary at Douay was not being well administered by those who had charge of it, wished to entrust it to the Society. In reply, the General told him that, if the matter was as represented, the King and Council would be sure to give some sign of their desire, but that meanwhile he was not to speak about the subject or try in any way to have the Seminary entrusted to the Society. Similarly, when he announced in the following year the foundation of a new Irish Seminary at Alcala, he was told to have nothing to do with it: “Better improve those of Salamanca, Seville, and Santiago, so that they may be able to support more alunni”.

In 1624 he appealed to the Catholic King to recommend the needs of the Irish students to the bishops of Spain, and in a letter dated St Laurence (the Escorial), 31st October, 1624, King Philip III wrote recommending them to the Bishop of Zamora, as he had already recommended then, he says, to the prelates of Seville and Jaen.

Meanwhile affairs were not proceeding well in the Irish Seminary of Seville, Before a year elapsed Fr Ramirez asked to be relieved of the rectorate. The Spanish Fathers were not able to manage the Irish students. On the 7th July, 1625, Fr. Conway was ordered to proceed to Seville and take charge of the Seminary, as soon as he had settled up his affairs in Madrid; but it was not until Christmas that he arrived in Seville, and entered upon his duties as Rector of the Seminary for the second time. Under his management the disorders ceased, and he was congratulated on the zeal with which he looked after the interests of the College.

In January of the following year, 1626, the Seminary suffered great loss from the overflowing of the river. A good part of the building collapsed, and Fr Conway's efforts for the welfare of his students won considerable praise. He found accommodation for them in different places, but remained on in the house himself, and when he had collected what was necessary for their support he carried the food to them every day on foot. A few months later, in August, 1626, he became seriously ill, and he died on the lst of December, after having received the last Sacraments.

In this sketch of Fr. Conway's life and work little has been said of his spiritual life. From the difficulties he overcame and the greatness of the work he accomplished it has been possible, no doubt, to form some idea of those interior forces which supernaturalised his external activities, but there is abundant testimony given by those who lived with him to his religious virtue and holy life. Especially remarkable was his constancy in prayer. As the hours of the day did not suffice for his many devotional exercises, he devoted to them a large part of the night. We are told, that, though it was generally twelve or one o'clock when he retired to rest, he rose before four in the morning. His spiritual note-books, which reveal the daily life of his soul, contain so many prayers and devotions, distributed by days, weeks, months, and years, that it would seen he had nothing else to do. His fasts and other mortifications were also noticed by his contemporaries. He slept three nights a week on the ground; he fasted every Saturday, and each day he gave a large part of his food to the poor. He wore clothes cast off by others, and at his death the only thing that he seems to have possessed was a small cross, half broken. As a final example of his spirit of detachment and abnegation may be mentioned the fact that, although for many years he had leave from his Superiors' to return to his native land, he never made use of it, lest by doing so he might neglect the Irish exiles abroad.

Fr Conway was not only a devoted son of the Catholic Church, but a great lover of Ireland. In the heat of controversy O’Sullivan Beare spoke of him as Anglo-Irish. Geoffrey Keating was accused of being the same, and his reply to the accusation might have been penned by Fr Richard Conway. For Fr Conway spoke the Irish language, and was as familiar with Irish history and tradiions as any O'Sullivan. By his words and writings he revived the name and fame of Ireland on the Continent. It was through him, as far as we can discover that the Codex Salmanticensis, from which Fr. John Colgan, OSF, and the Bollandists derive so much of their knowledge of Ireland's early saints, came into possession of the Irish College of Salamanca, and was thus preserved for future ages. The seminaries he founded frustrated the British plan of perverting Ireland through enforced ignorance.

To Salamanca, the first of the seminaries which lie ruled, he transmitted that tradition of learning and love of Ireland which such men as Fr Paul Sherlock and Fr Peter Reade afterwards handed on. Ireland may well be proud of him, and so may the Society of Jesus. At a time when the memory of the canonisation of St Ignatius and St Francis Xavier was still fresh in Spain, a Spanish contemporary does not hesitate to compare him with both these illustrious saints : “Fr Richard Conway”, he says, “was one of the true sons of our glorious Father, St Ignatius, and a true imitator of that zeal for souls that consumed the heart of the glorious Father, St Francis Xavier, on the eve of whose feast he was called to his reward by God, leaving to us who remain after him his exemplary life for our initiation and consolation”.

John MacErlean SJ

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Richard Conway 1572-1626
Fr Richard Conway, together with Fr John Houling and Fr Thomas White, may be reckoned as one of the Saviours of the Faith in Ireland. This claim is based on his work of founding and maintaining Irish Colleges, mainly in Spain and Portugal, by means of which a steady flow of secular priests, Jesuits and educated Irish gentlemen was poured into the country, when all means of higher education had been eeradicated by the English authorities

Richard Conway was born in New Ross in 1572, and he sought the education, deniend him at home, in Lisbon, at the age of sixteen or seventeen. There he met Fr John Howling, and under his aegis became a Jesuit at Coimbra in 1592. Thenceforward, his whole life was dedicated to the education andservice of trhe countless Irish refugees flybing from persecution at home. He founded the Colleges of Santiago and Seville, and by a lifetime questing alms and wisely governing various Irish Colleges, fought the good fight, which prompted Fr MacErlean to say of him “Ireland may well be proud of him, and so may the Society of Jesus”.

Some time before his death, while collecting alms, he was waylaid by robbers and deprived of everything he possessed.He was neated severely, and he was left with his hands toed to the bottom of an olive tree. He cried aloud for help but noone came. He invoked Our Lady and his Guardian Angel, whereupon his bonds were loosened, and he made his way to a nearby town.

On his death bed, December 1st 1626, before he closed his eyes forever, Christ Our Lord appeared to him, and as a foretaste of the glorious reward in store for him, led him unto a charming region, where he beheld strange and secret sights.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CONWAY, RICHARD. I learn from two letters of Dr. David Kearny, Archbishop of Cashell, of the 15th of July, 1616. and the 30th ot September, 1616, that this confidential Agent was actively employed In Spain in his Grace s service. The Father was at Madrid in October, 1624.

Born: 1580, Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 16 February 1605, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: c 1609, Rome, Italy
Died: 19 July 1649, Waterford Residence, Waterford City, County Waterford

Alias Clare

Had studied Philosophy and Theology at Irish College Douai before entry
Was the oldest of the Professed Fathers in 1648
Was stationed for a while at the Dublin Residence (his name appears on a book at Carlow College of that residence)
1617 was in Ireland - mentioned in the 1621 and 1622 Catalogue : talented with good judgement, prudence and experience. A pleasing character who might be formed to be a Superior
1649 Superior in Waterford

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He was a Preacher; The oldest of the Professed Fathers in 1648; Superior at Waterford in 1649; A man of talent

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Studied Rhetoric at Irish College Lisbon before, then Philosophy at Douai before Ent 1605 Rome
After First Vows completed his studies probably in Rome, and was ordained by the time he returned to Portugal 1609
1609 Returns to Portugal
1611-1616 Sent by the General to Irish College Lisbon as Prefect of Studies to replace Robert Bathe. In his letter to the Portuguese Provincial he said “I have seen such reports of Fr Cleere’s prudence, mature judgement and learning, that I trust the Irish College will not suffer by the change of Fr Bathe”
1613 Sent to Ireland and to Waterford Residence and worked there, Cork and the rest of Munster
1642-1649 Appointed Superior at Waterford Residence (1642-1647) and was Acting Superior of the Mission awaiting the new Mission Superior (1647-1648). In 1649 he was again appointed Superior of the Waterford Residence and died in Office19 July 1649

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Edmund Cleere (Clare) 1580-1649
Fr Edmund Cleere was a Waterford man.

Fr Holywood, writing on June 30th 1604 says : “I left behind me in Paris studying theology Mr Edmund Cleere”

As a priest Fr Cleere worked in Waterford and was Superior of our House there for many years. In 1648, Bishop Comerford of Waterford presented a memorial to the Nuncio beggin a revocation of the censures. Among the signatories was Edmund Cleere together with John Gough, William McGrath and Andrew Sall, all of the Society.

When the Visitor Fr Verdier visited Waterford, he found Fr Cleere almost superannuated. He died shortly afterwards in Waterford on July 19th 1649.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CLARE, EDWARD, of Waterford. The first time that he comes across me is in a letter of F. Holywood, dated the 30th of June, 1604, in which he says, “I left behind at Paris studying Theology, Mr. Edward Clare”. For many years he was Superior of his Brethren at Waterford; and when F. Verdier visited him, he found him almost superannuated. I learn from F. William Malone’s letter, dated Galway, the 2nd of August, 1649, that F. Clare, the most ancient of the Professed in the Mission, died at Waterford on the preceding 19th of July, “dierum et meritorum plenus”.
N.B. Anthony Wood and his copyists, Harris and Dodd, evidently confound this Father with his contemporary, F. John Clare. Had they turned to the conclusion of F. John Clare’s admirable work, The Converted Jew, they would find that he expressly calls himself an English Pryest.

Born: 1617, Waterford
Entered: 1639, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1649, Coimbra, Portugal
Professed: 15 August 1662
Died: 21 May 1696, Waterford Residence - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)

Alias Cary

1642 Student of Philosophy
1645 At Coimbra College; taught Latin at Évora College 1645
1649 Teacher “Mag in Artibus” at Lisbon College
1654 In Angra College in Madeira
Taught Latin and Cases of Conscience at Bragança
1665 Rector of College at Funchal, Madeira, teaching Moral Theology

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Is perhaps the Richard Carew, Irish Jesuit, who sailed from Portugal to Marañon in 1659, and then went to Pernambuco. (Franco’s “Annales”)
Recommended by his Superior, Francis White, as a Consultor of the Mission in a letter dated Kilkenny 19 December 1668

◆ Fr John MacErlean SJ ;
Distinguished career as professor of Theology in Portugal and the Azores, accompanied Fr Hyacinth de Magistris to visit Maranhon (Maranhão) in Brazil which lasted (1659-1662)
1662 Returned to Portugal
1668 Came to Ireland

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1641-1649 After First Vows studied at Coimbra and graduated MA. He was Ordained there in 1649
1649-1654 He had a distinguished teaching career at Braga and Branança and was later Professor of Theology at Angra on the island of Terceira in the Azores
1654-1662 He volunteered to work in Brazil, and this did not happen until 1659 when he accompanied the Jesuit Visitor Hyacinth de Magistris to Maranhon (Maranhão) in Brazil He became Superior at the Maranhão Residence, but during a conflict was expelled after three years.
1662-1665 On return to Portugal was appointed Procurator at the Irish College Lisbon
1665-1668 Sent as Operarius to the Church at Funchal, Madeira
1668 He returned to Ireland and was sent as Operarius to the Waterford Residence where he died 21 May 1696

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Richard Cary (Carew) SJ 1619-1696
Fr Richard Cary (or Carew) was born in Waterford in 1619 and entered the Society at Lisbon in 1639.

After a distinguished career as a professor of Theology in Portugal and the Azores, he accompanied Fr Hyacinth de Magistris on a visitation of Maranhon and Brazil.

On his return, he remained 6 years in Portugal, and then he came home to Ireland. He was stationed at Waterford until 1696, the year of his death.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
CAREW, RICHARD. (I suspect of the ancient family of Carew, of Garryvoe, in the Barony of Imokilly) I find that he was recommended for a Consultor by his Superior, Francis White, in a letter dated Kilkenny, 19th of December 1668.

Born: 01 February 1661, Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 13 December 1676, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 01 May 1690, Coimbra, Portugal
Final Vows: 02 May 1697
Died: 13 September 1707, Irish College, Salamanca, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

Alias Bruno

Nephew of Ignatius Browne - RIP 1679

1681 At St Anthony’s College, Lisbon studying - also studied at Irish College
1685 in 3rd Year Philosophy at Coimbra, Portugal
1690 4th Year Theology at Coimbra

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
Father Knoles, Mission Superior gives Ent date as 1677
Most likely a nephew of Ignatius Brown 1st.
1698 Deported with Bernard Kiernan and went to Poitiers, and then on to Spain. (cf Oliver, Stonyhurst MSS, citing a letter from Anthony Knoles New Ross 06/04/1714)

May be identical with Ignatius Brown who is said to have Ent at Milan in 1679, and studied in Genoa 1682-1683 (cf Foley’s Collectanea) - this man was said to have LEFT or been DISMISSED 26/09/1684

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
After First Vows he was sent to complete all his studies at Coimbra and was Ordained there in 1690
1690/1691 Sent to Ireland and worked as a schoolmaster at Kilkenny. In a letter of John Higgins 1694 to Thomas Eustace, he is described as an able and zealous preacher.
1697 Exiled to Spain where he was appointed to teach Humanities at Villagarcía CAST.
1699 Appointed to teach Theology at Salamanca
1705 Appointed Rector of Salamanca. He died in office at the Irish College, 13 September, 1707

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
BROWN, IGNATIUS, There were two Fathers of this name.
The junior entered the Society in 1677, and left Poitiers for the Castile Province on the 10th of September, 1698. I read in a letter of F. Ant. Knowles, dated Ross, 6th of April, 1714, “Tempore bellorum et persecutionis missi in exilium in eoque mortui, sunt P. P. Bernardus Kiernan et Ignatius Brown, duo pii et inculpabiles viri”.

Born: 1589/92, Galway City, County Galway
Entered: 1620, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1620 - pre Entry, Lisbon, Portugal
Died: 05 August 1626, Bragança, Portugal - Lusitania Province (LUS)

Studied two years Theology and was a Bachelor of Arts
1625 at Angra College in Island of Ierceira (Azores?), Minister and Prefect of Church
1628 Minister and procurator of “Villaniciosa (Villa Niçova?) - had been Procurator in Irish College in Lisbon
1633 Confessor at Porto
1636 at Bragança College : Confessor and Consultor, was minister for 9 years

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He was in Portugal in 1621 when his Superior wanted him for the Connaught Residence.
He was probably a grandnephew of Archbishop Bodkin, whose “nephew, grandnephew and great grandnephew entered Religious Orders” (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
1622 Was supposed to go to the Connaught Residence after First Vows, but his Portuguese Superiors retained him for their own work. So, he was appointed Minister and Prefect of the Church at San Miguel in the Azores. Later he held similar positions in Villa Viçosa and Porto.
Served for a time as Procurator of the Irish College Lisbon.
1636 By this time he was Operarius and Consultor at the Residence of Bragança where he died before 1639.

Born: 1582, Drogheda, County Louth
Entered: 23 October 1604, St Andrea, Rome, Italy - Romanae Province (ROM)
Ordained: c1610, Rome, Italy
Final Vows: 05 September 1622
Died: 15 June 1649, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny

Of the “Villa de Drochedat” Meath
Educated at Irish College Douay
1610-1611 Sent from Rome as Professor of Spirituality and Scholastic to Irish College Lisbon
1617 in Ireland
1622 in Meath or Dublin
1626 in Ireland
1637 described as fit to be a Superior, but has choleric temperament
1649 in Kilkenny aged 70

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
He was a learned and most edifying priest and had rendered great service “by sea and by land”.
He was Rector of the Drogheda Residence.
He went thrice to Rome on behalf of the Irish Mission
Socius to the Mission Superior.
He was forty-five years on the Mission, and from Drogheda worked throughout Ulster in the midst of many perils. (cf Foley’s Collectanea)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had started his studies at Douai before Ent at 26 October 1604 Rome
After First Vows he was sent to complete his studies at Roman College and was Ordained c 1610
1610 Sent to Lisbon to be Prefect of Studies and Spiritual Father at the Irish College
1612 Returned to Ireland and assigned to Dublin Residence - possibly stationed at Drogheda
1621 Working in Drogheda, during which time he became entangled in the dispute between the Vicar General and the Franciscans.
He retired from Drogheda in the early 1640's and spent his last years at Kilkenny where he died, 15 June, 1649. He was named amongst the six Jesuits who resisted the censures of Rinuccini.
Regularly asked to conduct Irish Mission business in Rome
For many years Robert was Socius to the Superior of the Mission.

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Robert Bath 1581-1649
Robert Bath was one of the most distinguished Jesuits who worked in Ireland during the period 1610-1649.

Born in Drogheda in 1581 of a family which gave a martyr to the Society, he entered the Jesuits in 1604. His work was mainly centred around Ulster, and for a long period he was Superior of the Drogheda Residence.

Three times he went to Rome to report on the state of the Mission.

Worn out after a ministry of 45 years, he died in Kilkenny on June 15th 1649.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
BATH, ROBERT. In 1624, he had been settled for about two years at Drogheda, where he instituted the Sodality of the B. Virgin Mary. He was thrice sent to Rome for the good of the Irish Mission. Worn out with age and infirmity, he died at Kilkenny, on the 15th of June, 1649.

Born: 1585/6, New Ross, County Wexford
Entered: 1606, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province (LUS)
Ordained: 1615, Coimbra, Portugal
Died: 26 March 1648, New Ross, County Wexford

Studied in Portugal, was examined for Grades after 4 years of Theology
1617 came on Irish Mission.
1622 in East Munster (Waterford).
Very talented but sickly

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
1617-1646 In Ireland
He is identical with “Michael Burrice” in Foley’s "Collectanea"

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Studied at Irish College Lisbon before Ent 1606 Lisbon
After First Vows he completed his studies at Évora and was ordained in 1615
1617 Sent to Ireland and exercised ministry at New Ross until his death there 26 March, 1648

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Michael Barick 1585/6-1648
Michael Barick was born in New Ross in 1582 or 5, and entered the Society in 1606 or 1610.

He returned to Ireland in 1617, and remained on the Mission until his death, which occurred between 1646 and 1649. Ther are very meagre details of a man’s life which can be accounted for by the fact that numerous letters sent by Superiors to Rome never reached their destination. Furthermore, if Fr Barick laboured in Ireland for about 30 years, as he did, he only succeeded in doing so by lying low and going round in disguise. In his case, the lack of information is complicated by the fact that his name is often given as “Burrice”.

Born: 23 January 1682, Kilkenny City, County Kilkenny
Entered: 12 September 1701, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Died: 31 October 1706, Arévalo, Castile y León, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

Alias Rivers

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of Raphael and Helena née Bryan
He was engaged in his theology studies at the Royal College, Salamanca, when he contracted consumption. He died at Arevolo, 31 October 1706. (Carta necrologica extant)

Born: 21 January1705, Dublin City, County Dublin
Entered: 16 April1729, Lisbon, Portugal - Lusitaniae Province(LUS)
Died: 01 March 1732, Coimbra Portugal - Lusitaniae Province(LUS)