A MSS: Irish language manuscripts
This series contains many of the most iconic and celebrated of the manuscripts in the Franciscan collection such as A 2, the Liber Hymnorum, a late eleventh century compilation of hymns and other devotional text; A 3, the Martyrology of Tallaght, ten twelfth-century vellum leaves which once formed part of the Book of Leinster; A 13, an autograph volume of the Annals of the Four Masters; A 14, one of the earliest surviving manuscript copies of Geoffrey Keating’s Foras feasa ar Éireann; and A 21, the diary of Tadhg Ó Cianáin, historian to Hugh O’Neill, the only copy of the description of the 1607-08 journey of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell as they and their retinue travelled from Donegal to Rome.
All the vellum manuscripts in the series have been comprehensively conserved. A catalogue of the manuscripts, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Franciscan Library, Killiney by Myles Dillon, Canice Mooney ofm and Pádraig de Brún, was published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1969. Digital images of thirty three of the most outstanding manuscripts with their catalogue descriptions are free to view and download from the Irish Script on Screen (ISOS) website hosted by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.