Three Irish seventeenth-century texts

Team: Dr John McCafferty, Dr Edel Bhreathnach, Dr Joseph MacMahon OFM

In 1934 Analecta Hibernica published editions of three texts:

• Donatus Moneyus de provincia Hiberniae S. Francisci
• Brevis Synposis Provinciae Hiberniae FF Minorum
• Mícheál Ó Cléirigh’s chronological list of the foundations of the Irish province

These three texts constitute key sources not only for the history of religion in Ireland in the early seventeenth century but are also chief sources for the medieval history of the Irish friars.  In the more linguistically adept days of the 1930s they were published  in their original Latin and Irish.

Mooney and Ó Cléirigh both toured Ireland in the 1610s and 1630s respectively and their manuscripts, along with the Brevis, are replete with political, social, economic and topological information about the period from the 1240s up to and including their own time.

The Irish Manuscripts Commission has agreed to publish an English translation of these three interlinked texts.  Two partial translations are in Duffy’s Irish Catholic Magazine (1840s) and The Irish Tertiary (1890s). These will be replaced by an easily accessible modern version.