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Life
1830-1911 [Patrick Francis; Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney]; b. Leighlinbridge,
co. Carlow; nephew of Cardinal Cullen; ed. Rome, 1842; Vice-Rector of
Irish College, 1856; Prof. of Hebrew at College of Propaganda, Rome; issued Memoir[s] of Oliver Plunkett (1861); issued The
Catholic Archbishops of Dublin (1864); co-ed. with Rev. George Conroy Irish Ecclesiastical Record, from March 1864; joined Cardinal Paul
Cullen in Ireland as his private secretary, 1866; appt. adjutor bishop
of Ossory, 1870; preferred to see of Ossory, 1872; ed. and annotated Mervyn
Archdall’s Monasticon Hibernicum [1789], 2 vols. (1873; rep.
1876); translated to Sydney [q.d.]; issued The Catholics of Ireland Under the Penal Laws (1899), and sundry pamphlets;
made cardinal. ODNB DIH
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Works
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References
Maureen Wall, Catholic Ireland in the Eighteenth Century: Collected
Essays, ed. Gerard O’Brien (Dublin: Geog. Publ. 1989), refers
to Spicelegium Ossoriense, 3 vols. (1874-84), as invaluable due
to later lost of documents in Record Office fire [in 1922].
British Library holds Monasticon [sic] Hibernicum, ed. with many additional notes by P. F. Moran, Vols. 1, 2 (Dublin: W. B. Kelly 1873, 1876) [no other vols.]
University of Ulster Library (Morris Collection) holds P. F. Moran, ed., Monasticum [sic] Hibernicum by Mervyn Archdall (1st edn.: Luke White 1789); also Patrick Francis Moran, Essays on the Origin, Doctrines, and discipline of the Early Irish Church (Duffy 1864); Historical Sketch on the persecutions of the Catholics of Ireland under the Rule of Cromwell and the Puritans (Gill 1907), 515p.; Spicelegium Ossoriense (1874); and Moran, ed., David Rothe, The Analecta (1884).
Library of Herbert Bell (Belfast) contains 24 CTS and Irish Messenger pamphlets bound as Irish History and Archaeology, incl. nationalist pamphlets on Irish history by Cardinal Moran; Most Rev John Healy, DD, Archb. of Tuam; E[dmund] Leahy, Very Rev. Dr Alphonsus Bellesheim, trans. Rev. W McLoughlin; John G Rowe, RJC, John B Cullen, Rev William Moran, DD, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth; Very Rev. Canon Murphy, DD, PP; JM Flood; John J Horgan; Rev. JJ MacNamee, and anon.
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Civilization of Ireland Before the Anglo-Norman Invasion (Dublin: CTS n.d). Quotes Froude, ‘The Irish, when the Normans took charge of them were with the exception of the clergy, scarcely better than a mob of armed savages. They had no settled industry, and no settled habitations, and scarcely a conception of property ... The only occupation considered honourable was fighting and plunder ... The religion of the Irish Celts, which three centuries earlier had burned like a star in Western Europe, had degenerated into a superstition, and no longer served as a check upon the most ferocious passions. ... their chief characteristics were treachery, thirst for blood, unbridled licentiousness, and inveterate detestation of order and rule. As a nation [Froude adds] they have done nothing which posterity will not be anxious to forget; [they] have little architecture of their own, and the forms introduced from England have been robbed of their grace; in fact, they are unable to boast of one single work of art’ [Of these people the Normans came to take charge] ‘fulfilling the work for which they were specially qualified and gifted ... The true justification of the conquest lay in the character of the conquerors. they were born rulers of men, and were forced, by the same necessity which has brought the decrepit kingdoms of Asia under the authority of England and Russia, to take the management, eight centuries ago, of the anarchic nations of Western Europe’ [Froude, The English in Ireland, I, pp.14-22; Moran, pp.10-11].
To this Moran counterposes Gerald’s Cambrensis wonderment at the Book of Kells, said to have been dictated by angels, moves on to quoting Stokes, ‘It is a remarkable fact that as Ireland was in the vanguard of progress in religion and art in Western Europe from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, so, also, does it seem to have been foremost in decline; ... this art sprang from the heart and instinct of the native population, the intense devotion of the holy men who carried it to its highest point; and so for the secret of its premature decay the student of history will not long search in vain.’ [16]. Moran ends by quoting Petrie, ‘The progressive decline of the fine arts in Ireland, from the end of the twelfth century, is as yet an unwritten chapter in the history of our country. Nevertheless, there are few circumstances in our annals that more strongly depict the debasement which it was the unhappy fate of Ireland to have suffered in those troubled times, or that more strikingly indicate the indissoluble connexion which ever exists between the cultivation of the fine arts, and the civilisation, greatness, and happiness of a people. If, in such a state of barbarism as Ireland was then reduced to, genius had arisen, it would have died like a flower in the desert, unnoticed and unknown; for it was not the warrior’s rude and bloody hand that could preserve and cherish it, nor yet his ruder mind that could appreciate its excellence and beauty, the seed should be wafted to some more genial clime before it could be nurtured into vigour.’
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