Daniel O’Daly [Bishop of Coimbra]

Life
1595-1662 [Dominicus de Rosario O’Daly]; b. Kerry; descended from Ó Dalaigh bards and from Desmond Geraldines on his mother’s side; entered Dominican order, Tralee, Co. Kerry; ordained at Lugo; studied at Burgos; Bordeaux, DD; served as priest in Tralee; taught theology at newly-established Dominican college, Louvain, 1627; travelled to Madrid and est. college in Lisbon with assent of Philip IV, 1629, becoming first rector; raised body of soldiers in Ireland as condition of permission from Philip to estab. convent of nuns; recruited soldiers in Limerick, for the Spanish Campaign in the Lowlands; built Our Lady of Bom Successo at Belem on the Tagus, assisted by the Countess of Atalaya, 1639; appt. envoy to Charles I and later Charles II; also Pope Innocent X, 1650; also appt. envoy to Pope Alexander VIII by Queen of Portugal; appt. envoy of John IV of Portugal to Anne of Austria and Louis XIV to conclude treaty, 1655; gave diplomatic service to House of Braganza, gratis; refused various ecclesiastical and secular offices; published Initium, Incrementum, et Exitus Familiæ Geraldinorum, Desmoniæ Comitum, Palatinorum Kyerriæ in Hibernia, ac Persecutionis Hæreticorum Descriptio (1665), on the Munster Geraldines (Earls of Desmond); incls. account of martyrdom of twenty Dominicans, formerly with him in Lisbon; estab. Corpo Santo, a larger Dominican convent, 1659; accepted office of Bishop of Coimbra Pres. of Privy Council; d. 30 June, 1662, Lisbon; bur. in cloister of Corpo Santo; a new monument erected after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755; Initium ... &c., translated into French by Abbé Joubert (1697) and into English by the Rev. C. P. Meehan (Dublin; 2nd Edn. 1878).

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Works
Initium, incrementum et exitus familiae Geraldinorum Desmoniae comitum (Lisbon: Craesbeck 1655); and Do., as The Geraldines, earls of Desmond, and the persecution of the Irish Catholics, translated from the latin [of Brother Dominicus de Rosario O’Daly], with notes and illustrations by the Rev. C. P. Meehan [Duffy’s Library of Ireland] (Dublin: James Duffy; London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 1847), xii, 238, [2]pp., 14.5cm.; Do. [2nd edn., as] The Rise, Increase and Exit of the Geraldines, translated […] with memoir and notes by C. P. Meehan [2nd. edn.] (Dublin & London: James Duffy & Sons, 1878), xxiii + 280[290]pp., 16cm.

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Reference
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XI contains an entry on Daniel O’Daly [online].

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Notes
O’Daly’s tomb in Lisborn bore the inscription: ‘In varus Regum legationibus felix ...Vir Prudentia, Litteris, and Religione conspicuus [Successful in embassies for kings ... A man distinguished for prudence, knowledge, and virtue].’

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