Myles Dillon, Canice Mooney OFM, & Padraig de Brún, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Fransciscan Library of Killiney (DIAS 1969), xxvi, 185pp.

The Catalogue overs 129 MS items including Martyrology of Tallaght; Felire Oenguso; fragments of Grail legend; Liber Hymnorum, Life of Colum Cille, Irish Aeneid (Destruction of Troy); Cormac’s Glossary; Annals of Four Masters; Foras Feasa ar Eirinn; Acallam na Senorach; Duanaire Finn; Flight of the Earls (Tadhg Ó Cianan); sgathan Shacramainte na hAithrighe; Topographical, gramatical and other fragments; Leabhrán Bhriain Uí Chathalálan; Life of St Finbar; Foras Feasa, in verse; prayerbooks, monastic rules, etc; also 2 appendices on scattered items among Latin and other mss, and Irish mss items in copies of printed books.
 
Introduction: The source of the library is the Franciscan friary, Merchants’ Quay, occuped to 1946. Dillon refers origins of collection to great hagiographical undertaking of St. Anthony’s Louvain, undertaken as result of chance meeting of Hugh Ward, Patrick Fleming, and Thomas Messingham, rector of the Irish College at Paris, then preparinig a vol. on lives of Irish saints, in Mar 1923. Work continued by Ward, Fleming, John Colgan, and Boneventure O’Doherty (d.1680); sending of Michael O’Clery to Ireland, 1624, &c. NOTE: Primate Ussher and James Ware placed MSS at disposal of Franciscan copyists. O’Clery arrived in 1626. A great mass of material was saved from destruction and much work accomplished tht would have been impossible even in the next generation. [xiv]. Those MSS in the collection of Bonaventure O’Doherty later ‘discovered’ at Rome by Rev J. P. Lyons of Belmullet, Co. Mayo, who sent tracings of headings to Dublin, where Eugene O’Curry succeeded in identifying them as part of the Louvain collection. Moves to have them transferred to RIA came to nothing in 1843, and in 1859 the Catholic University was also unsuccessful; in 1872, when there were fears that St Isidore in Rome would be possessed by the Italian govt., the MSS were brought back in sealed boxes with British diplomatic immunity by Fr Luke Carey OFM. A list was then prepared for the Hist. MS Commission by John Gilbert (1872). Other stray remnants from Rome arrived; MSS at other Irish houses in Killarney, Multifarnham, and Cork and Waterford were added.
 

[SPECIMEN Catalogue to be added]

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