by Pádraig Ó Riain
Few early seventeenth-century Irish scholars were made subject of casual, almost conversational comment, but in a letter sent in February 1629 to Hugh Ward, Malachy O’Queely, vicar-apostolic of the diocese of Killaloe, had this to say of the ‘poor friar’ Mícheál Ó Cléirigh:
As I was teaching at Cassell uppon your patron his festival daie [feast of St Francis, i.e. 4 October], there I met your brother Clery who made a collection of more than three or foure hundreth Lives [of saints]. I gave him some Lives I collected, and sent him to Ormond parte of my diecese to write there for a time, from whence he promised to com to Thowmond, wheare I undertook to get many things for him …soone I do expect his comminge who shall be wellcom truely to me.
Since the extant Lives of saints in Ó Cléirigh’s hand run to about 50, the number cited by O Queely appears to be greatly exaggerated. His comments, however, capture a fleeting image of a friar who, between about 1626 and 1637, travelled the length and breadth of Ireland in search of manuscripts. His search was no random one; he was acting on the instructions of his clerical superiors, whose main concern was the advancement of the so-called Louvain scheme for the preservation and publication of Ireland’s early literary monuments, both civil and religious.
