by Bernadette Cunningham
In January 1632 four Irish historians came together in County Donegal to compile a new history of the kingdom of Ireland. The men involved were members of hereditary learned families within Gaelic society. The leader of the group Mícheál Ó Cléirigh, a Franciscan who had spent time at the Irish College of St Anthony in Louvain in the 1620s. He was assisted by three laymen, Cú Choigcríche Ó Cléirigh, Fearfeasa Ó Maoil Chonaire and Cú Choigcríche Ó Duibhgeannáin.
They soon became known as the ‘Four Masters’. All were trained historians from the north-west of Ireland, steeped in the heritage of seanchas that had been their families’ profession for generations. They were experts in reading and interpreting Irish historical manuscripts, and they had assembled a significant collection of older manuscript sources that formed the basis of their work. They intended that their completed work would be published and become the first such compilation for Ireland to be made available in print.
Circumstances prevented the work from being printed before the mid-nineteenth century, but the original manuscripts of the annals survived through the centuries as a testimony to the achievement of the Four Masters.
