Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire

Life
1560-1629 [Florence Conry; Flaithrí Ó Maol Chonaire]; b. Co. Roscommon [var. Elphin, Co. Galway], of bardic family, ed. Spain and Netherlands; Franciscan at Salamanca; nominated provincial of Franciscans in Ireland, 1601; accompanied Don Juan del Aguila to Kinsale on Pope Clement VIII’s instructions, 1601; on leaving Ireland returned to Spain after battle of Kinsale; he became confessor to Red Hugh O’Donnell (d. Simancas Sept 1602), present at his death; met O’Neill and others when they reached Douai, 1607; involved in unsuccessful negotation of marriage between Dona Maria, dg., of Philip III, and Charles, Prince of Wales; founded Irish college at Louvain in 1616 [var. 1607]; appointed extraterritorial Archbishop of Tuam, 1609; made intensive study of St. Augustine for 16 years and became acknowledged expert, opposing the opinion of Jansen; Irish works incl. Sgáthán an Chrábhaidh [Mirror of Faith]; d. Madrid, bur. Louvain. RR DIB DIW ODNB OCIL

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Criticism
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, p.7-8, Maurice Conry.

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References
Dictionary of National Biography: sent by Philip II to foment rebellion in Ireland; wrote theological tracts in Latin, published 1619-44; and two in Irish, 1616 and 1625.

Brian Cleeve & Anne Brady, A Dictionary of Irish Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985), cites Sgáthán, in large part a translation of El Desseoso, published in Barcelona in Catalan, in 1615 (the Irish book often referred to as Desiderius).

Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (Amsterdam: Rodopi 1986), Maurice [Muirghius] Conry, Old French bishop of Ferns’s denunciation of Cromwellian persecution, Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica (Innsbruck 1659); Leerssen also cites under Ó Maolchonaire, Desiderius, otherwise called Sgáthán an chrábhaidh, ed. T. F. O’Rahilly (DIAS 1955); and under Conry, ‘F. M. Morisonus’ [pseud ‘MacMorris’], Threnodia Hiberno-Catholica, sive planctus universalis totius cleri et populi regni Hiberniae (1659), in Archivium Hibernica[u]m 13 (1947), pp.67-101. Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (1986), p.294-5.] ALSO, The Catalan El Desseoso [i.e. Desiderius] printed in Irish version as Emanuel, or Scáthán an chrábhaidh or Desiderius (Louvain 1616), translated by Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire, authority on Augustine of Jesuit leanings, later Archbishop of Tuam. [Leeerssen, p.298)

Muriel McCarthy, Hibernia Resurgens [Catalogue of Marsh’s Library Exhibition] (Dublin: Marsh’s Library 1994) [BIOG. and BIBL. [as supra] notes associated with Cornelius Jansenius bishop of Ypres, ending in his taking the papal side, with Lombard, Luke Wadding, and others, when Augustinus was condemned for heresy by Urban VIII; his own Tractatus de statu parvulorum, which had approval of Archbishop of Dublin and Jansens, played an important part in the history of Jansenism; this work was reprinted as an appendix to the hew edition of Augustinus (1652) to attempt to show identity of doctrine between Conry and Jansen. (p.45).

Marsh’s Library (Bouhéreau Collection) holds C[ontra] Jansenii ... Augustinus ... accessit huic editioni tractatus F. F. Conrij ... de statu parvulorum, 3 tom. (Rothomagi: sumptibus Ioannis Berthelin 1643), folio.

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