Born: 23 January 1831, Clonmel, Cobh, County Cork
Entered: 29 November 1847, St Acheul, Amiens, France - Franciae Province (FRA)
Ordained: 1855
Final vows: 15 August 1866
Died: 26 November 1917, St Ignatius, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin

by 1854 at Laval, France (FRA) studying Theology 2
by 1856 at St Beuno’s, Wales (ANG) studying Theology 4
by 1865 at Rome, Italy (ROM) making Tertianship

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
“Educated at UCD; D Litt 1897; Fellow and Examiner RUI; Professor of Irish and History at UCD; RIA Council, Todd Professor of Celtic Languages, Sec for Foreign Correspondence; Governor of the High School of Irish Learning; Brehon Law Commissioner for the publication of the ancient laws and institutes of Ireland; Has written more twenty or thirty works .......” - Catholic Who’s Who and Year Book”, 1915.

On his death, the following notice was published :
Father Hogan, who passed away peacefully after an illness which, up to the last, had not impaired his mental powers, was the last link with the pioneer days of O'Donovan, O’Curry and Zeuss. He was born in Clonmel, close to Queenstown 23 January 1831. Entering the Jesuit Noviceship at St Acheul at the age of sixteen, he was Ordained nine years later, and spent long and active years in labouring, now in the pulpit and confessional, now in the classroom. He was one of the founders of the Sacred Heart College, Limerick, in 1859, remaining there until 1865.
A subsequent year in Rome contributed largely to the definite trend of Father Hogan’s mind and interests towards the study of Irish antiquities. The Irish and other archives in the Eternal City started him upon a field of enquiry where he was to prove himself a singularly diligent and competent toiler. In spite of many difficulties, including the failure of his eyesight, he pursued studies along various lines of Irish linguistics, history and archaeology, and commenced in 1880 the publication of a series of works, many of which, at least will survive as imperishable monuments of energetic and well-directed scholarship.
The list of over twenty numbers would be too long to print here - we may mention as types, the “Documenta de Sto Patricio’, the “Battle of Ros-na-Righ” and other volumes in the Todd Lecture Series. “Ibernia Ignatiana”, “Distinguished Irishmen of the 16th Century” and the great “Onomasticom Goedelicum (completed in his 77th year) - a work bearing witness to his powers of laborious and minute research.
From 1888-1908 Father Hogan filled the Chair of Irish Language and History at UCD. He was a useful and active member of the RIA, and a Commissioner for the publication of the Brehon Laws.
His many fine personal qualities, no less than his eminent merits as a scholar, gained him the esteem of a circle extending even beyond the shores of the country, for which he laboured so untiringly and unselfishly, and will cause his departure, even at the ripe old age of eighty-seven, to be sincerely mourned.”

Note from Joseph O’Malley Entry :
He made his Noviceship in France with William Kelly, and then remained there for studies with Eugene Browne and Edmund Hogan

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Hogan, Edmund Ignatius
by Eoghan Ó Raghallaigh

Hogan, Edmund Ignatius (1831–1917), priest, Irish-language scholar, and historian, was born 23 January 1831 at Belvelly, near Cobh, Co. Cork, youngest son of William Hogan, craftsman, and Mary Hogan (née Morris). Though the older members of the family were native speakers of Irish, he was brought up through English. He entered the Jesuit Order at 16, beginning his noviciate in the Jesuits' French province on 29 November 1847. He stayed there until 1854, when, having completed his first two years of theology, he transferred to St Beuno's College, Flintshire, Wales, where he was ordained on 23 September 1855, completing his fourth year of theology the following year. He took his final vows in 1866.

On his return to Ireland he began teaching at Tullabeg House, King's Co. (Offaly) (1857–8), and was transferred the following year to Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare. He was one of the founders in 1859 of Sacred Heart College, The Crescent, Limerick, where he stayed until 1865. That year he travelled to Rome, where he researched Irish Jesuit history. This resulted in Ibernia Ignatiana (1880). From 1873 to 1877 he was attached to the Catholic University, teaching moral theology. He served as priest and teacher in various Irish Jesuit colleges, although his teaching duties gradually decreased as he devoted himself more to scholarship. He began teaching in UCD in the 1880s and served as professor of Irish language and history there until the dissolution of the Royal University of Ireland in 1909. He was appointed examiner in Celtic by the RUI in 1888 and subsequently served as fellow in Celtic/Irish until 1909. He received a D.Litt. honoris causa from the RUI in 1897. In the RIA, to which he was elected in 1890, he was Todd professor of Celtic languages (1891–8), a member of the council (1899–1904, 1905–9), and secretary for foreign correspondence (1907–9). In addition, he was appointed a commissioner in 1894 for the publication of the ancient laws of Ireland and was a governor of the School of Irish Learning from its foundation in Dublin in 1903.

His impressive literary output in Latin, Irish, and English began in 1866 with Limerick, its history and antiquities. Other publications include Cath Ruis na Ríg for Bóinn (1892), Distinguished Irishmen of the sixteenth century (1894), History of the Irish wolf dog (1897), and A handbook of Irish idioms (1898). He spent ten years preparing his greatest, and as yet unsurpassed, work, Onomasticon Goedelicum (1910), a reference book on names of places and tribes found in Gaelic manuscripts. After its publication his sight and general health began to deteriorate and he lived a life of semi-retirement.

He died 26 November 1917 at the Jesuit House, Lower Leeson St., Dublin, and was buried in Glasnevin cemetery. Papers relating to him are housed at the Jesuit Archives, 35 Lower Leeson St., Dublin.

Royal University of Ireland Calendar, 1888–1909; Douglas Hyde, ‘A great Irish scholar’, Studies, vi (1917), 663–8; John MacErlean, ‘A bibliography of Dr Hogan, S.J.’, Studies, vi (1917), 668–71; IBL, ix (1918), 64; The Society of Jesus, A page of history: story of University College Dublin 1883–1909 (1930); Michael Tierney (ed.), Struggle with fortune (1954), 33; William Hogan, ‘Rev. Edmund Hogan S.J.: an eminent Great Island scholar’, Cork Hist. Soc. Jn., lxx (1965), 63–5; Beathaisnéis, i, iv, v

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Edmund Hogan 1831-1916
“At a ripe old age, loved and admired by a large circle of friends and honoured by scholars in many countries, there passed away from us the Rev Edmund Hogan SJ D Litt”. These are the opening words of an article on Edmund Hogan by the late Dr Douglas Hyde, in Studies 1917.

Edmund Hogan was born on 23rd January 1831 near the Cobh of Cork. He became a Jesuit at the age of sixteen and was ordained nine years later. He was one of the founders of the Sacred Heart College Limerick, and remained there from 1859-1865. From there he proceeded to Rome where he ransacked the Archives, and he gathered a vast amount of information relating to the history of the Society and of the Irish Church.

The fruit of his labours may be seen from a brief list of his works :
“Ibernia Ignatiana”, “Onomastican”, “Goedelicum”, a life of “Father Henry Fitzsimon SJ”, “Distinguished irishmen of the 16th Century”, “Outlines of Grammar of Old Irish”, “The Bollandists Life of St Patrick”, “Chronolofical List of the Irish Jesuits 1550-1814.
His net was wise. His studies include :
“History of the Irish Wolf-dog”, “Irish and Scottishe names of Herbs, Plants, Trees, etc”, “Physical Characteristics of the Irish People”.

He was Professor of Irish Language and Hostory at University College Dublin, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, Governor of the High School of Irish Learning, and one of the Brehon Law Commissioners for the publication of the ancient laws and institutes of Ireland.

“He had a fine presence, his head was handsome, his forehead broad, his eyes kindly, and his manner always courteous and affable. With all his great learning, he was charmingly simple, and he delighted in anecdotes about people he had met and known”.

He died at Leeson Street on November 26th 1916. It was of him that Fr Henry Brown made a famous remark at recreation after his funeral “Well, I’m sure Fr Hogan will take what is coming to him like a man”.

◆ The Clongownian, 1918

Obituary
Father Edmund Hogan SJ
By Richard Ingham (Giving incidentally a glimpse of Clongowes in the Sixties)
My recollection of Father Edmund Hogan goes back to the year 1865-6, when he came to Clongowes to teach a class of philosophy. consisting of four students, James Galavan of Waterford, James Doyle of Wexford, Myles McSwiney of Dublin, and Stephen Boisson a Frenchman. These were high and mighty gentlemen, from the schoolboy's point of view, not mixing with the ordinary students and seldom seen by them except at a distance in Chapel, where they occupied one of the Community tribunes.

The professor of philosophy, then a fairly tall man, dark haired, and with an alert soldierly carriage, and a most genial and prepossessing appearance, we admired from a distance, but we had no acquaintance with him. In the next year, 1867-8, Father Hogan taught the class of 1st of Grammar, of which I was a member. Feeling deeply the loss of Father Stanley Mathews, of the family of Mount Hanover, Drogheda, one of the most fascinating men I ever met, always in college and in after life the best and truest of friends, the welcome extended to Father Hogan was, I fear, not warm.

After a little, his kindly, genial temperament won our regard and respect, and we pulled along evenly and well.

In those days the relation of master and pupils was intimate and very personal. In nearly all the subjects of their course the master was their sole teacher, and he was their guide, philosopher, and friend, and from the affection born in the classroom of times grew a strong, loving friendship, a help and stay to the pupil in all the joys and sorrows of his after life. Thank God, I have precious memories, alas, only memories, of many.

The present system in our colleges, I fear, is not calculated to foster such old world sentiments.

Long ago it was the custom for the master to bring his boys out to walk on playdays and half holidays, if they so wished, but the boys had to go to the castle and ask him.

Father Hogan was ever a great student, and in my days under him, all his spare time, and indeed all his waking thoughts, were devoted, we boys understood, to the preparation of a grammar, I daresay a Gaelic one, that was to throw into the shade all grammars hitherto in use. We sometimes found it difficult to catch our hare when he was wanted for a run, but when once caught, he gave us good sport, and was the most amiable and best of leaders. On one occasion we went to Maynooth, and after seeing the College, had a grand lunch of beefsteaks and pies in the hotel, over which Father Hogan presided, and we toasted the President in ginger beer.

It must have been trying to a man of his habits and tastes to have to run about the country roads with a pack of raw lads who took not the slightest interest in the studies or pursuits he most cared for. Never once, during the whole time he was our master, did I see Father Hogan show the least touch of annoyance, or shall I call it low spirits, on those occasions.

In 1868-9 Father Hogan was again our master in the class of poetry, of which Stephen Brown, now the Crown Solicitor of Kildare, was easily and worthily the Imperator primus. In this year our class acquired musical celebrity. Every day at the end of the after noon class our master, closing his desk, stood up and said, “Now, boys, a little French pronunciation”, and all standing, some in tune and some far from it, sang two verses of a hymn to our Blessed Lady, called “Reine des Cieux”. Never before, nor I suppose since, has choral music waked the corridors of Clongowes during class hours.

Father Hogan was singularly painstaking and patient in his efforts for our improvement, and always anxious that his class should make a decent appearance on all public occasions. As instances of the trouble he gave himself in these matters, I may mention the following. Twice he distinguished me, to my great annoyance, by selecting me to read the essay written by him at the academical exercises in July, 1868, and again as the reciter of the English poem in July, 1869. Curiously, the latter, called “A War Mirage on the Rhine”, was a vivid picture of the war that broke out the following year, 1870. Day after day alterations were made in that poem, until my small stock of patience being exhausted, I bluntly said I would learn no more new lines. My ill-temper was met with a genial smile, but the verses still grew. To practise' me in the required strength of pronunciation, I was brought to the big field beyond the pleasure ground, where, standing at one end and Father Hogan at the other, my success or failure depended, without regard to wind or distance, on Father Hogan's hearing me distinctly. I used to have a rough throat after these performances. To all of us, notwithstanding our shortcomings, Father Hogan was ever cheerful, kind, and singularly amiable, and at the end of the two years his class parted from him with the most kindly feelings, which lasted with the survivors to his death.

These thoughts were in my mind as I prayed beside the coffin, and looked upon the face of my dear old master for the last time. I seemed to hear again the voice coming to me across the big field, “Speak louder, I can't hear you”, or again calling on his class of Poetry to sing their evening hymn.

Richard Ingham

-oOo-

For Father Hogan's subsequent career as Irish historian, archæologist, and linguist, we must refer our readers to a sketch of him which appeared in “Studies” of last December under the heading “A Great Irish Scholar”. It is from the pen of Dr Douglas Hyde, joint founder and first president of the Gaelic League, and is a worthy tribute to his work, It is followed by a list of no fewer than thirty-eight publications by Father Hogan, Included in this list, which fittingly ends with his masterpiece, the “Onomasticon Gadelicum”, completed at the age of seventy-nine, appear four items which are the fruit of his connection with Clongowes. It was from a MS. preserved in Clongowes that he published for the first time in a large quarto volume of nearly four hundred pages, the “Description of Ireland and the State thereof as it is at this present in Anno 1598”. From another MS preserved in Clongowes he published in the “Irish Ecclesiastical Records” : “Hayne's Observation on the State of Ireland in 1600”. Then there is “The History of the Warr of Ireland (from 1641 to 1653)”, by a British Officer of the regiment of Sir John Clotworthy. This from a third Clongowes MS was published by Father Hogan in 1873, in a little volume of one hundred and sixty pages. Lastly, he published comparatively recently from yet another MS preserved in our Museum, “The Jacobite War 1688-1691”, by Colonel Charles O'Kelly.

Father Hogan died at 35 Lower Leeson St., Dublin, on 26th November, 1917. RIP

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959
Bonum Certamen ... A Biographical Index of Former Members of the Limerick Jesuit Community

Father Edmund Hogan (1831-1917)

A native of Cobh, the eminent Gaelic scholar and historian, was one of the pioneers in the foundation of Sacred Heart College. He entered the Society in 1847; and it is clear that his superiors expected great things of him from the fact that his period of formation was so shortened that he was only twenty-eight years of age when he arrived as a priest in Limerick in 1859. He was appointed minister of the house in 1861 and was in charge of the boys' choir. He remained in the Crescent until 1864. The following years were devoted to research work amongst medieval Irish MSS. For a time he worked with the Bollandists in Belgium on the Lives of the Irish Saints. He returned to the Crescent in 1884 on the teaching staff but remained only one year. The following year at Clongowes saw the end of his career as master. After a short period in Tullabeg, where his sole work was study, he became lecturer in Celtic studies at University College, Dublin and retained that post until the National University replaced the Royal University of Ireland. He remained in the Leeson St community for the rest of his days. Limerick is proud of its associations with Father Hogan's great predecessor in the chair of Celtic Studies, Eugene O'Curry, whose business here was that of time keeper for the building of Sarsfield Bridge. The city may also be proud of its association with Edmund Hogan whose business here was the humble task of educating Limerick schoolboys.

Born: 16 January 1833, Scarteen, County Cork
Entered: 26 October 1848, Dôle France - Lugdunensis Province (LUGD)
Ordained: 1862
Final vows: 02 February 1869
Died: 18 May 1896, University College, Dublin

by 1849 in Vals, France (LUGD) studying
by 1859 at Bonn, Germany (GER) studying Philosophy
by 1860 at Paderborn, Germany (GER) studying Theology
by 1861 at St Beuno’s, Wales (ANG) studying Theology 3
by 1867 at Manresa, Spain (ARA) making Tertianship

◆ HIB Menologies SJ :
When he was five years old the family moved to Kanturk, where he had his early education before going to Clongowes.

1852-1858 After First Vows and some studies he was sent for Regency to Clongowes as a Teacher of all years.
1859 He studied his Second Year of Philosophy at Bonn.
1860-1863 He began his Theology at Paderborn, but after one year was transferred to St Beuno’s.
Returning to Ireland he taught Humanities and Rhetoric as well as Logic at Clongowes.
1867 he made Tertianship at Manresa, Spain
1868 He was sent to Tullabeg teaching Rhetoric.
1869-1874 He was sent to teach at Crescent Limerick.
1874-1882 he was attached to the Missionary Staff, and was Superior of that Staff for seven years.
1883-1888 He taught at UCD
1888 he was sent to Milltown to teach Canon Law.
1892-1896 He was back at UCD, mainly as a Writer. He died unexpectedly during the night of 17 May 1896 in his 64th year and 48th in Religious Life.

Ten years before he died he had been appointed by the Bishops of Ireland as promoter of the Causes of those who had died for their faith during the Penal Times. His last work as entitled “Our Martyrs” which was not published until after his death, though he had seen the last sheet through the press!
His other works include : “The Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell”; The History of Holy Cross Abbey”; “School History of Ireland”

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Murphy, Denis
by David Murphy

Murphy, Denis (1833–96), priest and historian, was born 12 January 1833 at Scarteen, near Newmarket, Co. Cork, the eldest son of Timothy Murphy and his wife Joanna (née O'Connell). He was educated at Mr Curran's school in Kanturk before attending Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare. Entering the Society of Jesus on 26 October 1848, he made his noviceship at Dôle and then returned to Clongowes and taught history and literature (1852–8). He undertook further philosophical and theological studies in Bonn, Paderborn, and St. Beuno's in Wales and, returning to Ireland in 1863, taught rhetoric and logic at Clongowes (1863–7). In 1867 he made his tertianship at Manresa in Spain and later taught at St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, and the College of the Sacred Heart, Limerick. In 1874 he was attached to the society's missionary staff. He established a reputation as an excellent conductor of religious retreats and was appointed superior of the missionary staff in 1873. He began teaching French language and literature in 1883 at University College, St Stephen's Green, Dublin, and, in 1888, was appointed to teach moral theology, and later canon law, at Milltown Park. In 1892 he returned to his teaching duties at University College and also served as an examiner in Spanish for the RUI.

Best known for his historical researches and writings, Murphy was a prominent member of several learned societies including the Kildare Archaeological Society, the RSAI, and the RIA (1884), and contributed to their journals. His articles in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland include ‘Mungret Abbey’ (1894), ‘The castle of Roscommon’ (1891), ‘The ornamentation of the Lough Erne shrine’ (1892), and ‘The Irish Franciscans at Louvain’ (1893). His best known historical work is Cromwell in Ireland (1883), a scholarly and balanced account of the military campaign of 1649–51 written to refute the many myths associated with Oliver Cromwell (qv); new editions were published in 1885 and 1897. Murphy gave credit to Cromwell for his courage and military effectiveness, but condemned his religious bigotry and cruelty, and agreed with the 1st earl of Clarendon's saying ‘that he was a great, bad man’ (Cromwell in Ireland, p. ix). In 1893 Murphy translated into English and published Lughaidh Ó Cléirigh's (qv) manuscript life of Red Hugh O'Donnell (qv) with an extensive historical introduction and parallel bilingual text (The life of Hugh Roe O'Donnell (1893)). The translation, however, was severely criticised by some Irish scholars for its lack of precision. His widely used School history of Ireland (1894) gave a concise bird's eye view of Irish history from the arrival in Ireland in the 3rd century BC of Ceasair, granddaughter of Noah, ‘forty days before the deluge’, up to his own day.

At the request of the Irish bishops, in 1886 Murphy began researching a history of the martyrdom of Irish catholics since the reign of Henry VIII. He carried out extensive researches in the Vatican and other continental archives for over a decade, the result of which was the posthumously published Our martyrs: a record of those who suffered for the catholic faith under the penal laws in Ireland (1896) which he completed only days before his death. His edition of The annals of Clonmacnoise (1896), based on the translation of Conall Mageoghegan (qv), was also published posthumously.

He was elected to the RIA's committee of polite literature and antiquities (1891) and became vice-president of the RSAI (1894) and editor of the Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society. He received an honorary doctorate from the RUI in recognition of his historical research. A kindly and cheerful man, he enjoyed playing the bass violin to relax from his scholarly pursuits. He died suddenly 18 May 1896 in his rooms at University College, and was buried in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin cemetery. There is a substantial collection of his papers in the Jesuit archives in Dublin which includes research notes for Our martyrs and lists of Irish manuscripts in archives in Rome and Spain.

Times, 25 May 1896; Irish Catholic, 23 May 1896; RSAI Jn. (1896); Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society, ii (1896), 81–3; Irish Monthly, xxiv (1896), 328–31; DNB; Boase, supp. iii; Cork Hist. Soc. Jn., xv (1909), 90–92; Beathaisnéis 1882–1982, i, 90; papers of Denis Murphy, Jesuit Archives, Dublin

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973

Father Denis Murphy 1833-1896
Fr Denis Murphy was born at Scarteen County Cork on the 16th January 1833. Having received his education at Clongowes, he entered the Society in 1848, making his novitiate in Dôle, France.

After his ordination and tertianship he taught in our Colleges, Clongowes, Crescent and Tullabeg. From 1874-1882 he was attached to the Mission Staff. From 1883-1896 he taught at University College, St Stephen’s Green, wit a break in between as Professor ar Milltown Park.

He had been appointed by the Bishops of Ireland as Promoter of the Causes of the Irish Martyrs. This led to his book “Our Irish Martyrs”. His other published works are “The Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell”, “The History of Holy Cross Abbey”, “Cromwell in Ireland” and “The Annals of Clonmacnoise”.

He died rather suddenly on May 17th 1896, being 64 years of age and 48 years a Jesuit.

◆ The Clongownian, 1896

Obituary

Father Denis Murphy SJ

Clongowes was still lamenting the loss of one of her most distinguished sons, Dr William J Fitzpatrick, when another, of those who have won fame for their Alma Mater in the world of letters was called away to his account. Born at Newmarket, County Cork, in 1833; Denis. Murphy went first to school at Kanturk; and then came to Clongowes, so young and so clever, that he is said to have finished the class of rhetoric at the earliest age recorded except in the case of Chief Baron Palles. Before his sixteenth birthday he had entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, and after spending some years in England and on the Continent returned to Clongowes as professor of classics.

As a writer and a lecturer; Father Murphy soon made a name for himself; as an antiquary he stood in the foremost rank in this country, and in recognition of his great services to Irish literature and history, the Royal University conferred upon him the honorary degree of LLD.

Many noble tributes were paid to his memory by the Press, and we cannot do better than give our readers the notice which the “Independent” gave of his life and labours :-

The announcement of the death of the distinguished Jesuit, Father Denis Murphy, will come with tragic suddenness on his numerous friends in Ireland. Father Murphy had not been strong for some time past, but there was no premonition of the approach of his death. Last week he might have been met working among, as was his wont, the manuscript materials in the Royal Irish Academy. On Sunday, as usual, he performed his sacerdotal duties, and in the evening, apparently in the best of health, beguiled the time revising the final proofs of his “History of the Irish Martyrs”, which was promised from the printing press next month. On Monday morning he was found dead in his bed, evidently having passed quietly away in his sleep a few hours previously. By the death of the Rev Denis Murphy, Ireland is deprived of the services of an untiring, faithful-hearted son, who loved her with love “far brought from out the storied past”, used in the present and transfused for future times; and the Jesuits lose a useful member, whose work has added lustre to the Irish Province, for his name will be placed on the bead-roll with that of the Blessed Edmund Campion SJ, and those of the Bollandist Fathers.

Father Murphy was born in 1833; and shortly after the Famine Year joined the Society. He was educated: in England, Spain, and Germany, as well as at the Irish houses belonging to his Order. The little town of Newmarket, County Cork, where he was born, is famous as the birthplace of John Philpot Curran, and is hallowed by the memory that there too Thomas Davis spent much of his boyhood's years. It lies in the heart of one of the most historically interesting and romantic districts in that county which Sir Walter Scott estimated contained more romance than all Scotland. Not very far from Father Murphy's early home the brave MacAlistrum had fallen in fight against Murragh-au Theathaun, as the peasants still call the Cromwellian commander, and Phelix O’Sullivan, the vindicator of the Irish Catholics, had broken battle with the English in the Raven's Gleng, and crossed the Blackwater by dint of his long spears; in his historic march into Connaught. Such and similar surroundings possibly first formed the historic faculty which, in later years, developed and trained as it became, distinguished Father Murphy's career. Besides, lectures on side-lights of history, feuilletons and fugitive, magazine articles innumerable, he published several volumes of rare value as contributions to the history of Ireland, although dealing with periods and individual persons. His life of Hugh. O'Donnell deserves a place in every Irish home. It is a bilingual text, and side by side wish the Gaelic original of the pious Scribe O'Clery, we have an English translation copiously imitated. By this scholarly book probably Father Denis Murphy will “be best known to the future students of our country's history. The story of Red Hugh, the bright brand foretold of Fanult, is. a revelation of purity of motive and single-hearted. I purpose which teaches mighty lessons to all Irishmen, and its publication as such. apart from its historic value, was a most important event. Nothing in drama or epic of any age or country can exceed the pathos and tragedy contained in this simple record of facts which Father. Murphy was the first to render into the English tongue. Sir William Wilde used to lament that Cromwell's campaignings in Ireland were the most defective portion of modern Irish history. To remedy this Father Murphy set himself to work, and did so effectually in his book “Cromwell in Ireland”, which gives in detail an account of that memorable campaign which began in August, 1648, and ended in May, 1649. He follows Cromwell step by step in his progress through the country, and traces his march with a blood-red line upon the map. He is even at pains to rescue Cromwell's memory from some things set down in malice, but he musters facts enough to show him the great bad man Clarendon maintained he was. Among his other substantial works are his “History of Holy Cross Abbey”, “The Annals of Clonmacnoise”, and his compendium of Irish history, The work he was engaged on when death took him to his reward is entitled “Our Martyrs”, and is a detailed account of those who died for the Faith in the different religious persecutions in Ireland from the period which is styled the Reformation. This book was the carrying out of part of the work he under took a few years ago at the suggestion of the Irish bishops - viz, the promotion of the claims to canonization of those Irishmen and women who had suffered death for religion's sake. “The School History of Ireland”, which was published in 1893, fulfils a useful work, This little book, which was brought up to date from the earliest periods, contains on its last page a graceful allusion to Mr Parnell's honoured name, and the services he rendered Ireland, which is, perhaps, remarkable when we remember the position of the writer and how high party seeling ran at the year of the publication of the book. Besides faithfully discharging the duties of a missionary priest, and a teacher in several schools and colleges, Father Murphy managed to make time in his busy life to fill with credit to himself positions of responsibility in many learned societies. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a Vice-President of the Royal Academy and a Council member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, and of the National Literary Society. He was editor of the “Kildare Archaeological Journal”, and took a particular interest in similar publications in Cork, Waterford, and Belfast. Such are Father Murphy's services as a historical researcher and a reliable interpreter of records difficult of access as to cause abiding regret that his books are so few. His place as an Irish scholar will not easily be filled ; his place as a thoughtful, ever faithful friend never can”.

His funeral was attended by a large number of clergymen and other citizens of Dublin, the coffin being covered with numerous beautiful wreaths. One in particular calls for our notice. The staff at the establishment of Father Murphy's printers (Messrs Sealy, Bryers, and Walker), subscribed for and forwarded a costly wreath to be laid on his coffin. The gift was accompanied by a large card bearing the imprint of an open book, the left hand page of which bore the following inscription :

IN MEMORIAM.
REV DENIS MURPHY SJ, LLD,
Died May 18th, 1896
Aged 63
RIP

A Tribute of great Respect
and Affection
From the Staff of his Printers,
Messrs SEALY, BRYERS, and WALKER,
Middle Abbey Street.

The other page contained the following :

The concluding sentences of a corrected proof found at his death-bedside addressed to the Printer -

“But he chose the better part, he finished his course, and kept the faith. As to the rest, there was laid up for him a crown of justice which the just Judge gave him, and will give to all that love His coming”.

◆ The Crescent : Limerick Jesuit Centenary Record 1859-1959
Bonum Certamen ... A Biographical Index of Former Members of the Limerick Jesuit Community

Father Denis Murphy (1833-1896)

Was born at Scarteen, Newmarket, Co Cork. He was educated at Clongowes and, on being admitted to the Society, was sent to France for his noviceship. He pursued his higher studies at Bonn, and Paderborn, and was ordained at St Beuno's, in Wales in 1862. On his return to Ireland he was appointed to the teaching staff at Clongowes where he remained until 1867 when he set out for Spain to make his tertianship at Manresa. On his return from Spain, Father Murphy began his long association with the Crescent. From 1868 to 1874 he was a member of the teaching staff while he was also minister of the house, and in charge of the church choir. In 1874 he joined the mission staff then resident in Limerick and remained a member of it until 1883. During his years in Limerick, Father Murphy was held in the deepest respect and affection by all who knew him. He was known and appreciated as a man of versatile intellectual qualities. But this incident shows something of his very practical bent. During his years at the Crescent, it came to his notice that the widowed mother of two Crescent boys was having trouble with a leaking roof. She had seen better days and was in receipt of an annuity just enough to cover up the poverty of herself and children. She told Father Murphy that the estimates for repairs were beyond her resources short of going deeply into debt. Father Murphy, to calm her anxiety, went off to the builders, bought the wood at wholesale and with the help of the elder son of the widow, carried out the repairs on the roof with such skill that the next repairs became necessary only some forty years after Father Murphy's death.

In 1883, Father Murphy was transferred to University College, Dublin, where he was appointed to the post of bursar and librarian. His new post gave him enough spare time to work on his historical notes, the results of his researches during his scholastic days. For during his early years, he had travelled extensively in Europe to collect historical data on the persecutions for the Faith in Ireland. His researches brought him to the archives of cities so widely separated as Madrid, Lisbon, Douai, Louvain, Paris, Vienna and Prague. In his generation, Father Murphy was probably Ireland's most informed historian. After some five years at University College, Father Murphy was transferred to Milltown Park to take over the chair of moral theology. Fortunately, for Irish historical scholarship he was released from his post and returned to University College where he spent the last four years of his life. His monumental work entitled Our Martyrs was just finished in the press, but not yet published, the day before his death. For the last ten years of his life, he held from the Irish hierarchy the post of official Postulator of the Cause of the Irish Martyrs.

Born: 26 March 1907, Mullingar, County Westmeath
Entered: 01 September 1924, St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly
Ordained: 31 July 1939, Milltown Park. Dublin
Final Vows: 24 December 1945, St Ignatius, Leeson Street, Dublin
Died: 23 December 1970, St Vincent's Nursing Home, Leeson Street, Dublin

part of the St Ignatius, Lower Leeson Street, Dublin community at the time of death

by 1932 at Valkenburg, Limburg, Netherlands (GER I) studying

◆ Fr Francis Finegan : Admissions 1859-1948 - LEFT for a period and returned. Took First Vows 21 November 1926

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
Shaw, Francis
by Patrick Maume

Shaw, Francis (1907–70), Jesuit priest, Celtic scholar and historical polemicist, was born 26 March 1907 in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, the fourth child among four sons and two daughters of Patrick Walter Shaw (1872–1940), merchant, and his wife Mary 'Minnie' (née Galligan). The Shaws were a leading Mullingar business dynasty; Patrick Walter Shaw owned several premises in the town (and a number of racehorses) and sat on a number of public bodies, including Mullingar town commissioners and Westmeath county council; he chaired Westmeath county board of health. In local politics, the Shaw family formed a distinctive faction independent of both the local Redmondite organisation and the radical dissident group led by Laurence Ginnell (qv). P. W. Shaw, however, endorsed the support expressed by John Redmond (qv) for the allies in the first world war and addressed several recruiting meetings. He was a Cumann na nGaedheal TD for Longford–Westmeath (1923–33).

From an early age Francis Shaw took a strong interest in the Irish language, and was awarded fifteen prizes and medals at local and national feiseanna. He was educated at Mullingar Christian Brothers' School and Terenure College, Dublin. The latter school was chosen because its Carmelite proprietors were willing to make allowances for his frail health by letting him sleep in a single room rather than a dormitory. Shaw's health problems were chronic; late in life he stated he had hardly ever had a pain-free day.

On 1 September 1924 Shaw entered the Jesuit novitiate at Tullabeg, Rahan, Co. Offaly, and after his first profession (21 November 1926) undertook his juniorate studies at the Jesuit residence in Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, where Fr Lambert McKenna (qv) encouraged him to pursue a career in Celtic studies. In 1929 Shaw graduated from UCD with first-class honours in Celtic studies, winning a postgraduate scholarship and a Mansion House Fund scholarship in Irish language and literature; at UCD he wrote for the college magazine, the National Student. In 1930 he won a travelling scholarship in Celtic studies, and in 1931 graduated MA with first-class honours (his principal areas of study being Irish history and the Welsh language). He studied philosophy at the Ignatius Kolleg (the German Jesuit house of studies) at Valkenburg (near Limburg) in the Netherlands (1930–32). His scholarly mentors included Osborn Bergin (qv); Eoin MacNeill (qv), whose lectures Shaw recalled as 'unorthodox and unpredictable … they taught in action the way of research' (Martin and Byrne (1973), 303); Rudolf Thurneysen (qv), under whom he also studied at the University of Bonn (1932–3; he returned to Ireland prematurely because of ill health); and T. F. O'Rahilly (qv).

Shaw's presence in Germany during the Nazi seizure of power contributed to his abiding distaste for that movement. In 1935 he sparked public controversy by suggesting at a meeting in UCD that advocates of Irish-medium education for English-speaking children displayed a narrow nationalism comparable to Nazism; in April 1936 he published an article in the National Student denouncing Nazi persecution of catholicism, the regime's general lawlessness, and the writings of Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946): 'this farrago of impiety, stupidity and ludicrous ignorance of history … a religion of race and racial hatreds, founded on pseudo-scientific theories which are discredited by all serious historians and ethnologists'.

Shaw undertook further study at UCD (1933–6); in 1934 he produced a highly praised edition of the Old Irish text Aisling Oengusso. During his studies at UCD he regularly presented papers to the Irish-language student society Cumann Liteardha na Gaeilge and taught at the Irish-language summer college in Ballingeary, Co. Cork. He studied theology at the Jesuit faculty in Milltown Park, Dublin (1936–40), where he was ordained priest on 31 July 1939. He was allowed to substitute a long retreat for tertianship studies because of his ill health, and became a professed Jesuit on 24 December 1945. From autumn 1940 until his death Shaw lived in the Jesuit community at 35 Lower Leeson Street, Dublin, of which he was superior (1945–51); he annually constructed the Christmas crib in its chapel. He was also a consultor of the Irish Jesuit province (1947–53).

Shaw initially expected to spend some years on research after ordination. In March 1941, however, he was appointed professor of early and mediaeval Irish at UCD in succession to Bergin through the influence of D. A. Binchy (qv), and held this post for the remainder of his life. Later in 1941 he was appointed to the board of the Institute for Advanced Studies, and in 1942 was elected MRIA. Shaw was a painstaking teacher, and assisted foreign students with evening tuition, often in their own languages. His sense of humour and combative argumentation brightened his lectures and survives in such published remarks as his dismissal of the wilder theories of the archaeologist R. A. S. Macalister (qv) regarding cross-cultural parallels: 'The swastika in Dublin is associated with laundrying [a reference to the well-known Swastika Laundry]. Therefore the Nazi movement is the cult of hygiene and Hitler is a soap-and-water god!' (Studies (June 1935), 320).

Shaw's devotion to teaching, combined with his poor health, meant that his research interests (mediaeval Irish medical tracts, whose significance in pioneering a simplified Irish free from the inflated rhetoric of the bardic schools he held to be greatly undervalued; ancient Irish clothing, houses and social life generally; the history of Celtic scholarship) found expression only in occasional publications, including articles and book reviews, in the Jesuit journal Studies and similar outlets. Shaw remarked that whenever he set about reducing his collection of typewritten transcripts of medieval medical texts to coherence he had to go to hospital.

Shaw was an outspoken opponent of T. F. O'Rahilly's thesis on the existence of two St Patricks, both on scholarly and devotional grounds: he held that mediaeval miracle tales and scholarly positivism alike hindered recognition of the deep interior spirituality found in the 'Confession' and 'Letter to Coroticus'. He was scathing about scholars who (unlike his hero MacNeill) relied on printed editions (often outdated) rather than reading manuscripts. A recurring theme is that vague and ignorant romanticisation hinders the Irish nation from recognising authentic heroes such as George Petrie (qv), Eugene O'Curry (qv) and Johann Kaspar Zeuss (qv).

Shaw held the view, common among social historians, that history paid too much attention to the powerful and articulate and should explore the experience of the common people. He was encouraged in this by love of country sports and the fields and rivers of his native lake country; he praised his fellow Westmeath man Fr Paul Walsh (qv) for supporting his topographical studies by walking the land, and claimed that MacNeill, as an Antrim 'countryman', understood Ireland better than did the urban Patrick Pearse (qv) and James Connolly (qv). As he grew older, he felt his own lifetime had witnessed the end of an immemorial rural Irish way of life, whose traces, he hoped, would at least be preserved in the records of the Folklore Commission. He thought that popular commercial culture, particularly from America, was debasing public taste, and lamented that the authentic romance and heroism found in lives of saints and missionaries were being eclipsed by the synthetic Hollywood varieties. In 1942 he published a pamphlet criticising the novel and film Gone with the wind for excessive 'realism' in their depictions of sexuality and childbirth and for superficiality in their depictions of catholicism. This rousing defence of literary censorship against 'long-haired intellectuals' appealed to readers to keep the faith even if the European war subjected Ireland to the same devastation as that suffered by the defeated states of the American south.

Shaw attributed the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century to the efforts of ideologues to force common humanity into utopian projects. His scepticism of state power was influenced by contemporary catholic social thought, and he saw Irish identity as essentially catholic; but, though this forms a subtext in his 1963 article on the essentially Roman nature of early Irish spirituality and his analysis of the 'Celtic twilight' of W. B. Yeats (qv) as owing more to Macpherson's Ossian (mediated through Arnold and Renan), the rhetorical inflation of Standish James O'Grady (qv), and 'the charlatan Blavatsky and Brahman philosophers' than to the authentic past as revealed by Celtic scholarship, Shaw was not a bigot. Throughout his career he lauded protestant scholars such as Edmund Curtis (qv), Edward John Gwynn (qv), and Douglas Hyde (qv); he admired Pope John XXIII and welcomed his attempt to open the catholic church to the world.

Shaw took a strong interest in radio for religious purposes and popular education; he gave several 'retreats for the sick' on Radio Éireann, encouraging listeners to mentally re-enact, in Ignatian style, the life of Jesus, and he contributed to the Thomas Davis lecture series on early Ireland. He also wrote on spiritual and other matters for the Jesuit devotional magazine, the Sacred Heart Messenger, and was active in An Rioghacht (the League of the Kingship of Christ) and the Sodality of the Sacred Heart. His illness gave him a particular interest in ministry to the sick; he was a frequent hospital visitor, and directed the sodality of the nursing staff at St Vincent's Hospital (1944–59). He was popular as a confessor and spiritual adviser, and frequently mediated family disputes in local households.

Dean of the faculty of Celtic studies in UCD (1964–70), he served in the NUI senate (1963–70), and was spoken of as a possible successor to Michael Tierney (qv) as president of UCD; he served as interim president after Tierney's resignation in 1964, but did not seek the post. During the 'gentle revolution' protests of the late 1960s, Shaw supported the 'establishment' group around President J. J. Hogan (qv), and his defeat in UCD governing body elections in December 1969 strengthened advocates of greater student participation in university governance. After a year's illness, Shaw died in a Dublin nursing home on 23 December 1970, and was buried in the Jesuit plot in Glasnevin cemetery.

Shaw's posthumous fame rests on an article published two years after his death. He had been invited to contribute an essay to the spring 1966 issue of Studies (commemorating the 1916 rising), but his 10,000-word article, 'Cast a cold eye … prelude to a commemoration of 1916', was turned down by the journal's editor (Fr Burke Savage) and the Jesuit provincial as over-long and inopportune. Shaw acquiesced, but prepared a 20,000-word version which circulated in typescript. In 1971 a copy was acquired by the New Ulster Movement (precursor of the Alliance Party), which saw the piece as directly relevant to the developing Northern Ireland troubles, and gave it further informal circulation. Under these circumstances, Fr Troddyn (editor of Studies) and the provincial decided that official publication would reassert their copyright and assist understanding of Irish current affairs; the article appeared in the summer 1972 issue of Studies (vol. lxi, no. 242, pp 113–53) under the title (chosen by Troddyn) 'The canon of Irish history: a challenge'.

In 'The canon of Irish history', Shaw attacks the four last pamphlets produced by Patrick Pearse in 1915–16 to justify the forthcoming Easter rising. The pamphlets, Shaw contends, equate the Gaelic tradition with physical-force separatism as the 'gospel of Irish nationality', with Wolfe Tone (qv), Thomas Davis (qv), James Fintan Lalor (qv), and John Mitchel (qv) as its 'four evangelists'; claim that John Redmond and his political allies committed national apostasy in accepting home rule rather than full independence as a final settlement; and equate the rebels, precipitating war and their own deaths to redeem a corrupted Ireland, with Jesus crucified to redeem sinful humanity. Shaw argues that Pearse projected Standish James O'Grady's essentially pagan concept of heroism and a modern republican ideology essentially alien to Irish society onto the Gaelic past; that Pearse and his allies denied and betrayed the concrete achievements and genuine patriotism of others, particularly Redmond and MacNeill; that Pearse, and by extension the whole physical-force republican tradition, engaged in blasphemous self-deification to justify imposing their will on the majority in a manner reminiscent of twentieth-century fascism and communism; and that the independent Irish state owes more to an older and broader popular sense of Irish nationality, which Redmond and MacNeill represented, than the irreligious and destructive mindset of Tone and Pearse.

'The canon' sums up the concerns of Shaw's lifetime. Its critique of Pearse resembles his 1930s critique of Yeats; its invocation of the horrors of twentieth-century European history reflects his longstanding sensitivity to those horrors; its vaguely defined but essentially catholic and rural-populist version of Irish identity reflects Shaw's lifelong self-presentation as spokesman and servant of the plain people of Ireland; and Redmond and MacNeill are cast, like Zeuss and Petrie, as heroes unjustly forgotten by those enjoying the fruits of their labours.

In 1966 Shaw had concluded his essay by hoping that recent moves towards north-south reconciliation indicated that both parts of Ireland, north and south, as well as Ireland and Britain, might recognise their commonalities and join in preserving the best in their cultures from American commercial cosmopolitanism. The essay's publication six years later, at the height of the Northern Ireland troubles, coincided with intensive debate (associated with such figures as Conor Cruise O'Brien (1917–2008)) about whether traditional Irish nationalist self-images had contributed to the conflict in Northern Ireland and threatened to unleash similar conflict in the Republic; this context gave the essay an explosive impact. An Irish Times editorial (11 September 1972) noted that Shaw's view of Pearse as a destructive ideologue comparable to Rosenberg raised awkward questions about numerous eulogies of Pearse as a model Christian patriot: 'Has every other cleric been wrong and only Father Shaw been right?' The Jesuits were accused by Cruise O'Brien of opportunism in suppressing Shaw's piece until it became convenient to distance the catholic church from militant nationalism (New York Review of Books, 25 January 1973), and by an Irish Press editorialist (1 September 1972) of re-enacting previous clericalist betrayals of Irish nationalism: 'The name of Pearse will easily survive this modern Shavian broadside.'

Shaw's essay has been subjected to extensive critique (Lyons, Lee, Ó Snodaigh) over its failures to place Pearse in context and to address the place of Irish protestants and unionists in Irish nationality; its dismissive attitude to republicanism and socialism; and its over-simplistic view that pre-1916 Ireland was a democracy. (Shaw also unduly minimises the political differences between Redmond and MacNeill.) It is still, however, regularly cited in debates about the relationship between nationalism and Irish historiography; when Studies marked its centenary by publishing a selection of essays from past issues, Shaw's essay was singled out by former Taoiseach John Bruton as 'the most startling essay in the volume'. Some who praised Shaw's critique of Pearse's sacrificial politics were advocates of a secularist liberalism which would have horrified Shaw, and the essay survived, when the man behind it was virtually forgotten, into an Ireland whose social and political attitudes he would have found unrecognisable.

Shaw's papers are held at the Irish Jesuit Archives, 35 Lower Leeson Street (reference J451), which also has files concerning the 1972 publication of 'The canon of Irish history' (CM/LEES/359, 383). A miniature plaster side-portrait by the sculptor Gary Trimble is held in the same building.

Westmeath Examiner, 24 Oct., 8 Nov. 1931; 28 July 1934; 16 Mar., 21 Sept. 1940; 15 Mar. 1941; Ir. Times, 10 Sept., 2 Oct. 1964; 11 Dec. 1969; 11 Sept. 1972 (includes F. S. L. Lyons, 'The shadow of the past', p. 12, on Shaw's 'The canon'); Marian Keaney, Westmeath authors: a bibliographical and biographical study (1969), 174–6; Ir. Independent, 25–8 Dec. 1970; obituary, by Fr Francis Finnegan, Irish Province News (1971), 76–8; M. Proinséas Ní Catháin, 'The academic and other writings of Rev. Professor Francis Shaw, SJ', Studies, lx, no. 238 (summer 1971), 203–07 [list is incomplete]; Studia Celtica, vii (1972), 177; Francis Shaw, 'MacNeill the person' in F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (ed.), The scholar revolutionary: Eoin MacNeill, 1867–1945, and the making of the new Ireland (1973), 299–311 (includes note on contributor, p. 300); Lochlann, vi (1974) [supplement to Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap, xi], 180–81; Pádraig Ó Snodaigh, Two godfathers of revisionism: 1916 in the revisionist canon (1991); Diarmuid Breathnach and Máire Ní Mhurchú, 1882–1982: Beathaisnéis, iii (1992), 152–3; J. J. Lee, '“The canon of Irish history: a challenge” reconsidered' in Toner Quinn (ed.) Desmond Fennell: his life and work (2001), 57–82; Philip O'Leary, Gaelic prose in the Irish Free State 1922–1939 (2004), 52; Michael Wheatley, Nationalism and the Irish party: provincial Ireland 1910–1916 (2005); Bryan Fanning (ed.), An Irish century: Studies 1912–2012 (2012); John Bruton, remarks at launch of Bryan Fanning (ed.), An Irish century, 21 Mar. 2012, www.johnbruton.com/2012/03/irish-century-studies-1912-2012.html (accessed 27 June 2012)

◆ Irish Province News

Irish Province News 46th Year No 2 1971

Obituary :

Fr Frank Shaw SJ

The death of Father Shaw which took place at “96” on 23rd December, 1970 was not altogether unexpected. The news of his condition throughout the spring and summer was none too reassuring. He left us for the James Connolly Hospital, Blanchardstown, in March and during his stay there met with some minor accidents because of physical weakness. Later, while convalescing, he broke a leg and had to be transferred to the hospital at Navan. It seemed little less than a miracle that he should have returned to UCD. to lecture in the autumn. He paid us what proved to be a farewell visit in October. After some weeks of class-work at Belfield he had once more to go into hospital, at St. Vincent's, Elm Park, whence he was transferred to “96”, Father Frank had made many a recovery from serious illnesses over the years but this time it seemed presumptuous to expect a further prolongation of his life. The end came peacefully and painlessly just on the eve of Christmas Eve. His last thoughts may well have been that the coming Christmas Eve should be the first in so many years that he did not spend the day just outside our domestic chapel putting together the Christmas Crib.
Frank Shaw was born in Mullingar on 26th March, 1907 and was educated at the Christian Brothers' school in that town and afterwards at the Carmelite College, Terenure. He entered the novitiate at Tullabeg on 1st September 1924. After his first religious profession two years later he began his juniorate studies at Ratharnham. He had the good fortunate to meet at Rathfarnham Father Lambert McKenna who discerned in the young scholastic the desire and ability to engage in Irish studies. In after-life, Father Frank never failed to acknowledge the wholesome advice of Father Lambert whom he affectionately referred to as “The Bard'.
His success in the First Arts examination was such that he was advised to study for his degree in Celtic Studies. He graduated B.A. with First Class Honours in 1929 and at the end of the following year won the much coveted Travelling Studentship. But immediately after this success he set off for Valkenburg for his philosophy course. He completed this latter branch of studies in two years, 1930-32, and half-way through graduated M.A.
In the autumn of 1932 he set out for Bonn to enter on his higher studies. Here he had the good fortune to have Professor Rudolf Thurneysen to guide him. Professor Thurneysen, who had reached the age-limit, no longer held the chair but continued to lecture at the University. Frank, however, was not fated to complete his Travelling Studentship course under the celebrated professor. The following year he had to return to Dublin as the regime of life in Germany did not suit his delicate health. For the next two years, 1933-35, he was a member of the Leeson Street community and then spent a further year in private study at Rathfarnham before he went for theology to Milltown Park in the summer of 1936. Three years later he was ordained priest on the Feast of St. Ignatius. On the completion of his theology he once more joined the Leeson Street community where he was to spend the rest of his life. Because of his very frail health, he was excused from making the usual tertianship but did the Long Retreat at Rathfarnham.
When Father Frank returned to Leeson Street in 1940 it would seem that for the next ten or fifteen years he would be a research worker while gradually moving up the ranks of teaching responsibility. But early in 1941 the chair of Early and Medieval Irish was vacated by his former professor, Dr Osborn Bergin. So far as Father Frank or the rest of the community was concerned his elevation to the vacant post was not seriously considered. It was only when Professor Daniel Binchy suggested that he should present himself for the chair that Frank put his name forward. Thanks to so eminent a supporter as Professor Binchy, together with other admirers of the young Jesuit's ability, he was nominated Professor at a meeting of the Senate of the National University held in March, Thereafter he had to abandon any further extensive researches as his little energy had to be carefully husbanded to enable him to do justice to his students in the Celtic faculty.
His major published works were his critical edition of the early Irish text, Aislig Oenguso', which appeared in 1934 and his Medieval Medico-Philosophical Treatises in the Irish Language, an essay contribute to the Féil-Sgribhinn Eoin Mhic Néill (1940). Yet, making due allowance for the ill-health which never ceased to try him and the scrupulous care with which he imparted know ledge to his students, it is remarkable how much writing of lasting value he was able to achieve during all his professional career. His writing is to be found in many essays and reviews he contributed, chiefly to Studies. Some of his most searching reviews were written in his early student days but already he was giving advance notice of the interests in Celtic Studies that particularly attracted him. In 1930 appeared his pamphlet The Real St. Patrick, a best-seller ever since. Later critical essays were The Linguistic Argument for Two Patricks (1943), The Myth of the Second Patrick (1961), Post mortem on the Second Patrick (1962) and Early Irish Spirituality (1963). These are but a selection of the ably-presented essays from the pen of a scholar who at the end of his life could scarcely ever remember a day free from some pain or ache.
On 17th April, 1945 he was appointed Superior at Leeson Street and held office for the next six years. It was as Superior he made his final profession in the Society on Christmas Eve 1945. For the last ten years of his life he was spiritual father to the community who will long remember the devotion and high intelligence he brought to bear in presenting the word of God.
From his earliest years in the Society his superiors were aware that his health would always be cause for concern. Even in his days at Terenure College he had to be excused the usual dormitory regime of the other boarders and have a room to himself like the members of the community. It was the provision of this facility that determined Frank's parents to send him to school with the Carmelite Fathers rather than to Castleknock, where other members of his family had been educated. Yet, it should be said at once that Frank himself was never selfishly concerned about his health. Indeed, he had to be reminded frequently by superiors to spare himself. The preparation of lectures and the holding of classes cannot but have made heavy demands upon his fragile resources of strength but this sickly scholar was made of heroic stuff.
The boredom of being obliged to pass weeks on end at convalescent homes made him early in life aware of the misery of his fellow-patients. So it is not matter for surprise that throughout his priestly life of thirty years he became something of a legend in the Dublin hospitals for his devotion to the sick. Not a few Jesuits he helped in his time to face up to an unfavourable medical diagnosis and meet the supreme hour with gentle resignation to God's will. Scarce a day ever passed that inquiries did not reach Leeson Street, asking whether Frank could call at one or other of the city hospitals to solace the sick and their afflicted dependents. It was known also that he was frequently called upon to settle family disputes and restore harmony.
Inevitably the newspapers carried reports of his attendance at this funeral or that wedding or the baptism of the children of friends he had made in the academic world and the professional classes generally. What did not appear in the papers, however, was his attendance at the wedding of some poor artisan's daughter or the christening of his child, or his visits to the poor in their bereavements. He knew for instance that the newsboy's little son was about to make his First Holy Communion and not once or twice from his sick bed he would commission a member of the community when down town to buy some little memento appreciated on these occasions. His entering a sick-room gave one the feeling of something sacramental. The 'Retreats for the Sick which he broadcast in Holy Week are still spoken of by those whom they helped. Even when he himself was in hospital he was more concerned with the spiritual and physical health of his fellow-patients than he was with his own troubles.
His piety was simple. Like his own patron saint, Francis of Assisi, Father Frank had a great devotion to the mysteries of Christmas. Patients in St. Vincent's Hospital in the Green and in Blanchardstown Hospital will remember the loving care that he spent on building the magnificent cribs there. They were the out ward sign of his desire that others should share in that devotion, If they have a Christmas Crib in heaven, then Frank was busy his first Christmas there.
His devotion to the dead was remarkable. In all weathers when ho could manage to be out of bed he was off to a funeral to bring solace to the desolate. Like the Divine Master, he went about doing good.
There was a very human side to Frank. He was an intelligent man and could not fail to realise the fact. He was also a born dialectician and enthusiastically defended the weaker case in an argument. When he was up and about his presence at community recreation radiated sheer delight. In debate he was unyielding. One instance made history at Leeson Street. He was defending a patently weak case with his customary bravura when his contestant vigorously rejoined “Can't you keep to facts”. To this Frank replied “Can't we leave facts aside and keep to the argument?” He was also generous to a fault. If he felt that someone took hurt in an argument he spared no pains to explain matters and see to it that charity did not suffer.
For many years he was spiritual director to the Nurses' Sodality at St. Vincent's Hospital. One might well wonder whence came the energy to sustain him in keeping up to a routine of sermons or lectures ... a wearing experience even for those blessed with good health. But Frank was of that unselfish stuff that did not reckon the cost. The miracle of his life is that he accomplished so much in spite of so much ill-health.
A little-known side of his apostolate was his instruction of those intending to enter the Church. Only the recording angel will ever . be able to say how many wearying hours he spent in the parlour
in this very rewarding but exacting form of the ministry. His advice was frequently sought by those intending to enter the religious life. He was a much sought-after confessor and spiritual adviser. To the last he was extrovert, helping others to bear the daily cross in the following of a crucified Master. It is almost needless to be labour the point that in leaving us he has gone up with full hands to the judgement seat of that Master whom he so generously served.
FJF