Are Irish historical sources being suppressed? The case of Commentarius Rinuccinianus

[scolairebocht]

In the early years of the Irish state they did fine work in publishing some of the great texts of Irish history, in many cases for the first time. One great example is the first time publication, from 1932-1949 by the Irish Manuscripts Commission, of the Latin text of Commentarius Rinuccinianus. Spread across five large volumes of dense Latin (not including an index and summary volume) it is a description of the political turmoil in Ireland during the time of Archbishop Rinuccini, the Florentine who was sent as Papal Nuncio to Ireland in 1645-9.

So its focus is a defence of this Archbishop, and to an extent was patronised by him and his family in Florence, but actually it roams across all the history of Ireland up to that time and includes countless letters and historical sources that illuminate all the great figures and events of those, and later and earlier, years. It was written by two Irish Capuchins, Fr Richard O'Farrell from Longford and Fr Robert O'Connell from Kerry and is widely considered one of the great works of Irish history. However it was never translated into English and unfortunately is not widely quoted or used nowadays for that reason.


Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages

So it was with great joy that historians learned of a major cross border translation effort for this work which was in full swing by 2005, as the BBC in that year relates:

"The scholars from the University of Ulster's Magee campus in Londonderry are translating a record of life in Ireland in the 1640s from Latin into modern English.
...
The work, which is being carried out by the Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages, is being officially launched in Dublin on Tuesday by the Republic's Minister of Arts, Sport and Tourism John Donoghue.
...
During the course of initial research the project team discovered a previously unknown manuscript about the history of Ireland, the Historia, which was written by Robert O'Connell in the 17th century.
It will also be translated and published for the first time.
"In effect, O'Connell's Historia is a history of Ireland and Europe in the 17th century," said Dr Kelly.
"This work has not been used by historians of the period and is actually unknown to all but a few. It has not been translated or published."
The Faculty of Arts at the University of Ulster is currently translating the Commentarius and will host this translation online at the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages.
The website, launched on Tuesday, contains the first tranche of translated material.
The English translation of the Commentarius Rinuccinianus will be completed by October 2007 and will be made available online."
( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4372614.stm .)

By the name Historia they mean Historia Missionis Hibernicae Capuccinorum, written in Charleville in France in 1654. Its a great exaggeration to say they 'discovered' the text, its reasonably well known, with a long quote and translation in this work for example:
View: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Defence-Conspiracy-Theories-Examples-International/dp/0955681227/
, p.116-118.

In any case, a long and detailed introduction to this Commentarius translation, including extensive quotes from the already done translations, was published now nearly 20 years ago, by William P. Kelly, but even that seems to be lost alongwith the website dedicated to this translation and in fact now anything to do with it: https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/en/public...line-text-of-the-commentarius-rinuccinianus-3 .


Irish Manuscripts Commission

Failing that the next focus of all our hopes on this area became the Irish Manuscripts Commission, which initially stated:

"IMC remained committed to five high-profile projects in the period 2012–2016:
• Commentarius Rinuccinianus — publishing for the first time a full English translation of the entire Commentarius, originally published in Latin only;"
( https://www.irishmanuscripts.ie/pdf/IMC SDP 2018_2022 EN.pdf .)

Then that became:

"Publishing Programme 2018–2022...Commentarius Rinuccinianus (ed. James McGuire, translated by Gráinne McLaughlin et al.),
5 vols simultaneously (2021)"
( https://www.irishmanuscripts.ie/pdf/IMC SDP 2018_2022 EN.pdf .)

This was so firm and agreed that even the profile of language scholar Michael A Putnam refers to:

"...Commentarius Rinuccinianus (Irish Manuscripts Commission, forthcoming 2021)..."
(https://rubedo.press/michael-a-putman .)

Also it was listed as about to be published, if not already published, on the Irish Manuscripts Commission website I think for 2022 and 2023 as well, but now the aspiration is:

"Commentarius Rinuccinianus Vol. I (ed. James McGuire, translated by Gráinne McLaughlin et al.)
(2025–7) (5 vols serially)"
( https://www.irishmanuscripts.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IMC-SDP-23-27-EN.pdf .)

And we will believe that when we see it!


A theory on why it might be suppressed

With that catalogue of, shall we say, mishap and delay, the question has to be asked are the powers that be trying to suppress this translation, and if so why? Well who knows really, certainly any Irish Catholic voice is unwelcome in academic Irish history circles, where almost a bigotry against Catholics, and what are considered Irish nationalist texts, is given free rein.

But specifically I wonder if it can be linked to the ongoing debate about Irish slaves. Clearly the powers that be are always hyping the issue of slaves in the Americas, but they seem determined to characterise these as always African with European masters. However the disagreeable, to them, reality is that not a few of the early slaves in the Americas were in fact Irish. They try to suppress all this as a kind of Irish Nationalist myth etc etc but the facts are against them. So while they cannot deny the presence of these Irish, what they say is that the Irish that were there were servants, not slaves, and as such free to come and go etc, totally unlike the Africans who were there at that time or in fact only really arrived a bit later.

Their narrative, as you can read in the quotes below, does not stand up to a translation of the Commentarius, so hence is that the reason they are seemingly suppressing it? What follows then are some quotes from this great work, centring on the slave issue but also treating of some other matters that might give you a flavour of the text.

by Brian Nugent

 

[scolairebocht]

c.1630 An account from Commentarius Rinuccinianus of what appears to be an early tradition of the Irish slaves in the Caribbean:

"The island of St Christopher [St Kitts], with regard to which here he speaks, is part of that region which in our fathers memory was captured by the English to inhabit in America, into which several thousands of the Catholic Irish were transported and integrated into these colonies as having been reduced into slavery, not only to eradicate the Irish nation but also to eradicate from the homes of this race and nation, the Catholic faith, moreover so that they can populate this region at the ends of the world. Indeed those Irish, having been transferred there and equal with slaves, are all held under penalty of a cruel yoke, so that these great believers in the faith (whose only solace is God), one of the greatest parts of the community of faithful in Ireland, is infixed into America."
(Fr Stanislaus Kavanagh edit, Commentarius Rinuccinianus, 1652-1666 (Dublin, 1944) vol v, p.95.)

1649-1654 The Commentarius authors here describe the state of the country from the fall of the Confederacy in 1649 to 1654, with respect to the transportations:

"Mindful of the exiles, the banishments, the deportations, progressing from Cromwell in the year 1649 on the Island, people packed together so that it was more tolerable to die. Now indeed the navy of the English was laden with clergy and people, into those American Islands and other regions captured and inhabited by the English in recent memory, with a destination most hard there. Ours to be commodities of those heretics, sold into slavery. Now those of merit were transported to under a Catholic King, and under Condaeus in Spain or Belgium. Those who were transported into America, were sold into a harsher slavery than the yoke of the Turk. Not even leaving off those of tender or decrepit years, or condition, or the priestly grade, reckoning not the status of Religious or sex, indeed to such a monstrous and barbarous degree that the spectacle was of a married wife, and the husband torn away from the wife. Indeed in the midst of all this expedition nothing was condescended at. For instance father from son, brother from brother, sister from sister, neighbours from neighbours, cousins from cousins, spouses from spouses, thus were separated and treated with contempt through this enchainment by the most inhuman and savage English heretics ever born. The whole island, for the sake of the sacrifice of all the goods, the death of their loved ones, of the imprisonments, and the prisoners and many of the remainder in exile or being transported, resounded with the desperate lamentations of the Catholics. Thereupon the sons of the noblemen, the hope and consolation of their parents who had grown old, until then delicately raised and with a liberal education, not only denied the expectation of a succession to their ancestral properties, but also stripped of their costly clothes and this rank, and dressed in rags and patchworks, their limbs supported by sticks, their skin and flesh having been branded, like cattle they are herded onto these infamous ships in flocks. There the most honest chaste and pious virgins, of course Catholic, educated in their parents homes, a great part descended from great houses, where they might have been preparing for marriage, instead of with parents, as in one case, seven days ago suspended from a tree, blooming with the necessities of life into an act of the cross, and with an ample inheritance mutilated by the intense greed of the heretics, now nearly naked amidst the weather shrieking as they are dragged towards the ships. There the most dear spouses, with one of their sons killed in the war, one of them killed by breaking the neck, one reduced to begging or being an indigent soldier among foreigners, all the family in fact wiped out, or into various regions miserably dispersed, while under the constituted taxes of the heretics all they could hope for would be, a valuation having been composed they may be unbound, their house and farm made use of in order that in old age, amidst tears and communal grief, they may be permitted to finally relinquish, thrust out of their own dwelling by a twisting of the neck, and the wife among the Irish who had been thrown in jail, the husband destined for slavery into the American Colonies, among those for transport to America. Among which Anglican barbarity nothing appeared more mournful than the lamentation of the couple, who on account of the bonds of long marital affection proclaimed they would face the rest of their hardships with an even soul, as long as they were not placed in diverse regions but together, however much they were to live in exile or reduced into slavery.
I read from a letter written into Rome by deserving faithful, that scarcely a sixth part of the nation in this year 1654 were still surviving, and even of this sixth itself 50,000 were transported, partly into the aforementioned American Colonies of England, partly into Belgium, partly into Spain, as we have seen above."
(Fr Stanislaus Kavanagh edit., Commentarius Rinuccinianus, 1652-1666 (Dublin, 1944) vol v, p.175-7.)

 

[scolairebocht]

1653 Fr John Dalton OFM (Cap.) and two nuns were held in captivity in Kilkenny in August 1653, alongwith a Capuchin lay brother called Brother John Verdon. The former was executed and the nuns exiled to Spain, before that the circumstances of their imprisonment is mentioned here by the Commentarius authors:

"It came to pass however in that abject prison the nuns, not solely but also secular ladies their joint captives, one man having been removed, who when in custody with his wife in this squalor for three months, was finally parted cruelly from his most dear wife, going into the regions of America inhabited by colonies of heretics of England in recent memory, is transported with many other patriots on account of the odium to their faith, with his wife weary from her ejaculations to heaven, imploring for the greatest favour, that she herself would be damned into slavery rather than be separated from her beloved consort. But the English heretics, who with a lack of discernment plunged into a heap of sins and I fear with the penalty of their souls, as even now with all contempt of equity in angling for their own advantage, their own individual benefit not Divine law and sin, the wife, because unsuitable to serve as a slave in the new colonies, in custody they abandoned incarcerated in Ireland, with her husband banished into America. This monstrous spectacle then presented to John, plus he bore more horrors in the squalor in jail, with the rattling of the chains, and finally brought into him the sentence of death."
(Fr Stanislaus Kavanagh edit., Commentarius Rinuccinianus, 1652-1666 (Dublin, 1944) vol v, p.161.)

1655 Fr. Matthew Fogarty OFM (Cap.), who had been intending to return to Ireland, after he had previously been imprisoned and exiled from there, died at the Capuchin convent in Nantes on the 9th October 1655. In fact he had even been sentenced to death before it was commuted to exile, while his fellow priest, Fr William Tirry OSA, who was sentenced with him, was indeed executed. The Commentarius authors relate here a story about an event at sea that occurred while Fr Matthew was in Nantes:

"While Father Matthew waited in the Convent in Nantes for an opportunity to sail [back to Ireland], the English under Cromwell controlling Ireland, those who had become accustomed to great tyranny, were transporting into the American islands some Irish, particularly from Waterford, not a few of whom were nobles born of rank, reluctantly and unwillingly they were being transported into the American Islands, where the English lived, condemned by the Cromwellians to develop the tobacco there. To be drudges, indeed resembling brutes, the ships having been supplied with chains they were bound with them early in the night and loosened in the morning. Exhausted after a few days sail in enduring this kind of treatment, hiding the conversation among themselves through the Irish language, they resolved to capture two each of the English as they passed, so that some among them could exist, on the pronouncement in Irish voices of 'Dia agus Padraig linn', i.e. God and Patrick help us. And accordingly early on a certain morning the English recently awakened, breathing the free air on the gangway of the ship, and all things having been examined and the Irish at the same time, according to the practice, with their fetters loosened, the commander of the strategy, ordered the Irish to disperse furtively among the English, in order that he might set free those captives. The commander of the plan, with all mingling absolutely harmoniously, pronounced the agreed signal, in Irish an invocation to God and Saint Patrick, and at the same time a popular exhortation in the vernacular, and all the English at that moment were intercepted, and then put in chains, to become accustomed to be bound like ours, to be given, to an Irish ship, at the same time hired to divert into France; where, in the bay of Nantes, [greeted] by Father Matthew, a little before his death and funeral, a large group of Capuchins visiting the foundation of the British Capuchins there, they bestowed the provisions of the English, so that they converted the merchandise and the ship to their own use."
(Fr Stanislaus Kavanagh edit., Commentarius Rinuccinianus, 1652-1666 (Dublin, 1944) vol v, p.242.)

1655 The Carmelite Fr Oliver Walsh petitioned the Pope, as envoy of four Irish bishops, the Archbishop of Tuam and Bishops of Killala, Ferns and Ardagh then in exile in Brittany, seeking among other matters a general absolution for any excommunications handed out by the Nuncio Archbishop Rinuccini in 1648:

"As Your Holiness in your mercy may think deserving, all and singular those who dwell in Ireland, who were censured by the most Illustrious Lord Rinuccini, then Nuncio, having been excommunicated, to be absolved, either because your delegates are not able to accede to the words, or those who are unable to hasten to the delegates, because some are in Ireland, some are in the Islands of Barbadoes, and (as I may say in one word) all of the nation are dispersed. Out of your paternal benevolence therefore, a general absolution not having been declared, nor your holy blessing on that miserable Kingdom, [I petition] to pardon the exceedingly afflicted and to bestow freely [the blessing and absolution] on those who may be burdened."
(Fr Stanislaus Kavanagh edit., Commentarius Rinuccinianus, 1652-1666 (Dublin, 1944) vol v, p.266.)

This was replied to by two Cardinals, Capponius and Albizzi, their basic point being that there are Bishops everywhere that can absolve those excommunicated, or they can appoint priests to do that and send them everywhere needed, but individually, so there is therefore no need for some general absolution which anyway is only needed by a few:

"To the first [part of the petition], by the utmost and abundant provision from the highest providence of Our Most Holy Lord, for the conscience and salvation of the excommunicated, [the excommunication] can be dispensed with by the several Bishops delegated throughout the whole Kingdom, to which the excommunicated are themselves able [to approach], as in Spain, France, Belgium and Germany, who into Ireland and into Barbadoes are able to transmit to their own delegates, or their own vicars or others. Next, not the Kingdom of Ireland, nor all, nor a tenth part of its inhabitants, were excommunicated; but only a few, who conspired with the heretics, and surrendered and sold the fatherland, faith, Catholics and Clergy."
(Fr Stanislaus Kavanagh edit., Commentarius Rinuccinianus, 1652-1666 (Dublin, 1944) vol v, p.267.)

1656 Philip O'Reilly and Moriarty O'Brien, two Irish exiles in Brussels, in 1656 hoped to renew the war and so gave instructions to the Most Reverend Clonmacnoise to approach the Pope hoping to get supplies and help in this war, and among these instructions:

"[You are] to expound on the miserable condition and deplorable state of many thousands of Irish Catholics in the Province of Connaught, compulsorily [sent there] in one transplantation, by which they are every day threatened with massacre or proscribed into Barbados, and with the danger of the loss of all their faith, if not assisted in time."
(Fr Stanislaus Kavanagh edit., Commentarius Rinuccinianus, 1652-1666 (Dublin, 1944) vol v, p.304.)

1656 The Commentarius authors are describing here the fate of Fr Fiacre Tobin OFM (Cap.) when he was arrested in Ireland in 1656:

"For finally about the year 1656, captured by the heretics on his return into Ireland, cruelly in Ireland itself having been dragged about to be condemned into that monstrous slavery by them, a hard martyrdom itself, one of the many Irish souls deported with reluctance into America, to that place among the islands recently inhabited by the English, who consumed their labour on Tobacco in that consummate tyranny, for no other pay, than sufficient for a wretched life, and a slow protracted inevitable martyrdom. But, having been prepared for and laboured for the same, and having sailed, he was seized with an attack of fever. Whereby since this occurred as the winds were averse, either having been supported by the anchorage of the ship, or at any rate in view of his desperate health, those torturing executioners having abandoned him in the port of Kinsale in Ireland he expired most piously."
(Fr Stanislaus Kavanagh edit., Commentarius Rinuccinianus, 1652-1666 (Dublin, 1944) vol v, p.96.)

 

[Mad as Fish]

1653 Fr John Dalton OFM (Cap.) and two nuns were held in captivity in Kilkenny in August 1653, alongwith a Capuchin lay brother called Brother John Verdon. The former was executed and the nuns exiled to Spain, before that the circumstances of their imprisonment is mentioned here by the Commentarius authors:


1655 Fr. Matthew Fogarty OFM (Cap.), who had been intending to return to Ireland, after he had previously been imprisoned and exiled from there, died at the Capuchin convent in Nantes on the 9th October 1655. In fact he had even been sentenced to death before it was commuted to exile, while his fellow priest, Fr William Tirry OSA, who was sentenced with him, was indeed executed. The Commentarius authors relate here a story about an event at sea that occurred while Fr Matthew was in Nantes:


1655 The Carmelite Fr Oliver Walsh petitioned the Pope, as envoy of four Irish bishops, the Archbishop of Tuam and Bishops of Killala, Ferns and Ardagh then in exile in Brittany, seeking among other matters a general absolution for any excommunications handed out by the Nuncio Archbishop Rinuccini in 1648:

This was replied to by two Cardinals, Capponius and Albizzi, their basic point being that there are Bishops everywhere that can absolve those excommunicated, or they can appoint priests to do that and send them everywhere needed, but individually, so there is therefore no need for some general absolution which anyway is only needed by a few:


1656 Philip O'Reilly and Moriarty O'Brien, two Irish exiles in Brussels, in 1656 hoped to renew the war and so gave instructions to the Most Reverend Clonmacnoise to approach the Pope hoping to get supplies and help in this war, and among these instructions:


1656 The Commentarius authors are describing here the fate of Fr Fiacre Tobin OFM (Cap.) when he was arrested in Ireland in 1656:

We tend to be brought up from a young age to believe that historical facts are facts and are to be accepted at face value. If we pursue either history, or science, to a higher level then we come to appreciate both are in fact ongoing debates.

Just as we have seen the corruption of science revealed over the past few years it might now be the turn of history to be exposed as a study that is as vulnerable to the interests of the establishment as any other, but hasn't that always been the case, and isn't it the role of scholars to try and ensure a balanced interpretation of past events is presented to new generations?

Alas, many are as self interested as other academics whose egos thrive on recognition rather than adhering to any absolute standard, and so they may be easily swayed by the promise of lots of letters after their name. This enables the establishment to buy them at little expense through dangling such baubles in front of their eyes, and this may well indeed be the case here.

 

[Mad as Fish]

I do hope poor Myles's constitution is robust enough this morning to cope with encountering this OP!

 

[scolairebocht]

Yes Mad as Fish, you see in practice the historian is only as good as his sources and since the Irish of that time nearly always wrote in Latin, which modern Irish academic scholars generally ignore, then they blank out so much of the Irish Catholic experience.

Also of course nearly all historical collections of papers that turn up, and are the sources then of history, spend years maybe decades, been analysed and catalogued within the big research depositories before Irish historians are allowed to see them. Of course in theory all this is very necessary, but is there sometimes a censoring of the letters etc going on here?

If I was to guess I would say the main area that seems to get censored are any references to Freemasons or the Occult. Ages ago I think I read nearly all the papers of the family of Farrenconnell in Cavan but then when I had a chance to talk to a member of the family, a daughter of the WWI general, and talked about him being in the UVF, she said 'ah yes, he joined them because of his friendship in the Masons with Lord Farnham," or words to that effect. But I don't think there is a single word in the whole corpus of those papers which mentions Freemasonry.

The Farnham family of Cavan were frequently 32 or 33 degree Masons but in their papers, a catalogue of some of which you can read here: https://www.nli.ie/sites/default/files/2022-12/farnham2.pdf , I don't think there is a single mention of anything to do with Freemasonry. It gets completely blanked out from any collections of Irish historical documents as far as I can see, and I wonder is that just a natural or artificial omission.

This is also true of the Occult groups, which obviously circulate around the upper reaches of Freemasonry. But curiously that narrative has now changed in the last few years. In the National Library of Ireland they now have a huge multi volume catalogue of the 'Occult Papers' of W. B. Yeats, which were not long ago deposited there. Its a very strange change, after blanking out this whole history, with no mention anywhere really of any Occult groups in Ireland before this in any work or collection of papers, now we have a huge abundance of references to the Rosicrucians and the other Occult groups out there that Yeats was heavily involved with.

A curious change, I wonder if it can be linked with the overall drift that you can see the Powers That Be promoting in Ireland. Having slandered and, in their mind, destroyed the Catholic Church here, now they want us to embrace our Pagan and Occult past. We are to move from atheism, which they previously promoted, into this Occult world.