RT Generic
T1 Luke Wadding Papers
A1 UCD Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute for the Study of Irish History and Civilisation
A1 Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive (IVRLA)
NO Scope and Content: This online collection, UCD-OFM, MSS. D.01, represents the first five volumes of Luke Wadding’s Papers. Previously uncatalogued, this amounts to 1,080 pages which have been disbound, cleaned and strengthened by professional conservator Susan Corr and then databased by Benjamin Hazard. By reason of Luke Wadding’s office as consultor to the Holy See, a selection of these papers came into his hands and, under his supervision, Irish Franciscan friars made exact copies of documents from the Vatican Archive and Library. The collection includes manuscript correspondence, contemporary transcripts and printed matter. This reflects the wide variety of activity engaged in at St. Isidore’s College – from theological scholarship to diplomacy and politics, from Franciscan relations with other religious orders to concerns about patronage and the day-to-day running of the college.
NO Provenance: Wadding, Luke, 1588-1657
NO Acquisition Information: The papers in this collection were transferred to UCD Archives from the Franciscan Library, Killiney, County Dublin.
NO Biographical History: Luke Wadding was born in Waterford on 16 October 1588, the eleventh of fourteen children. He was baptised two days later on the Feast of St. Luke. His family were originally from the baronies of Forth and Bargy in County Wexford. His father Walter was a well-established Waterford merchant and his mother Anastasia a kinswoman of the prominent Lombard family of Waterford. After the death of his parents, Luke left Ireland with his elder brother, Matthew, who enrolled him at the Irish Jesuits’ College in Lisbon. At seventeen years of age, Wadding made his way to Matozinhos in northern Portugal, near Oporto, where he entered the Franciscan Order.
NO On completion of his noviciate, Wadding’s superiors sent him to the University of Coimbra and from there, to Salamanca. At Easter 1613, Luke Wadding was ordained to the priesthood after his studies. He was then appointed as a professor of theology at the Franciscan College of León and later at Salamanca.
NO Such was the distinction Wadding achieved in Spain that he was chosen by Philip III for the office of theologian in the embassy sent to defend the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception at the papal court. Several decades later, by letters patent of 1642, the Council of the Confederation of Kilkenny appointed Wadding its accredited agent in Rome. He lived there for almost forty years, in which time he founded St. Isidore’s Franciscan College, the Ludovisian College for Irish secular clergy and, a year before his death in 1657, a noviciate at the friary of Our Lady of the Plain, Capranica.
NO In total, Luke Wadding compiled or edited about fifty learned volumes on theological and historical subjects, averaging out at well over a volume a year. In 1639, for instance, he published at Lyons a complete edition of the writings of John Duns Scotus in 16 volumes. His greatest literary achievement was the Annales Minorum. First published in eight volumes, it traces the history of the Franciscan Order from its beginnings to the year 1540.
NO Luke Wadding completed his scholarly works in 1654. Three years later, after a month’s illness he died on Sunday morning, 18 November 1657 and he was buried in the Church of St. Isidore.
AN uri:info:fedora/ivrla:18726
UL http://hdl.handle.net/:10151/EAD_0000034_CI
LK //digital.ucd.ie/?getObject=ivrla:18726
SL UCD Library, University College Dublin
LL Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland