Constantine Ó Nialláin
Irish soldier and friar
Constantine Ó Nialláin, (a.k.a. Constantine O'Nelan) Irish soldier and Capuchin friar, c. 1560?-after 1621.
Biography
The "son of Dr O’Nelan of Ballyfarracnan castle, County Limerick" (p. 13), Ó Nialláin had fought as a young man against English forces in Ireland, possibly during the Desmond rebellion. Following this, he emigrated to Spain where he became a medical student at Salamanca, before turning to philosophy and theology. It was not till he was over forty years of age that he joined the Capuchin order, while in France.
Martin notes that "O’Nelan was credited with rare sanctity of life, and his biography was written after his death by Fr Raphaël de Nantes." According to Nicholas Archbold, Ó Nialláin was bald and had, by the time he joined the order, lost almost all his teeth. This latter affliction made Francis Lavalin Nugent refuse, at considerable controversy, to send him as a missionary to Charleville {in northern France} in 1621, because his lack of teeth made his speech virtually unintelligible.
See also
Stephen Ó Dálaigh
Laurence Nugent
Nicholas Archbold
References
So Manie in the Verie Prime and Spring of their Youth, Manie of them Heirs of Lande: The Friars of the Irish Capuchin Mission in Northern France and the Low Countries, 1591-1641", p. 9-10, F.X. Martin, in "Ireland and France: a Bountiful Friendship", pp.
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This entry incorporates text from “Constantine Ó Nialláin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.