Froinsias Ó Maolmhuaidh

Froinsias Ó Maolmhuaidh (anglicised as Francis Molloy; c. 1606–1677) was a Franciscan friar, theologian and grammarian, author of the first published grammar of the Irish language written in Latin.

Biography

Early life

Ó Maolmhuaidh was born in the Diocese of Meath, most probably in the district of Fercall, lordship of The Ó Maolmhuaidh, in what was then called King's County. While his exact place within the Ó Maolmhuaidh family is unknown, he recorded stories heard in his youth "of a great Christmas banquet for 960 people, lasting twelve days, held by Calvagh O'Molloy, chief of his name, at the end of the sixteenth century."

He appears to have been an uncle to Reverend Seán Ó Dálaigh, a student at Saint Isidore's College, Rome, who seemed to have been the man who acted as censor librorum for Ó Maolmhuaidh's Grammatica.

From Rome to Vienna and back again

Ó Maolmhuaidh became a member of the Friars Minor of Strict Observance at the Irish College at Rome on 2 August 1632. In 1642 he was appointed lecturer in philosophy at Klosterneuberg, Vienna, when aged about thirty-six. It was then that his solely theological work, Disputatio theologica de incarnatione verbi ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti was written, probably as a thesis. It was published in 1645. He received instructions while in Mantua, on 4 May 1647, to proceed to the Irish Franciscan College of St. Isidore, at Rome, to teach philosophy; he was teaching theology there in 1652, and was doing so as late as 1677.