Matthew Kelly (historian)
Irish historian
Matthew Kelly (21 September 1814 – 30 October 1858) was an Irish Roman Catholic priest, academic and antiquary.
Life
Born at Kilkenny, he was eldest son of James Kelly, by Margaret Sauphy. An uncle, Patrick Kelly, was Bishop of Waterford. Kelly was taught in very early years by Michael John Brenan, author of the Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. When about seven years of age he entered the Kilkenny diocesan seminary, and in 1831 he began theological studies at Maynooth College, where he was elected a Dunboyne student in 1836.
From 1839 to 1841 Kelly was professor successively of philosophy and theology in the Irish College at Paris, and on 5 November 1841 was appointed to the chair of belles-lettres and French at Maynooth; on 20 October 1857 he became professor there of ecclesiastical history. In 1854 he was made D.D. by the pope, and about the same time a canon of Ossory. Kelly died on 30 October 1858, and was buried in the cemetery of Maynooth.
Works
Kelly was a student of Irish antiquities and ecclesiastical history. He made large collections for a work on ‘The Ecclesiastical Annals of Ireland from the Invasion to the Reformation,’ as a continuation of the work of John Lanigan, and was superintending the publication of the ‘Collections on Irish Church History’ by Laurence Renehan.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Matthew Kelly (historian)” as irish historian. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as irish historian. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6790785. VIAF identifies the subject as 266860779. The Library of Congress control number is no2014032045. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1814, 1858, 1831 and 1836.
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This entry incorporates text from “Matthew Kelly (historian)” 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.