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. , Rome.|alt=|left
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. While he never seems to have become
guardian of the college on the death of
Luke Wadding in 1657, he was president for a time in 1671.
Publications Ó Maolmhuaidh was still in Rome when his
Iubilatio genethliaca in honorem Prosperi Baltharasaris Philippi Hispaniarum principis was published there in 1658. "By 1663 he was preparing a course on philosophy for publication. The first part of his
Philosophia ... tomus primus dialectiae breviarum complectens was published at Rome in 1666, but no further part was published." His best-known work,
Lucerna fidelium, seu, Fasciclus decerptus ab authoribus magis versatis qui tractarunt de doctrin a Christiana (
Lochrann na gCreidmheach), was an Irish-language
catechism of Catholic church
doctrine. It was published in Rome in 1676. This project dated back to 1670, when it was instigated by the secretary of
Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, Monsignor
Baldeschi, who, along with Cardinal Altieri (later
Pope Clement X), were among his most influential friends and contacts in the city. His last printed work,
Grammatica Latino-Hibernica nunc compendiata, was the first printed
grammar of the Irish language, and was published in 1677. It is in
Latin, and consists of twenty-five chapters: nine on the letters of the
alphabet, three on
etymology, one on
contractions and
cryptic writings, and twelve on
prosody and
versification. At the end is an Irish poem by Molloy on the neglect of the ancient language of Ireland and the prospects of its resuscitation.
As an Irish Franciscan He attended a
general chapter of the order at Rome in 1664 on behalf of the Irish
provincial superior.
Final years While a commemorative stone at St. Isidore's College erected early in the 1900s gave 1684 as the year of his death, Ó Maolmhuaidh's decease has since been narrowed to sometime in the last quarter of 1677. He died while travelling through
France for
Ireland, in the company of
Seán Ó Dálaigh. ==See also==