This series comprises a small collection of glass plate negative images of seventeenth century manuscripts and other original records pertaining to the lives, ministries, and writings of several early Irish Capuchins. These were acquired by Fr. Angelus Healy OFM Cap. (1875-1953) and Fr. Stanislaus Kavanagh OFM Cap. (1876-1965), another prominent Irish Capuchin historian, for research and publication purposes.
A file containing ‘Lastre a gelatine bromuro d’argento … di Cappelli, Milano’ box containing four large plate reproductions of an original manuscript. The box cover gives two dates of 1906 and 1911 (probably company awards). A faint manuscript annotation on the box reads: ‘Catalogo Campione’. The manuscript is titled on the first plate: ‘De haeresis Anglicanae in Iberniam intrusione et progressu, et de Bell Catholico ad annum 1641 caepto, exindeque per aliquot gesto, Commentarius’. The plates are images of the original copy of the ‘Commentarius Rinuccinanus’ held in the Archivio Storico Milano. The original text was destroyed in a bombing raid on Milan during the Second World War.
Photographic print of a group of Capuchin friars in the garden of Holy Trinity Friary. The group includes first on the left, Fr. Angelus Healy OSFC (1975-1953), third from the left, Fr. Camillus Killian OSFC (1872-1941), fifth from the left, Fr. Albert Bibby OSFC (1877-1925), third from the right, Fr. Bernardine Harvey OSFC (1874-1953), and first on the right, Fr. Stanislaus Kavanagh OSFC (1876-1965). Photographer/Studio: Guy Studio, Cork. An annotation in faint pencil on the reverse reads: ‘Taken in Holy Trinity garden by a most cross and irritable German from Guy’s’.
Letters of Fr. Declan McFadden OFM Cap. (1901-1979). The correspondents include Fr. Kevin Moynihan OFM Cap. Provincial Minister; Fr. Kieran O’Callaghan OFM Cap., Provincial Secretary. The subjects include: Fr. Declan’s first impressions of the South African mission; negotiations with Bishop Bernard Cornelius O’Riley (1868-1956), Vicar Apostolic of the Cape of Good Hope; Fr. Declan’s efforts to open a mission school in Claremont Parish, Cape Province, South Africa. Fr. Declan also refers to arrangements for the opening of the Irish Capuchin mission in Northern Rhodesia. He wrote ‘Looking at the map it may strike you that the Cape is a long way from N. Rhodesia – it’s nearly two thousand miles. Yet it’s quicker and at least as cheap, if not cheaper, for our men to land at the Cape and rail to N. Rhodesia’. (27 Feb. 1931). Fr. Declan also provides an account of Irish missionary activity for Stanislaus Kavanagh OFM Cap., Provincial Archivist. (25 Sept. 1931). Reference is also made to the missionary activities of Fr. Casimir Butler OFM Cap. and Fr. Killian Flynn OFM Cap. in Barotseland.
