D MSS: letters and papers of the Irish Franciscans in the seventeenth century
Also referred to as Wadding Papers, as the bulk of the manuscripts are papers of Luke Wadding and his contemporaries and came from St Isidore’s College, Rome. The series reflects the wide variety of activity engaged in at St. Isidore’s, from theological scholarship to diplomacy and politics, from Franciscan relations with other religious orders to concerns about patronage and the day-to-day running of the college. The collection contains two main types of documents: correspondence, and material for research into ecclesiastical history. Centred upon the years 1618-57, it starts with the period of Wadding’s career at St. Isidore’s to his death, encompassing his work as Irish agent in Rome and his scholarly interests as a historian. After Wadding’s death, Francis Harold ofm, a nephew of Luke Wadding and his first biographer, continued to add to the collection which was subsequently maintained by the archivists at St. Isidore’s, before being transferred to Dublin in 1872.
This series is the focus of a major conservation, cataloguing and digitization project. D 1, consisting of over two hundred documents and more than one thousand pages, is available to view on the UCD Digital Library.