Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Joseph P. Thomas.
Fleming, Patrick
by Elaine Murphy
Fleming, Patrick (1599–1631), Franciscan friar and scholar,
was born on 17 April 1599 at Bel atha Lagan, Clonkeen, Co. Louth, the son of
Gerald Fleming and Elizabeth Cusack of Cushintown. He was baptised Christopher
and was a pious and hard-working child. At the age of thirteen he was sent into
the care of his uncle Christopher Cusack, administrator of the Irish colleges
in Flanders, to ensure his catholic upbringing. Having studied humanities at
Douai, he proceeded to the Franciscan college of St Anthony of Padua at
Louvain. On 17 March 1617 he began his novitiate in that order and, exactly one
year later, he made his solemn profession, taking the name Patrick.
On completion of his studies in 1623, he was chosen to
accompany Hugh MacCaghwell (qv),
visitator of the order, to Rome. En route to Rome, they passed through Paris,
where Fleming became friendly with Father Hugh Ward (qv);
the two men shared an interest in collecting material relating to Irish saints.
During his journey and visit to Rome, Fleming visited many libraries, including
those at Bobbio and Clairvaux, sending to Ward any information he discovered in
relation to Irish saints. While in Rome, he composed a sketch about
MacCaghwell, who had been appointed primate of Armagh; part of the sketch was
incorporated by Vernulaeus in his panegyric on MacCaghwell. On his return
journey to Louvain, he stopped at Regensburg, there writing a compendium to the
chronicle of the Irish monastery of St Peter.
After his return from Rome, Fleming held the chair of
philosophy and theology at Louvain. In 1630, because of his reputation for
scholarship and his family connections, he was appointed the first superior and
lecturer in divinity of the newly founded Irish college in Prague. He set out
for Prague in November 1630 in the company of Father Gerald Fitzgerald. When he
reached the city, he set about establishing the college, purchasing a site for
2,100 florins on 4 April 1631. The solemn opening of the College of the
Immaculate Conception took place on 6 July 1631 and, a month later, Fleming
left for Vienna to try to secure a permanent endowment for the college from the
emperor. He was unsuccessful and he returned to Prague, where, during the
autumn of 1631, protestant military successes led to a general exodus of
catholic clergy from the city. The Franciscans left for Vienna in two groups,
with Fleming and Brother Mathew Hore being among the second group to leave. On
7 November 1631, near Beneschau, they were attacked by a group of peasants and
both men were killed. Fleming's body was taken to the nearby monastery at
Voticium, where he was buried.
Before going to Prague in 1630, Fleming left his
writings on St Columbanus and other Irish saints with Moretus, a printer in
Antwerp. This work remained unpublished for more than thirty years, until it
was edited by Thomas O'Sherrin, jubilate lector of divinity at Louvain, who
published it as Collectanea sacra in 1667.
William Reeves, ‘Irish library no. 2’, UJA, ii
(1854), 253–61; Allibone, i, 604; IER, vii (1871), 59–65,
193–216; DNB, vii, 281–2; M. Pearde Beaufort, ‘Hugh MacCaghwell and
Patrick Fleming’, Irish Monthly, xlv (1917), 800–03; Brendan Jennings, ‘The
Irish Franciscans in Prague’, Studies, xxviii (1939), 210–15; Brendan
Jennings (ed.), Wadding papers, 1614–38, IMC (1953), 168, 410,
456; B. Jennings and C. Giblin (eds), Louvain papers, 1606–1827, IMC
(1968), 57; Liam MacMathuna, ‘Donagh O'Daly O.S.M., 1600–c.1661’, Studia
Hib., no. 19 (1979), 18
SOURCE : https://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do?articleId=a3286
FLEMING, PATRICK (1599–1631), a Franciscan friar of
the Strict Observance, was born on 17 April 1599 at Bel-atha-Lagain, now the
townland of Lagan, in the parish of Clonkeen and county of Louth, Ireland. His
father, Gerald Fleming, was great-grandson of Christopher Fleming, baron of
Slane and treasurer of Ireland. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Robert
Cusack of Cushinstown, a baron of the exchequer, by Catharine Nugent, daughter
of Christopher, heir to the barony of Delvin. He was baptised by Father William
Jacson, and received the family christian name of Christopher. At the age of
thirteen he was sent by his parents to Flanders, and placed under the care of
his uncle, the Rev. Christopher Cusack, who was administrator of the Irish
colleges for the secular clergy in that country. Having studied humanities at
Douay he removed to the college of St. Anthony of Padua at Louvain, where, on
17 March 1616–17, he took the probationary habit of St. Francis from the hands
of Anthony Hickey, the superior; and on the same day in the following year he
made his solemn profession, assuming in religion the name of Patrick. In 1623
he journeyed to Rome in company with Hugh Mac Caghwell, then definitor-general
of the Franciscan order, and afterwards archbishop of Armagh. In passing
through Paris, Fleming contracted a close friendship with Father Hugh Ward, to
whom he promised a zealous co-operation in searching out and illustrating the
lives of the early saints of Ireland. He completed his philosophical and
theological studies in the Irish college of St. Isidore at Rome
(Wadding, Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, ed. 1806, p. 185), and afterwards he
was sent to teach philosophy at Louvain, where he continued to lecture for some
years. He removed to Prague in Bohemia on being appointed the first superior
of, and divinity lecturer in, the college of the Immaculate Conception,
recently founded in that city for Irish Franciscans of the Strict Observance.
When the elector Palatine invaded Bohemia, Fleming fled from the city, in
company with Matthew Hoar, a deacon. On 7 Nov. 1631 they were suddenly attacked
near the small town of Beneschau, by a party of armed peasants, who killed them
on the spot. Fleming's body was conveyed to the monastery of Voticium, about
four miles from the scene of the murder, and solemnly interred in the presence
of forty brethren.
His works are: 1. ‘Vita S. Columbani, Abbatis
Bobiensis, cum annotationibus.’ This work, and the lives of some other Irish
saints, with their ‘Opuscula,’ Fleming, before his departure for Prague, gave
to Moretus, the famous printer of Antwerp, with a view to publication, but the
design was not then carried into effect. The manuscripts afterwards were edited
by Thomas Sirinus, or O'Sherrin, jubilate lector of divinity in the college of
St. Anthony of Padua at Louvain, who published them under the title of
‘Collectanea Sacra, seu S. Columbani Hiberni Abbatis, magni Monachorum
Patriarchæ, Monasteriorum Luxoviensis in Gallia, et Bobiensis in Italia,
aliorumque, Fundatoris et Patroni, Necnon aliorum aliquot è Veteri itidem
Scotiâ seu Hiberniâ antiquorum Sanctorum Acta & Opuscula, nusquam antehàc
edita, partem ab ipso brevibus Notis, partem fusioribus Commentariis, ac
speciali de Monastica S. Columbani institutione Tractatu, illustrata,’ Louvain,
1667, fol. pp. 455. This work is of even greater rarity than the scarce volumes
of Colgan. A detailed account of its contents, by William Reeves, D.D., will be
found in the ‘Ulster Journal of Archæology,’ vol. ii. 2. ‘Vita Reverendi Patris
Hugonis Cavelli [Mac Caghwell],’ 1626. This biography was incorporated by
Vernulæus in the panegyric of the deceased primate which he delivered at
Louvain; and its chief facts are preserved by Lynch in his manuscript ‘History
of the Bishops of Ireland.’ 3. ‘Chronicon Consecrati Petri Ratisbonæ,’
manuscript, being a compendium of the chronicle of the monastery of St. Peter
at Regensberg. 4. Letters on Irish hagiology addressed to Hugh Ward, and
printed in the ‘Irish Ecclesiastical Record.’
[Life by O'Sherrin, prefixed to Fleming's Collectanea;
Ware's Writers of Ireland (Harris), p. 112; Preface to Colgan's Acta Sanctorum;
Ulster Journal of Archæology, ii. 253; Sbaralea's Suppl. et Castigatio ad
Scriptores Trium Ordinum S. Francisci a Waddingo aliisve descriptos, p. 573;
Irish Ecclesiastical Record, vii. 59, 193; Brenan's Eccl. Hist. of Ireland, p.
512; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn), p. 809.]
Dictionary of National Biography volume 19
SOURCE :
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_19.djvu/287
Voir aussi : https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/03/444-irish-catholic-martyrs-heroic-confessors.html
