Cathal Maguire

Maguire, Cathal, Dean of Clogher, an eminent divine, philosopher, and historian, and a canon of Armagh, was born about 1438. He was the 7th in descent from Maguire, a distinguished chief of Fermanagh, who died in 1302. Harris's Ware says he wrote Annales Hiberniae usque ad sua tempora. They were called Annales Senatenses from a place called Senat-Mac-Magnus, in the County of Fermanagh [Belle Isle in Lough Erne], where the author wrote them, and oftener Annales Ultonienses, the Annals of Ulster, because they were compiled in and by natives of that province. They begin in 431, and are carried down by the compiler to his death in 1498; but they were afterwards continued by Roderic Cassidy to the year 1532. He also wrote a book entitled Aengusius Auctus, or the Martyrology of Aengus enlarged. He died of small-pox on the 23rd of March 1498, aged 59. There are also ascribed to him Scholia, or annotations on the Registry of Clogher, a work now lost. Several interesting notes on this annalist, by Dr. O'Donovan, will be found in the Annals of the Four Masters under the year 1498; and O'Curry devotes the larger portion of a chapter of his Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History to a disquisition on the five copies of the Annals of Ulster known to exist. He says "the text is a mixture of Gaedhlic and Latin, sometimes being written partly in one language and partly in the other."

Sources

134. Four Masters, Annals of Ireland by the: Translated and Edited by John O'Donovan. 7 vols. Dublin, 1856.

260. O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History. Dublin, 1861.

339. Ware, Sir James, Works: Walter Harris. 2 vols. Dublin, 1764.