For anyone with a sense of history, it must be a matter of regret that the most common association between Ireland and Portugal today is the possibility of inexpensive golfing holidays. For hundreds of years, of course, there were many other close connections, but these are now largely forgotten. So when retired librarian Patricia O Connell began researching the history of the Irish College of St Patrick in Lisbon, she found even residents in the Portuguese capital were unfamiliar with this institution.
Dublin-born O Connell now describes herself as "absolutely passionately interested in Portugal" but initially, having been awarded an MA in Spanish from UCD, her attention was taken with the country's immediate and larger neighbour. Following her retirement, she decided to undertake research into the six Irish colleges established on the Iberian peninsula in the 16th and 17th centuries and has already published a history of one of these, at Alcalβ de Henares near Madrid.
A few years ago, she decided to investigate the Lisbon college, visiting the city regularly and studying Portuguese. In the course of her work, she discovered that not only is there now a fairly substantial Irish community in the city, but that it had origins traceable back through many centuries. For Irish travellers, Portugal's appeal lay in its relative closeness to the south coast of this country. "Coming from ports like Waterford or Cork,"
O Connell explains, "this was the obvious place to go, and apparently there was a lot of trade taking place as well." Indeed, as is shown by Rose Macaulay's enchanting They Went to Portugal, first published in 1946 but now sadly out of print, from the middle ages onwards, there was extensive communication between that country and these islands.
The specific ties with Ireland were greatly strengthened as a result of the Elizabethan wars and subsequent arrival of English settlers when many displaced families left here and moved to another state where Catholicism was the established faith. The most important of these families still to have a presence in Portugal are the O'Neills, with whom Patricia O Connell has become well acquainted in recent years. Shane O'Neill arrived in Lisbon in the 1740s, having decided, according to one of his descendants, that "he could no longer lead in Ireland the life of a gentleman and all hopes of fighting for the revival of Gaelic rule were lost". For many years, members of the family were partners in one of Portugal's leading merchant houses but the present head, Hugo O'Neill, titular Prince and Count of Tyrone and Clanaboy, runs a brokerage company.
Dom Hugo, or The O'Neill, has visited this country on a number of occasions. Similarly, his forbears were always closely associated with the Irish community in Lisbon which was primarily based around the college established in the city in 1590. Beginning in Paris, 29 such institutions, in effect seminaries, were set up across Europe between 1578 and 1680 due to increasing hostility towards Catholicism and its practice on the part of the British authorities. As Patricia O Connell notes, a report to the Jesuit provincial in Portugal early in the 17th century observed that many Irish sent their sons to such colleges so that "well-instructed in the Catholic faith, they would return to their country to refute the errors of heretics".
Lisbon's Irish college survived until 1834, by which time the British government had passed legislation to permit Catholic emancipation and a seminary in Maynooth was already well established. The effect was to make overseas centres of education largely redundant, although the Irish college in Salamanca survived until 1951.
However, many of the European colleges had already been closed, if only temporarily, during earlier waves of anti-clericalism; in both Spain and Portugal, for example, where the institutions were mostly run by Jesuits, they suffered when the Society was suppressed in the 18th century. Lisbon's Irish college was certainly founded by a Wexford-born Jesuit called John Howling. Twenty-one years later, it moved to the premises it thereafter occupied in the city. The buildings were badly damaged in the earthquake which destroyed much of Lisbon in November 1755, and afterwards it gradually went into decline. By 1822, three former students of the college still resident in Lisbon wrote back to Ireland that the college "sits eminent as the doleful monument of national delinquency and disgrace".
Twelve years later, the Irish college closed down for good and the property passed into the hands of the Dominican order until it became home to a division of the city's law courts in the early part of the last century. Most of the institution's archives are now in this country, held either by the Jesuits or by the Dublin Diocesan offices.
Though the loss of this link with the past is disappointing, Patricia O Connell records other, equally long-standing connections between Ireland and Lisbon which continue to the present day. One of these is the church of Corpo Santo, close to the city's docks, which was established by a Dominican priest from Co Kerry, Father Dominic O'Daly, in 1634 and is still tended by Irish priests from the same order. Similarly, in nearby BelΘm stands the convent of Nossa Senhora de Bom Sucesso, home for the past 360 years to Irish Dominican nuns who now run their substantial premises as a school. "They're involved in everything and do lots of social work," according to Patricia O Connell, although she notes that the house has no young recruits, which imperils the future of the Irish link.
Since the Government has begun to take an interest of late in the preservation of other properties in Europe once associated with Ireland, such as the former colleges in Paris and Louvain, perhaps something might be done to ensure that this connection is not severed? Otherwise golf on the Algarve could become the only bond.
Irish College at Lisbon 1590-1834 by Patricia O Connell is published by the Four Courts Press, price £25.60
