Qualla: St Patrick's Pontifical University, Maynooth

St Patrick's Pontifical University, Maynooth: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dieglop, CC BY-SA 4.0. The vines on the old tower beside the gate carry sixteenth-century history. It is all that remains of the College of St Mary of Maynooth, founded around 1518 by Gerald Fitzgerald, the ninth Earl of Kildare, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1535 Henry VIII suppressed it and confiscated its endowments as part of the Reformation. For more than two and a half centuries the site lay quiet. Then, in 1795, with Britain at war with revolutionary France and Irish Catholic priests still being trained in dangerous Parisian seminaries, the Royal College of St Patrick was legally established on the same ground by Maynooth College Act of 1795. The Fitzgerald family had built the original. The British and Irish authorities now built its successor for reasons that had everything to do with the guillotine.

Image: Dieglop | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Patrick's Pontifical University, Maynooth: Founded Against the Revolution

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sheila1988, CC BY-SA 4.0. Thomas Pelham, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, introduced the bill in 1795. The new college was to provide "for the better education of persons professing the popish or Roman Catholic religion," with room for up to five hundred seminarians and the ordination of as many as ninety...

Image: Sheila1988 | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Patrick's Pontifical University, Maynooth: The Pontifical Charter and the College Chapel

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Biella "Gabriella" Coleman from San Juan, PR, CC BY 2.0. In 1896 Pope Leo XIII granted the Pontifical Charter, giving the college the right to confer its own degrees in canon law, philosophy and theology - degrees the Royal University of Ireland was not permitted to award. The same period produced the most precious building on the camp...

Image: Biella "Gabriella" Coleman from San Juan, PR | CC BY 2.0

St Patrick's Pontifical University, Maynooth: Nicholas Callan and the Induction Coil

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tealily, CC BY-SA 4.0. Among the priests who taught at Maynooth in the nineteenth century, none was stranger or more consequential than Nicholas Callan, professor of natural philosophy. Working in a laboratory in the college, Callan invented the induction coil in 1836 - the device that made it possible...

Image: Tealily | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Patrick's Pontifical University, Maynooth: A Pontifical University in a Modern University Town

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Csaccount6, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the Universities Act of 1997 transferred the secular faculties of arts, science, Celtic studies and philosophy to the new Maynooth University, St Patrick's remained as a separate legal entity, focused on its original mission of theological education. The two institutions sha...

Image: Csaccount6 | CC BY-SA 4.0