Laurence F. Renehan

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Rev. Dr. Laurence F. Renehan (1797-1857) served as president of St Patrick's College, Maynooth in County Kildare, Ireland, from 1845 through 1857. (St. Patrick's College is now formally the Pontifical University and National Seminary of Ireland, but is better known simply as Maynooth College. As such, it shares a campus and works in close cooperation with the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.) Renehan was also a noted antiquarian, a leading historian of the development of Catholicism in Ireland, and a priest of the Church. [1] Renehan's extensive private collection of early Irish Church manuscripts constitutes 79 volumes of material currently housed in Maynooth's Russell Library. [2] It was Renehan who commissioned the architect Augustus Pugin, a friend, to build the elaborate and beautiful buildings ("St. Mary's Square") that still dominate the South Campus at Maynooth. Renehan was closely associated with the Irish historian and antiquarian John O'Donovan (1803-1861). A massive volume upon which Renehan had labored for years, Collections on Irish Church History, Vol. 1: Irish Archbishops, received editing after his death by his colleague Daniel McCarthy and was published 1861 by C.M. Warren and Thomas Richardson, Dublin. This book remains a much-cited reference. A large meeting-room at Maynooth is named in Renehan's honor. He lies buried in a small cemetery on the campus. Renehan was succeeded at St. Patrick's by Charles William Russell.

[edit] External Links

• Maynooth College - Pontifical Univeristy (Official Website)
• National University of Ireland, Maynooth (Official Website)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Entry for Laurence F. Renehan