O'CLERY, MICHAEL. - Irish historian, b. at Kilbaron (County Donegal) in 1575, d. at Louvain in 1643. He entered the Franciscan Order at the college of S. Antonio in Louvain, taking the name Michele.
He was sent to his homeland by his Irish superiors, Hugh Boy Macanwad (or Ward) and John Colgan, to collect the lives of Irish saints still surviving in old manuscripts. Later, under the patronage of Fergal O' Gara, he conceived the plan of gathering and bringing together in a single collection all the unpublished annalistic works that could still be discovered in Ireland. He feared that otherwise they would soon be lost; indeed, almost all of them were, probably during the invasions of Cromwell and Guglielmo. He therefore carried out the work with his assistants Farfassa O'Mulcary, Peregrine O'Clery, and Peregrine O'Duignan, to whom Colgan gave the name The Four Masters (“The Four Masters”) in the preface to his Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae (1645). Maurice O'Mulcary and Conary O'Clery were added to these. Thus he wrote M. Reim Rieghroidhe (“Royal Roll [or List],” 1630), Leabhar Gabhala (“List of Invasions,” 1631), Annala Rieghrodha Eireann (“Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland,” 1636), and Martyrologium Hiberniae (1636). Of the Annals, the best edition is that of John O'Donovan (Dublin, 1851).