Mary Bonaventure Browne - Abbess in Galway

Abbess in Galway

In her first year, Mary commissioned Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh to complete the work of translating The Rule of St. Clare and related documents. This had been begun prior to October 1636 by Father Aodh O Raghailligh and Séamus Ó Siaghail. It was transcribed in mid-October 1636 by Brother Mícheál Ó Cléirigh. Mac Fhirbhisigh translated and transcribed the remaining sections (some two-thirds of the total) from English into Irish and "designed it to be a continuation of the manuscript executed by Ó Cléirigh. It was completed on the 8th December 1657 and is now Royal Irish Academy MS D i 2.

Helena Concannon remarks that "It is additional proof of Mother Bonaventure's keen interest in Irish to find that she had brought this MS with her from Bethleham." The fact that she commissioned Mac Fhirbhisigh to complete the work is a very interesting marker of the high status of the Irish language, all the more surprising in a convent twelve of who's members were of Old English stock.

While Abbess, Mother Mary oversaw plans for founding a daughter-house of the Galway convent at Loughrea. The foundation document, now preserved in the Poor Clare archives in Galway, led to the house's apparent existence in 1649-50, but due to the warfare which soon arose in the county seems to have been short-lived.

In the summer of 1649, Mother Mary sent a petition to the "Mayors, Sheriffs, Free Burgesses and Commonalty of the Towne of Galway" stating that, due to excessive rent, they would be obliged to leave their current home at the end of the lease, which occurred the following May. Therefore she petitioned that "you may be pleased to grant them sufficient room for building a monastery and rooms convenient thereunto a garden and orchard in the next island adjoining to the bridge Illaun Altenagh." The Mayor and Recorder recommended the grant on 1 July and on the 10 July the Corporation unanimously agreed and granted the petition. The convent on Oileán Ealtanach - now called Nun's Island - was "a good large and spacious house with other conveniences with the cost and charge of two hundred and odd pounds of the Sisters' portions in timber and other materials."