COLGAN, John. Triadis Thaumaturgae [LIMITED EDITION IN UNIQUE FINE BINDING]

Seu Divorum Patricii, Columbae et Brigidae, trium veteris et maioris Scotiae, seu Hiberniae Sanctorum Insulae, Communium Patronorum Acta, a Variis, iisque pervetustis, ac Sanctis authoribus Scripta, ac studio R.P.F. Joannis Colgani, in Conventu FF Minor, Hibernor. strictior. observ. Louanii, S. Theologiae Lectorius Jubilati. Ex variis Bibliothecis collecta, Scholiis et commentariis illustrata, et pluribus Appendicibus aucta: complectitur Tomus Secundus Sacrarum ejusdem insulae Antiquitatum - Louvain 1647. A new edition with introduction by Pádraig Ó Riain. Dublin: By Éamonn de Búrca for Edmund Burke Publisher, 1997. Edition limited to 300 copies. This copy in a once-off special binding.Handsomely bound by Des Smith at Antiquarian Bookcrafts in generous quarter vellum on vellum parchment boards, Irish text from the book inset on upper cover. Spine titled in gilt; white endbands; dark blue endpapers; red silk marker; binder‟s rectangular label on front pastedown; top edge gilt. Signed by the publisher. A superb copy in a unique fine binding.

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A new edition of „one of the rarest of all Irish books.‟ John Colgan was born in the townland of Muff
near Carndonagh in the Inishowen peninsula about 1592. As a young boy he would have heard the
news of the permanent garrisoning of Derry by the English, about the brutal slaying of the aged and
venerated Bishop O‟Gallagher in 1602, about the defeat at Kinsale, the death of Red Hugh in Spain and
the surrender of Hugh O'Neill at Mellifont. Such was the political state of Ireland in which the young
Colgan grew up.
The Trias Thaumaturga, first published in Louvain in 1647, deals with the three great national saints of
Ireland, Patrick, Brigid, and Columbcille. In it are contained seven of the ancient lives of St. Patrick,
five of St. Columba, and six of St. Brigid. For a long time the Trias Thaumaturga was nearly the only
source of information on St. Patrick, and even since the Whitley Stokes edition of the Vita Tripartita
(Rolls Series), Colgan‟s work cannot be dispensed with. Colgan gives a Latin version of the Vita
Tripartita which represents a different text from that edited by Stokes. Besides the „Lives‟ in the Trias
Thaumaturga, there are also contained in this volume many valuable „Appendices‟, dealing with the
ecclesiastical antiquities of Ireland, and critical and topographical notes. In 1655 he published at
Antwerp a life of Duns Scotus, in which he undertook to prove that this great Franciscan doctor was
born in Ireland, and not in Scotland, as was then frequently asserted.
William E.H. Lecky, a rationalist historian, wrote generously of his fellow Irishman's books as “one of
the most interesting collections of Lives of the Saints in the world. It is very shameful that it has not
been reprinted and translated”. Of its rarity Shane Leslie wrote, “Bishop Reeves calculated that there
were about fifteen sets of Colgan in Ireland. There cannot be more than fifty in the world at a very
large estimate.”