[1] Before the age of twenty, Nugent obtained the degree of doctor at the Universities of Paris and Louvain; and he occupied chairs in these two centres of learning, prior to his entrance into religion.
[3] In 1610, at the request of Johann Schweikhard von Kronberg, Archbishop of Mainz, seven friars of the province were sent to establish the order in the Rhine country, and Nugent was appointed commissary general.
In 1615, Nugent began a monastery at Mainz, and Pope Paul V nominated him vicar Apostolic and commissary general with full power to establish the Order in Ireland.
Meanwhile, in 1618 the monastery of Charleville, in the Ardennes, became a training school for friars intended for the Irish mission, and facilities for the same purpose were offered by the Flandro-Belgian Province.
[4] In 1629, Thomas Fleming, Archbishop of Dublin, himself a member of the Order of Friars Minor, addressed to the Irish clergy a letter commending the Capuchin priests, specially mentioning "their learning, prudence, and earnestness".
Two years later, Nugent founded a monastery at Slane, in the diocese of his friend, Dease, who had previously borne public testimony to the merits of the Capuchins.
Giovanni Battista Rinuccini described Nugent as "a man of most ardent zeal and most exemplary piety", and the annalists of the order state that he refused the Archbishopric of Armagh offered him by Pope Pius V,[4] who styled him "the support of the Church and the light of the orthodox faith".