Froinsias Ó Maolmhuaidh

Froinsias Ó Maolmhuaidh (anglicised as Francis Molloy; c. 1606–1677) was a Franciscan friar, theologian and grammarian, author of the first published grammar of the Irish language written in Latin.

While his exact place within the Ó Maolmhuaidh family is unknown, he recorded stories heard in his youth "of a great Christmas banquet for 960 people, lasting twelve days, held by Calvagh O'Molloy, chief of his name, at the end of the sixteenth century.

It was then that his solely theological work, Disputatio theologica de incarnatione verbi ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti was written, probably as a thesis.

This project dated back to 1670, when it was instigated by the secretary of Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, Monsignor Baldeschi, who, along with Cardinal Altieri (later Pope Clement X), were among his most influential friends and contacts in the city.

[1] While a commemorative stone at St. Isidore's College erected early in the 1900s gave 1684 as the year of his death, Ó Maolmhuaidh's decease has since been narrowed to sometime in the last quarter of 1677.