Life

Born at Kilkenny

Kilkenny

Kilkenny is a city and is the county town of the eponymous County Kilkenny in Ireland. It is situated on both banks of the River Nore in the province of Leinster, in the south-east of Ireland...

 21 September 1814, he was eldest son of James Kelly, by Margaret Sauphy. An uncle, Patrick Kelly

Patrick Kelly

Patrick Kelly may refer to:* Patrick Kelly , British, best known for his Oriental Metrology* Patrick Kelly , Union officer in the U.S...

, was Bishop of Waterford

Bishop of Waterford

The Bishop of Waterford was a medieval prelate, governing the Diocese of Waterford from its creation in the 11th century until it was absorbed into the new Roman Catholic Diocese of Waterford and Lismore in the 14th century...

. Kelly was taught in very early years by Michael John Brenan

Michael John Brenan

Michael John Brenan was a Roman Catholic priest and an ecclesiastical historian.-Life:Brenan was born in Kilkenny, Ireland, the son of a stonemason. After his ordination to the priesthood, he quickly obtained a reputation as a preacher, but, owing to his vanity and pride, came into collision with...

, author of the Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. When about seven years of age he entered the Kilkenny diocesan seminary, and in 1831 he began theological studies at Maynooth

Maynooth

Maynooth is a town in north County Kildare, Ireland. It is home to a branch of the National University of Ireland, a Papal University and Ireland's main Roman Catholic seminary, St. Patrick's College...

, where he was elected a Dunboyne student in 1836.

From 1839 to 1841 Kelly was professor successively of philosophy and theology in the Irish College at Paris, and on 5 November 1841 was appointed to the chair of belles-lettres

Belles-lettres

Belles-lettres or belles lettres is a term that is used to describe a category of writing. A writer of belles-lettres is a belletrist. However, the boundaries of that category vary in different usages....

and French at Maynooth; on 20 October 1857 he became professor there of ecclesiastical history. In 1854 he was made D.D. by the pope, and about the same time a canon of Ossory. Kelly died on 30 October 1858, and was buried in the cemetery of Maynooth.

Works

Kelly was a student of Irish antiquities and ecclesiastical history. He made large collections for a work on ‘The Ecclesiastical Annals of Ireland from the Invasion to the Reformation,’ as a continuation of the work of John Lanigan

John Lanigan

About him...

, and was superintending the publication of the ‘Collections on Irish Church History’ by Laurence Renehan. He edited John Lynch

John Lynch (Gratianus Lucius)

John Lynch, pseudonym Gratianus Lucius, D.D., was an Irish Roman Catholic priest, known as a historian and Archdeacon of Tuam.-Life:...

's ‘Cambrensis Eversus,’ Dublin, 3 vols. 1848–52 (for the Celtic Society, of whose council he was a member); Stephen White

Stephen White (Jesuit)

Stephen White, SJ was a Jesuit author and antiquarian who wrote about the early Irish saints.He was born in Clonmel, Ireland, to a family devoted to religion and education. In 1592, Trinity College, Dublin was founded, and S. White was one of the few students named in the charter...

's ‘Apologia pro Hibernia,’ Dublin, 1849; and Philip O'Sullivan's ‘Historiæ Catholicæ Iberniæ Compendium,’ Dublin, 1850. He also translated Jean Edmé Auguste Gosselin's ‘Power of the Popes during the Middle Ages,’ London, 1853 (vol. i. of the ‘Library of Translations from Select Foreign Literature’), and published a ‘Calendar of Irish Saints, the Martyrology of Tullagh; with Notices of the Patron Saints of Ireland. And Select Poems and Hymns,’ Dublin, 1857.

Kelly contributed to various periodicals, notably the Dublin Review

Dublin Review (Catholic periodical)

The Dublin Review was an influential Catholic periodical founded in 1836 by Michael Joseph Quin, Cardinal Wiseman and Daniel O'Connell. Quin had the original idea for the new journal, soon persuading Wiseman to lend his support, and next enlisting O'Connell whose Catholic Emancipation campaign he...

, and a collection of his essays, entitled ‘Dissertations chiefly on Irish Church History,’ was edited, with a memoir, by D. McCarthy, Dublin, 1864.