Launch of the Salamanca Archive Exhibition and Online Catalogue

On Monday, 2nd December 2013, at 4 p.m.  His Excellency, Mr. Javier Garrigues Florez, Spanish Ambassador, will open an exhibition and launch the online catalogue of The Salamanca Archive in the John Paul II, Library at NUI Maynooth.  This archive holds over 50,000 documents from the late sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century, mainly from the Irish College in Salamanca. These colleges were established after the Reformation with the specific task of educating and training students for the priesthood and acted as service and social centres for Irish religious communities implanted all over Spain. The archives are the property of the Irish Episcopal Conference and were deposited in Maynooth in 1951 when the last of the Irish Colleges in Salamanca closed its doors. It is the most important Spanish language archive collection in Ireland. The exhibition in the John Paul II Library is open to the public and will run until 10 January 2014.