An Irish Dominican College, Corpo Santo, was established in Lisbon, Portugal in 1634.

The College of Corpo Santo at Cais do Sodré was built in 1659 by the Irish Dominicans, supported by King Philip of Spain (who was also King of Portugal at the time).

Since so many ordained priests who returned to Ireland were killed during the Penal Laws the seminary was called 'the Martyr's Seminary'.

The college was greatly damaged in the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, and it was not re-built until 1771. 

 

Corpo Santo Altar Wine was made under canonical laws and the supervision of the Irish Dominicans at their vineyards at Lumiar, Lisbon and exported to Ireland as altar wine.

The College functioned as a seminary until the mid-nineteenth century. 

 

Fr. Michael Coyne OP (1767-1815) served as Rector of Corpo Santo College, Lisbon, Portugal (1799-1802).

 

Earlier, an Irish College, St. Patrick’s was a seminary founded in 1590 to train Irish priests leading up to and during the period of the Penal Laws (1695 to 1829).

 

While the most well documented "Penal Laws" were enacted by the Protestant-dominated Irish Parliament in the late 17th century, Elizabeth I and James I laid the groundwork for them by introducing earlier, less comprehensive restrictions on Catholics. The religious persecution under Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and James I (1603-1625), (James I had already been reigning as James VI of Scotland since 24 July 1567. Upon Elizabeth's death in 1603, he ascended to the English throne, uniting the crowns of England, Scotland, and Ireland), led to the suppression of the monastic schools in Ireland.

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Elizabeth I (1558–1603) introduced the Act of Supremacy (1559) and Act of Uniformity, which required people to attend Anglican services or pay "recusancy" fines. These early laws were often poorly enforced in Ireland because the government needed the support of the "Old English" Catholic aristocracy during various rebellions.

 

James l increased pressure on Catholics, particularly after the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. He also oversaw the Plantation of Ulster, which brought large numbers of Protestant settlers into Ireland. 

 

While Elizabeth and James passed the initial penal legislation, these were expanded, resulting in the comprehensive, systematic Irish Penal Laws, which barred Catholics from voting, owning land, inheriting land, receiving an education, and holding public office. These later laws were described by Edmund Burke as "well-fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people". Enforcement was varied, however, after the Nine Years War (1594–1603) and especially from 1607, Catholic priests were banished, churches were transferred to the Protestant Church of Ireland, and the "Flight of the Earls" enabled the Plantation of Ulster.

 

It became necessary, therefore, to seek education abroad, and colleges were founded in Europe. In 1593, the Irish College of St Patrick, Lisbon (Collegio de Estudiantes Irlandeses sub invocacaon de San Patricio en Lisboa; School of the Holy Catholic Faith of the Irish Students’ invocation of St. Patrick) was established by Royal Charter with a board of Portuguese noblemen under the management of a group of exiled Irish Jesuits.

 

St. Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, was a student at the college in Lisbon, later also in Rome. [Oliver Plunkett was the last priest to be judicially executed at Tyburn, London, in 1681. After his consecration at Ghent, Belgium as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland he travelled to Ireland, via London, where he was received by Queen Catherine of Braganza, a great patron of the English Benedictines, at Somerset House. Somerset House had a small English Benedictine community of Gregorian monks who assisted the Queen’s English secular chaplains, educated at the English College at Lisbon.]

 

The institution survived through war, earthquake and even suppression (in 1759 under the government of the Marqués de Pombal, chief minister to King José) for over 200 years. The former college building still stands in a beautiful corner of old Lisbon and now functions as a municipal courthouse. Many papers from the College, as with others on the Iberian peninsula are part of the Irish College Salamanca Archive which is the Russell Library in Maynooth College. 

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Both institutions played crucial roles in training Irish priests during the penal laws, with Corpo Santo maintaining a long-term presence. The Irish Dominican sisters left Lisbon in 2016 and the last Irish Dominican priests left in 2021.