page_title: Michael O'Flanagan
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Michael O'Flanagan / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: Young Fr. Michael O'Flanagan, photo possibly taken at his ordination in 1900.
context_page_description: Michael O'Flanagan was a Roman Catholic priest, Irish language scholar, inventor and historian. He was a popular, socialist Irish republican; "a vice-president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, he was a proponent of land redistribution." He was Gaelic League envoy to the United States from 1910 to 1912, and he supported the striking dockers in Sligo in 1913.
  O'Flanagan was friends with many of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising and was vocal in his admiration for the sacrifice made by the men of Easter Week. He was active in reorganising the Sinn Féin party after the Rising. He was the main driving force behind the Election of the Snows in North Roscommon in February 1917, when Count Plunkett won a by-election as an independent candidate.
  At the Sinn Féin Convention in October 1917, Éamon de Valera was elected President. Along with Arthur Griffith, O'Flanagan was elected joint Vice-President, a position he held from 1917 to 1923 and again from 1930 to 1931. He campaigned for the imprisoned Griffith in the East Cavan by-election in 1918, and was instrumental in securing the seat.
context_section_description: Michael Flanagan was born on 13 August 1876 at Cloonfower in the parish of Kilkeeven, close to Castlerea in County Roscommon. He was the fourth of eight children born to Edward Flanagan (born 1842) and Mary Crawley (born 1847).  Both of Michael's parents were fluent speakers in both Irish and English, living on a small farm in what was known as a breac or speckled gaeltacht. When he was three years old, "An Gorta Beag, the famine of 1879" swept through the west of Ireland. 
  In both 1845 and 1879 the poorest in society, as they faced starvation, were forced to bear the brunt of the recession as Landlords, supported by the British State, refused to stop food exports or reduce rent. Indeed many landlords tried to use both crises to evict tenants into destitution and starvation in order to replace them with more profitable ranches while continuing to export food abroad.
  While conditions were not as severe as thirty years earlier, there was great fear among the people who had survived the earlier starvation, expressed in a wave of religious fervour, as for example, the apparitions at Knock in 1879. The Flanagan family were staunch supporters of the Fenian movement. As a young man Michael lived through the evictions, boycotts and shootings of the Land War. His parents were  and members of the Land League, and he was fascinated by politics, avidly following the rise and fall of Charles Stewart Parnell.
  O'Flanagan attended the local national school at Cloonboniffe, known as the Don School, where his teacher "was a Michael O'Callaghan, and he became O'Flanagan's mentor and friend; O'Callaghan would also be a prominent Gaelic League activist." In 1890 O'Flanagan went on to attend secondary school at Summerhill College in Sligo. He entered St Patrick's College, Maynooth in the autumn of 1894 where he had an excellent academic record, winning prizes in theology, scripture, canon law, Irish language, education, and natural science.
  O'Flanagan was ordained a priest of the Third Order of St. Francis for the Diocese of Elphin in Sligo Cathedral on 15 August 1900 at the age of 24. It was around this time that he began to use the Irish form of his surname.
  "O'Flanagan was appointed to the academic staff of Summerhill College as professor of Irish; he immediately set about a study of the sounds of Irish and in 1904 published a small book on the rules of aspiration and eclipses. It was also he who proposed the wearing of the fainne as a sign to others of readiness to speak Irish."
  While working in Sligo O'Flanagan was active in his promotion of the Irish culture and language, and he gave evening language classes in Sligo Town Hall. He was a founding member and secretary of the Sligo Feis, which was first held in 1903, when Padraig Pearse was invited to give a lecture titled "The Saving of a Nation" in Sligo Town Hall. Both Pearse and Douglas Hyde were the judges of the Irish language competitions in 1903 and again in 1904.
caption: Young Fr. Michael O'Flanagan, photo possibly taken at his ordination in 1900.
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