Giovanni Battista Rinuccini (1592-1653) was an Italian Roman Catholic archbishop who served as the official Papal Nuncio to Ireland during the Confederate Wars from 1645 to 1649, bringing significant numbers of arms and funding to the Confederate cause. In Rinuccini’s writings throughout his career in Ireland, he shows intense sympathy with the more militant faction of the Confederates, clustered around the commander in Ulster, Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill, who refused any rapprochement with the Royalists in an alliance against the Protestant Parliamentarian forces headed by Oliver Cromwell, and who sought to establish a wholly independent Catholic Ireland. Eventually unable however to prevent the dissolution of the Confederacy, Rinuccini was recalled to Rome in early 1649 shortly before Ó Néill’s death, attributing much of the blame for the failure of the Confederate cause on the more reformist Old English faction of the Confederacy.
Writings
Account of the Battle of Benburb (1646)
Epitaph of Owen Roe O’Neill (c. 1649-1653)