Darby O'Callahan

Darby O'Callahan (died 1500) was an Irish monk who started a monastery in Italy dedicated to the Order of St. Patrick in 1494.

Biography
Born beyond the Pale (outside the area of English control in Ireland, which was considered savage, hence, the expression "beyond the pale"), Darby O'Callahan spent his teen years hunting and raiding English settlements. In his papers, he described the time period as "a dark point in my life, but, to be honest, I had my fun too".

When O'Callahan's Gaelic father married a Catholic, everything changed. "He forced me to work the fields. No more raiding, no more girls. It was Hell on Earth", says one particular entry, dated 1462. To escape his father, O'Callahan decided to become a monk. "I was told by my mother that monks did little work, and threw large feasts for the seasonal holidays".

He joined the Abbeylara Monastery in 1462, becoming a Cistercian. Ultimately, however, O'Callahan found the order too austere: "We worked in the fields from dawn until dusk, Abbot Shaw wouldn't allow us to drink, and worst of all, the only girls were nuns. This was a deeper level of Hell than I had ever imagined possible".

Convincing a small group of his fellow monks to join the Dominicans, Darby left Ireland in 1463 for Italy: "where we can hire farmers to work for us in the fields. Then, when we give our sermons, we will see the beauty of the Lord in the golden light of Italy and the soulful faces of the farmer's wives".

Ultimately, O'Callahan was kicked out of the Dominican order in 1493, due to "repeated attempts to convert townspeople while within a drinking house". In Darby's own accounts he claims that he had great success with the conversions, although the men "refused to come to church, so I had to return to the ale house for repeat visits to preach the word of the Lord to their receptive ears".

O'Callahan moved to the Romagna countryside in 1494, starting a monastery dedicated to the Order of St. Patrick in an abandoned church, but he didn't have much success in securing converts.

Probably during the same year or shortly after, O'Callahan was attacked by a group of soldiers. Luckily for him, Ezio Auditore da Firenze was nearby and saved him from his attackers. Ezio asked him if he knew of a monk with a missing finger, to which he could only reply to go look for this monk in Forlì.

In 1500, he died of what had been described as "bad blood", but was most likely syphilis. His body was buried in the small cemetery beside the church.

Trivia

 * Brother O'Callahan is the only Irish character encountered so far in the Assasin's Creed series.
 * O'Callahan is an anglicized version of the Irish name Ó Ceileacháin which means "ancestor of Ceallacán". Other anglicized versions can be written as O'Callaghan or Callahan.
 * After saving him in Assassin's Creed II you can actually kill him.

Source

 * Assassin's Creed II - Battle of Forlì