Bruodin (MacBrody), Anthony (d. 1680), Franciscan author and lecturer, was the son of Miler Bruodin, a landowner, and Margaret O'Mollony; he was a member of a bardic family of Ballyhogan, Co. Clare, who traditionally acted as chroniclers and genealogists to the O'Brien kings of Thomond. He joined the Franciscans aged 20 and left Ireland in 1643 to study at St Isidore's College, Rome. Upon completing his studies there at the start of 1650, he wished to join his relative Bernardine Clanchy at the Irish College in Prague but Luke Wadding (qv) advised against his appointment as lector in theology and philosophy in the Irish college there (Wadding did however say that he was a good student). In March 1650 he arrived at Prague, where he became a member of the Irish Franciscan community, but he left the Irish Franciscans to join the Bohemian province of the order in late 1651. His decision to leave the Irish Franciscans may not have been voluntary – he was undoubtedly a tempestuous character; but he may have been transferred to the Bohemian province because the Irish Franciscan colleges on the continent could not cope with the large influx of refugees fleeing persecution in Ireland.
He prospered in his new setting, being appointed prefect of studies for the newly erected philosophical school at Olmütz (1651) and during his 15 years as a teacher in Bohemia proved an able lecturer in philosophy and theology. Thereafter, he became a provincial definitor of the Bohemian province of the Franciscan order (1659), guardian of the convent of Olmütz (1662–3), guardian of the friary of Our Lady of the Snows in Prague (1668–70), and guardian of the friary at Neuhaus (1672–4). At this time German influence was predominant in Bohemia and the German Franciscans were attempting to control the important offices within the Bohemian province, with a view to incorporating it into the province of Austria. Throughout his career, Bruodin opposed these efforts and, by rallying the Czech clergy and canvassing the support of Czech nobles, ensured that it did not come to pass. Around 1674–5 he was a candidate for the position of provincial (or head) of the Bohemian province, but he was accused of lobbying and expelled. In 1675 he re-joined the Irish province and was attached to the College of the Immaculate Conception in Prague. He died of the plague at Prague on 7 May 1680.
Bruodin wrote and published a number of works, in which he variously discussed Scotist theology (his two-volume Oecodonomia, 1663–4, was the first published handbook of Scotist theology to appear in Bohemia), compiled a biography of Duns Scotus, wrote a description of heresies throughout history, composed accounts of Irish martyrs in the 16th and 17th centuries, defended Irish catholics from English criticisms, engaged in a bitter and drawn-out controversy with an Irish catholic priest Thomas Carew (qv), and lauded the achievements (exaggerated or otherwise) of both himself and his family. His writings on Irish martyrs, published in 1669 as Propugnaculum catholicae veritatis, are of interest and he is the only known source for a number of them. He appears to have consulted an impressive range and volume of sources and his accounts of the Elizabethan and early Stuart martyrs are more or less accurate, but his martyrologies of the 1640s and 1650s are very unreliable, probably because he relied on garbled oral reports. Like many priest historians then and since he deliberately downplayed the manner in which some of the martyrs were put to death for political as much as religious reasons.
Bruodin is remembered mainly for his dispute with Thomas Carew, who was based in Vienna and had published a history of Ireland that criticised the papal nuncio to Ireland in the 1640s, GianBattista Rinuccini (qv), while praising the attempts by the lord lieutenant of Ireland, James Butler (qv), marquess of Ormond, to secure an alliance with the confederate catholics. Bruodin supported Rinuccini's stance of non-accommodation with the protestant Ormond and, in his martyrology, attacked Carew's political views. The controversy raged on through Carew's Enchiridion apologeticum (1670) and Responsorio veridico (1672) and Bruodin's Anatomicum examen (1671). Meaningful political debate often took second place to crude puns and personal abuse. In this dispute Ireland's 17th-century tragedy repeated itself as farce.