A copy of the very rare first edition of Bishop David Rothe’s
Analecta Sacra published in Paris in 1616, has been purchased and
presented to St. Kieran’s College.
The purchaser, a senior Ossory cleric, is
well-known for his altruistic deeds. He has had a long and close
association with St. Kieran’s.
This unique volume, part of our Ossory
heritage, was found on the internet by Willie Murphy of Thomastown, who
suggested ‘it should be bought for Ossory’.
The transaction was
negotiated through the Thomastown-based retired school principal turned
book-dealer, Joe Doyle of Geata Buidhe Books.
David Rothe, who was
born in Kilkenny in 1573, was the son of John Rothe (d.1590) and his
wife Lettice Rothe, only daughter of John Rothe Fitzpiers of New Ross.
Our Rothe House was built by a different John Rothe of Kilkenny. David
probably received his early education in Kilkenny at the local grammar
school which was founded by Sir Piers Butler 8th earl of Ormond (died
1539).
Earl Pier’s splendid tomb may be seen in St. Canice’s Cathedral.
Rothe received his subsequent education at the Irish college in Douai,
then in the Low Countries which was part of the Habsburg lands. Rothe’s
appointment as Lombard’s deputy in Ireland necessitated his return home.
The times were uncertain for Irish Roman Catholic clerics.
In Kilkenny,
we are told he lived with his brother Edward and also with Richard
Butler, Viscount Mountgarret, a peer closely related to the all powerful
earls of Ormond.
In 1614, Rothe composed a number of petitions to James
1, who had succeeded to the English throne in 1603 upon the death of
Elizabeth 1. In these petitions he pleaded with King James, (son of an
executed Catholic queen), for toleration of Catholics in Ireland.
The
Analecta Sacra details the sufferings which the Irish Catholic Church
and its followers were undergoing at the hands of the Irish
administration led by the Irish lord-deputy, Sir Arthur Chichester.
Two
years after the first printing of the book, Rothe was appointed to the
episcopal chair of Ossory.
He remained bishop until his death early in
1650. Bishop Rothe was a leading member of the Irish hierarchy in the
first half of the seventeenth century and played an important role in
the Confederation of Kilkenny during the 1640s. His had always been a
voice pleading for toleration as well as one which sought an end to
sectarian murders.
Days before his death, he was expelled from Kilkenny
by the new Cromwellian administration. The College already has a copy of
the equally rare second edition of the Analecta Sacra, published in two
volumes in 1617 and 1619 in Cologne. It also has an important
collection of early vestments and altar plate which had belonged to
Bishop Rothe.
These items were inherited by the bishop’s collateral
descendants, the Catholic Bryan family of Jenkinstown. The Bryan
inheritance in turn passed in the nineteenth century to their
descendants, the Lords Bellew of Barmeath Castle, Co. Louth.
The
portrait study of Bishop Rothe shown here still hangs at Barmeath
Castle, as does a portrait of his brother, Archdeacon Thomas Rothe.
Thanks to the Bryan and Bellew families, copies of these portraits, with
other episcopal and related pictures are now on display in St. Kieran’s
College.