Life
See Gerard O’Brien, ed., Catholic Ireland in the Eighteenth Century,
collected Essays of Maureen Wall (1989), Dr Timothy O’Brien of
the Irish College at Toulouse, returning to Ireland in 1715, became parish
priest of Castle Lyon in Cork and vicar general of united diocese of Cork,
Cloyne and Ross. He engaged with Rowland Davies, Protestant Dean of Cork,
who had written a tract called The truly Catholic and old religion.
His most famous controversy was with Dr Clayton, Protestant bishop of
Cork, later of Clogher. Dr O’Brien begun in 1743 with A brief
historical and authentic account of the beginnings and doctrine of the
sects called Vaudois, or Waldenses, and Albigenses, in reality an
attack on Protestantism. The exchange lasted two years. O’Brien’s
tracts were published without imprint in Cork and Dublin. When he died,
the Dublin Courant carried a long obituary stating that ‘on
account of his good behaviour and inoffensive deportment, he was greatly
esteemed, not only by his own, but by those of a different communion from
him.’ [54]
Notes
No entries in Brian Cleeve & Anne Brady, A Dictionary of Irish
Writers (Dublin: Lilliput 1985), Henry Boylan, Dictionary
of Irish Biography (Dublin: Gill & MacMillan 1988) or Dictionary of National Biography.
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)