Timothy O’Brien

Life
fl.1715; ed. and ord. Toulouse; PP at Castle Lyon, Co. Cork; vicar-gen. of Cork, Cloyne and Ross; engaged in controversy with Rowland Davies, Protestant Bishop of Cork; no DNB, &c.

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Commentary
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.’ (p.54.)

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