Life
1573-1650; b. Old English family in Kilkenny; ed. Douai, and then at Salamanca; Vicar-General of Armagh, 1609; wrote Analecta Sacra, 1610-11 (publ. 1616-17), a critique of English ecclesiastical policy; consec. Catholic Bishop of Ossory, 1618; Hibernia resugens (1621) defends Irish saints against expropriation by Thomas Dempster; joined confederation but came into conflict with Rinuccini [ODNB]; forced to flee Kilkenny on entry of Cromwellian forces [var. striped and humiliated]; died shortly after; his “Distinction of Purgatories“, an argument in favour of the pilgrimage at Lough Derg, was printed in Thomas Messingham, Florilegium Insulae Sanctorum Hibernia (1624). ODNB
Works
See
Edmund Lewes Lenthal Swift, Life and Acts of Saint Patrick the Archbishop, primate and apostle of Ireland, with the elucidations of David Rothe, Bishop of Ossory (Dublin: Hibernia Press 1809)
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Quotations
Harmless poor people: Rothe described the situation in 1617 when the Viceroy ‘expelled from their ancient possessions harmless poor people ... [who] had nothing but flocks and herds, no trade but agriculture, no learning ... they will fight for their cellars and hearths, and seek a bloody death near the graves of their fathers rather than be buried in foreign earth and alien sands’ (Quoted in James Carty, Ireland from the Flight of the Earls to Grattan’s Parliament, 1949, p.39; cited in Ann Cruikshank and the Knight of Glin, Irish Portraits 1600-1860 [Catalogue] 1969, p.12.)
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References
Dictionary of National Biography gives bio-details; b. Kilkenny; ed. Douai, BD; returned to Ireland in 1609; vicar-gen. of Armagh; deputy to Peter Lombard, primate of Ireland; deanery of Kilkenny, 1641; regulated Catholic Confederation; attempted escape from Cromwell when marching on Kilkenny but recaptured and died soon after; published treatises, and left unfinish manuscript history of diocese of Ossory. SEE also Roy Foster, Modern Ireland (1988) p.46.
Muriel McCarthy, comp., Hibernia Resugens [Catalogue of Marsh’s Library Exhibition] (Dublin: Marsh’s Library 1994) (Rothomagi: apud Nicholaum le Brun 1621); copy in Stillingfleet collection of Marsh’s library; author’s presentation copy to Richard Arthur, Catholic bishop of Limerick, subsequently owned by Arthur Annesley, vice-treasurer for Ireland, 1660-67, and then Lord Privy Seal; cites Thomas Messingham on Rothe, ‘An elegant orator, a subtile philosopher, a profound divine, an eminent historian, and a sharp reprover of vice’; does not cite conflict with Rinuccini.
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