Biographia Hibernica/Richard Archdekin

by Richard Ryan

RICHARD ARCHDEKIN,

As eminent Jesuit, was a native of the county of Kilkenny, and became a member of that society at Mechlin, in Brabant, in 1642, at the age of twenty-three. He taught divinity and philosophy successively at Louvain and Antwerp, and, at the latter place, became rector of the students of the highest class in 1676, and afterwards professor of divinity. He died there about 1690. Peter Talbot gives him the character of "a good father, but an incautious writer;" and the Abbé de la Berthier, in his parallel of the Doctrines of the Pagans and Jesuits, quarrels with a proposition advanced by him in his under-named Theologia Tripartita, viz. "That absolution is not to be deferred to 'habitual sinners,' till they are actually reformed;" to which he opposes that saying of Horace, Epist. ii. Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem testa diu; and of Catullus, Epigr. lxxvii. Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem. And from thence humorously makes these two, and other pagan authors, anti-jesuits. He wrote, "Of Miracles, and the new Miracles done by the Relieks of St. Francis Xaviers, in the Jesuits' College, at Mechlin." Louvanii, 1667, 8vo. This piece is in English and Irish.

"Præcipuæ Controversiæ Fidei ad facilem Methodum redactæ; ac Resolutiones Theologicæ ad omnia Sacerdotis munia, præsertim in Missionibus, accommodatæ, cum apparatu ad Doctrinam sacram. Cui accessit summa Doctrinæ Christianæ selectis Exemplis elucidata." The first title is, "Theologia, Polemica, Practicæ, Sacra." Louvanii, 1671, 8vo.

"Vitæ et Miraculorum S. Patricii, Hiberniæ Apostoli, Epitome, cum brevi Notitiâ Hiberniæ." Louvanii, 1671, 8vo. printed with the former; which he afterwards revised and enlarged, and published under the title of "Theologia Tripartita Universa, sive Resolutiones Polemicæ, Practicæ, Controversiarum et Questionum etiam recentissimarum, quæ in Scholâ et in Praxi per omnia usum præcipuum habent; Missionariis, et aliis Animarum Curatoribus, et Theologiæ Studiasis, solerter accommodatæ Editio quinta." Antwerpiæ, 1682, 3 vols. 8vo. If we may judge by the number of editions, this book carried a vast reputation abroad. I have seen the eleventh edition of it printed, Venice 1700, 4to. after the author's death, and, for what I know, there may be others since. At the time the eight edition was undertaken, there were sixteen thousand of them disposed of, and a great demand for more.

He also wrote and published, "The Lives of Peter Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, and of Oliver Plunket, Primate of Ireland," which are printed in the eleventh edidion of his "Theologia Tripartita."

Sotvellus tells us, that he had a book ready for the press, entitled, "Theologia Apostolica."