Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lombard, Peter
LOMBARD, PETER, D.D.(d. 1625), Irish Roman catholic prelate, son of a merchant at Waterford, studied for some time under Camden at Westminster (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 341). Proceeding to the university of Louvain, he there graduated in 1575, going out as first in the school of arts, and on 30 Aug. 1594 he was created D.D. (Andreas, Fasti Academici Lovanienses, ed. 1650, p. 130). He obtained a canonry in the collegiate church, 'Sidenensis,' in the diocese of Tournai, and was also appointed provost of the cathedral of Cambrai. On 9 July 1601 the pope appointed him archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland in succession to Edmund MacGaura. The pall was granted to him on 14 Dec. 1601, and he was allowed to retain possession of his ecclesiastical preferments in Belgium (Brady, Episcopal Succession, i. 224). In 1614 he was personally noticed by James I, in a speech from the throne, as a disturber of the government (Anthologia Hibernica, i. 33). He was residing at Rome in 1623, and died there in 1625.
He bequeathed 'his laborious writings and all his literary traivells' to Nicholas Laffan of Ossory (Brady, ii. 360).
His published works are: 1. 'Casus circa decretum Clementis Papæ VIII de Sacramentali confessione et absolutione non facienda in absentia,' Antwerp, 1624, 12mo. It is printed as an opinion in the Jesuit father Giles Coninck's 'Responsio ad dissertationem impugnantem Absolutionem Moribund sensibus destituti.' 2. 'De Regno Hibernise, Sanctorum Insulâ, Commentarius; in quo preter ejusdem Insulæ Situm, nominis originem … Pii Conatus et Res a Principe O-Neillo ad fidem Catholicam propagandam feliciter gestæ continentur,' Louvain, 1632, 4to. On 20 Nov. 1633, after Lombard's death, Secretary Windebank wrote to the Lord-deputy Strafford that the king had ordered the deputy to suppress this book, and to call the author to account for it.
[Ware's Writers of Ireland (Harris), p. 103; Brenan's Eccl. Hist. of Ireland, p. 490; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. (Bohn), p. 1385; Anthologia Hibernica, i. 119; Moran's Spicilegium Ossoriensis, i. 126, 137.]