Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Rice, Edmund Ignatius
RICE, EDMUND IGNATIUS (1762–1844), founder of the Roman catholic institute known as the ‘Irish Christian Brothers,’ and the pioneer of primary education in Ireland, was born on 1 June 1762 at Westcourt, near the town of Callan, co. Kilkenny. He was the third son of Robert Rice and his wife, Margaret Tierney. His father, besides being a small farmer, carried on a miscellaneous business in Callan. Young Rice received much of his early education from an Augustinian friar, of which order his youngest brother subsequently became a member. He was soon sent to a day school in Callan, and later to Kilkenny. In his seventeenth year he was placed in business at Waterford, under his uncle, Michael Rice, a wealthy export provision merchant. The latter died about 1790, and bequeathed to Edmund his entire business, which he carried on for several years with great success.
About 1796 a charitable organisation for visiting and relieving the poor, known as the Distressed Room-keepers' Society, was established in Waterford by Rice and other merchants there. Rice visited the slums of the city in connection with this society, and was deeply impressed by the number of idle boys who neither attended school nor had any knowledge of religion. Abandoning an early notion of disposing of his business and entering an Augustinian monastery in Rome, he resolved to educate gratuitously the children of the poorer classes in Waterford. Bishop John Lanigan [q. v.] of Ossory and Bishop Thomas Hussey [q. v.] of Waterford sanctioned his scheme, and in 1802 he rented a house in New Street, Waterford, to be used as a temporary day school. Here he placed two qualified teachers in charge of the school, under his supervision. On the opening day the school was crowded.
Next year Rice retired from business, and his example was soon followed by four friends who joined him in dedicating their means and energy to the education of young catholics. They obeyed Rice as their director, and called each other brother. They lived together, and set apart special hours for school work, religious reading, recreation, and meals. They were all unmarried. Meanwhile a new schoolhouse, which was named Mount Sion, had been built at the joint expense of Rice and Bishop Hussey, and was formally opened at Waterford by Bishop Power, Hussey's successor, on 1 May 1804. In 1805 Rice and his associates were joined by a nephew of Bishop Power, who contributed to the enterprise a large sum of money. The following year two more merchants, who had recently joined Rice, opened schools under Rice's guidance in Carrick-on-Suir and Dungarvan. In August 1808 the directors—now nine in number—met at Waterford, and took from their bishop religious vows, and assumed a ‘habit’ peculiar to themselves. They each adopted an additional christian name, by which they were to address each other. Thenceforward they were known as ‘christian brothers.’
In 1811 the first school of the duly constituted order was opened in Cork, where local benefactors soon helped them to extend their operations. In 1812, at the invitation of Archbishop Daniel Murray [q. v.] of Dublin, Rice established schools in the Irish metropolis. Each school received postulants, and trained novices; and Rice soon despatched teachers and directors to all parts of the country. In 1817 schools were thus established in Thurles and Limerick. There were at this time a few of the Lancasterian schools in the latter town, but on the opening of the christian brothers' schools seven hundred pupils left them to enter the new establishment.
In 1818 the archbishop of Dublin, at the request of Rice, presented a memorial to the pope from all the brothers, praying his approbation of the new religious order. They also asked an extension of the papal brief granted to a similar community in France, founded by De la Salle, and known as the ‘brothers of the christian schools.’ On 5 Sept. 1820 Pius VII issued a brief to Rice, sanctioning the establishing of the order, under the title of ‘Religious Brothers of the Christian Schools (Ireland).’ According to the rules and constitutions of the order, all the members were to devote their lives to the gratuitous instruction, religious and literary, of male children, especially of the poor. The brothers were also to be bound by vows of obedience, chastity, poverty, and perseverance in the institute. It was ordained by the pope that the directors, or heads of each house, should elect a superior-general from their body, who alone should regulate the government of the order. Rice was unanimously elected first superior-general in 1822, at a chapter held in Waterford, and governed the institute for sixteen years. In 1825 he was requisitioned by the catholics of Preston (Lancashire) to open schools of his order there. During the next few years his schools were established not only in other large towns in Ireland, especially in Munster, but in Manchester, Soho (London), Sunderland, Liverpool, Salford, Leeds, and Bolton. After twenty-three houses had been set up by him in the United Kingdom, he in 1843 sent three brothers to Melbourne to found schools of the order in the Australian cities. The course of instruction was soon extended beyond the needs of primary education. Pupils were successfully prepared for university examinations and for the Irish intermediate education examinations.
Owing to advanced years, Rice resigned the superior-generalship of the order in 1838. He died at Mount Sion, Waterford, on 29 Aug. 1844, aged 82. He was interred in the cemetery attached to the schools, where a memorial church was erected in his honour. The Irish christian brothers have recently had ninety-seven houses in Ireland, with three hundred schools attached, and an average daily attendance of thirty thousand pupils. Within recent years they have opened establishments in Newfoundland, Gibraltar, Calcutta, and Allahabad. The brothers also conduct six male industrial schools in Ireland, a deaf mutes' and a blind institution, and orphanages for the poor and middle classes.
[Private information.]