BURKE
80
BURKE
who prepared him for admission into the order.
A dispensation was obtained from the Sacred Con-
gregation, and on 14 June, 1724, he was clothed with
the Dominican habit before he had attained his
fifteenth year. Young Burke showed special apti-
tude for study and with the permission of the master
general was allowed to begin his course during his
novitiate. Two years were given to philosophy and
five to theology. So marked was his progress in
studies and letters that lie was singled out, even
though yet a novice, by special marks of affection
from Benedict XIII. During the reconstruction of
St. Sixtus' in 1727 and 172S, the pontiff visited the
Irish Dominicans once a week, taking part in their
community exercises, becoming familiar with the
friars and especially with Burke. He was gradually
promoted to the highest theological honours of the
order, being charged successively with all the official
duties in a regular Dominican studium. He held the
office of regent of studies for six years. In 1742 the
Master General, Thomas Hipoll. personally conferred
on him the degree of Master of Theology. The fol-
lowing year he returned to Dublin where he took up
the work of the ministry. A general chapter of the
order held at Bologna in 174S passed an ordinance
that in all the immediately following provincial chap-
ters a historiographer should be appointed in every
province. This order did not reach Ireland from
Rome in time for the provincial chapter which was
convened the following year at Dublin, and to which
assembly Father Burke had been elected by his
brethren as Definitor. At the subsequent chapter,
however, of 1753 he was appointed historian of his
province. The same honour of Definitor was con-
ferred again in 1757.
Father Burke while in Rome was commissioned by the Irish clergy, through Bishop MacDonough of Kilmore, to obtain from the Holy See ten new offices of Irish saints. After his return to Ireland, he was entrusted with a similar commission by the Arch- bishop of Dublin, the Most Rev. John Linegar, and the Bishops of Ireland for fourteen other feasts of the Irish saints. The decrees were given respectively 8 July, 1741 and 1 July, 1747. Both original docu- ments are preserved in the archives of St. Clement's, Rome. Father Burke was promoted by Clement XIII in 1759, to the See of Ossory which he governed for seventeen years. His talents, learning, culture, and piety fitted him for the pastoral office, united with his noble and fearless character. An accurate portrait of Bishop Burke is possessed by the Domini- can nuns of Drogheda, Ireland. He is known to pos- terity more on account of his learned work "Hibernia Dominicana", than by any other claim. The work was nominally published at Cologne, but in reality it came from the press of Edmund Finn of Kilkenny, in 1762. The author gave to it four years of incessant labour, and in 1772 he added a "Supplementum" which was a vindication of Rinuccini, the nuncio of Tope Innocent X, of the charges brought against him by the supreme council of Confederate Catholics during his residence in Ireland. Question of the oath of allegiance and fear of subverting " that fidelity and submission which we acknowledge ourselves to owe from duty and from gratitude to his Majesty King George III" caused seven of the Irish Bishops to con- demn the "Hibernia Dominicana" and "Supplemen- tum". (For defense of Bishop Burke see Coleman, Ir. Eccl. Record.) " Promptuarium dogmatico ca- nonico morale", a work of the celebrated Spanish Dominican Larrago, enlarged and accommodated to its day by Father Burke, was about to be pub- lished in 1753 when his appointment as historian interrupted it.
Bprke, Hibernia Dominicana (Cologne. 17621. I; Webb, A Compendium of Irish Hiooraphy (Dublin. 1S7S); Anthro- pologut Hibrrnica. February I (4 vols.. 1793-94); Coleman, Thomat de Burao in Ir, Eccl. Record, 1892; Mohan, Spiciltgium
Thomas N. Burke, O
Ossoriensr. (Dublin. 1884), pives the MSS. collected by Bishop
Burke for a second edition of the Hibernia Dominicana.
John T. McNicholas. Burke, Thomas Nicholas, a celebrated Domini- can orator, b. 8 September, 1830, in Galway; d. 2 July, 1882, at Tallaght, Ireland. His parents, though in moderate circumstances, gave him a good education. He was placed at first under the care of the Patrician Brothers, and was afterwards sent to a pri- vate school. An at tack of typhoid fever when he was fourteen years old, and the harrowing scenes of the famine year (1847), had a sobering effect on the quick-witted and studious lad, and turned his thoughts into more serious channels. To- ward the end of that year he asked to be re- ceived into the Order of Preach- ers, and was sent t o Perugia i n
Italy, to make his novitiate. On 29 December, he was clothed there in the habit of St. Dominic and received the name of Thomas. Shortly afterward he was sent to Rome to begin his studies in the Convent of the Minerva. He passed thence to the Roman con- vent of Santa Sabina, where he won such esteem by his fervour, regularity, and cheerfulness, that his su- periors sent him, while yet a student, as novice-master to Woodchester, the novitiate of the resuscitated English Province. He was ordained priest 26 March, 1853, and on 3 August, 1854, defended publicly the theses in universd theologid, and took his Dominican degree of Lector. Early in the following year Father Burke was recalled to Ireland to found the novitiate of the Irish Province at Tallaght, near Dublin. In 1859 he preached his first notable sermon on "Church Music " ; it immediately lifted him into fame. Elected Prior of Tallaght in 1863, he went to Rome the following year as Rector of the Dominican Con- vent of San Clemente, and attracted great attention in the Eternal City by his preaching. He returned to Ireland in 1867, and delivered his oration on O'Connell at Glasnevin before fifty thousand people. Bishop Leahy took him as his theologian to the Vatican Council in 1S70, and the following year he was sent as Visitor to the Dominican convents in America. His fame had preceded him. and he was besieged with invitations to preach and lecture. The seats were filled hours before he appeared, and his audiences overflowed the churches and halls in which he lectured. In New York he delivered the discourses in refutation of the English historian Froude. In eighteen months he gave four hundred lectures, exclusive of sermons, the proceeds amount- ing to nearly S400.000. His mission was a triumph, but the triumph was dearly won. and when he arrived in Ireland on 7 March, 1873, he was spent and broken. Yet during the next ten years we find him preaching continually in Ireland. England, and Scotland. He began the election of the church
in Tallaght m 1882, ami the following May preached
a series of sermons in the new Dominican church, London. In June he returned to Tallaght in a dying condition, and preached his last sermon in
