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Born: 1575, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Entered: 13 October 1596, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: c 1601, Salamanca, Spain
Final Vows: 06 January 1613, Dilingen, Germany
Died: 23 April 1647, Galway Residence, Galway City, County Galway

Younger Brother of Thomas - RIP 1622; Uncle of Peter White - RIP 1678; Thomas White - Ent 30/09/1612, LEFT 12/11/1618; Cousin of William White - RIP 1625

His name appears on a list of 8 who got a BA from Salamanca University in 1595 and then entered
1597 At Villagarcía College Age 22 Soc 6. Already a BA and studying Theology
1600 At Salamanca studying Theology Age 25 Soc 3
1603 Age 29 Soc 7. Professor of Arts at Salamanca University
1605 Came from CAST to GER SUP
1606-1609 At Ingolstadt lecturing in Theology. Age 32 Soc 10 and a Doctor of Divinity. Confessor and “Oreses Religiosorum in Convictu”
1610-1323 At Dilingen teaching Sacred Scripture “vires mediocres”
1612 Professor of Scholastic Theology at Dillingen and Pres of Casus. Confessor
1623-1627 Went to Pont-á-Mousson (CAMP) - Confessor and Spiritual Father to Germans
1628-1630 At Metz Confessor, Spiritual Father and Prefect of Cases
1630 Came to Irish Mission
Usher praised White in his Collectanea 1621 Tom V & VI)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica”:
c1617 he was in Bavaria
1634 Distinguished Professor of Theology (IER)
The Protestant Archbishop Ussher in “Primordia” p 400 calls him a man of exquisite knowledge in the antiquities, not only of Ireland, but also of other nations.
Robert Nugent, Superior of Irish Mission in a letter from Kilkenny 10 January 1646 to Charles Sangri, speaks of his works which he had sent to censors for examination.
Professor of Theology at Dillingen, Ingolstadt and Pont-à-Mousson etc.; Writer; Antiquarian;
Called a “Polyhistor” by Raderus, Colgan and others on account of his extraordinary learning.
(cf Oliver Stonyhurts MSS; Dean Reeves “Memoir of Stephen White”; de Backer “Biblioth. des Écrivains SJ”; De Buck “Archéologie Irlandaise”)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Had already graduated with a BA in Arts and in Theology abroad before Ent 13 October 1596 Villagarcía
1598-1601 After First Vows he was sent to Royal College Salamanca for studies and was Ordained there c 1601
1601-1605 Taught Philosophy at Irish College Salamanca
1605-1609 To the disappointment of his Spanish Superiors he was withdrawn by the General from CAST and appointed to a Chair of Theology at the College of Ingolstadt in the Upper German Province (GER SUP). At the end of two years here he was reported to the General as having departed from the ratio studiorum in his teaching. His lectures were represented to the General as “partly temerarious, partly dangerous and in great part to be retracted”,
1609 In September 1609 General ordered that Stephen be dismissed from his post and sent back to Ireland. But his health was never robust and his physician decided against the return journey to the Irish Mission. Later the General was to learn that White had not been so unorthodox, he had merely been expounding the opinions of Vasquez and was not the only Jesuit who approved of that scholar's teaching.
1610-1622 He was sent to the College of Dilingen, and he was not reinstated as a professor of Theology for the next two years. But this temporary disgrace incurred at Ingolstadt proved to be providential. The two years of freedom from the lecture-hall were not spent idly by Stephen. From this time dates his interest in the rich manuscript materials for Irish history and hagiography buried away in German monastic libraries. By Autumn, 1612, he had composed a work on the lives of Irish Saints but the General ordered that the book be submitted to rigid censorship in case it might cause offence to people of other countries. That same Autumn, he resumed his theology lectures in Dilingen, and was congratulated by the General who warned him, however, not to deflect from the 'sententia ordinaria". During these years he was professor, for a time, of Sacred Scripture. He remained in Dilingen as professor of dogmatic theology until 1622
1622-1627 Ever since 1620 White was anxious to leave the Upper German province and in 1622 was allowed to pass to CAMP where he was assigned to the University of Pont-à-Mousson. Although he had been advised in advance that he could not expect a Chair in that University, he taught Theology in fact there over the next three years, although his status might be better described, perhaps, as coach and not professor. But the five years, 1622/27, spent by him at Pont-à-Mousson were mostly taken up with historical research. For within a year of his arrival, 1623, he had ready for the press his celebrated “Apologia pro Hibernia”. But the General stopped the printing of this work at Antwerp.
1627-1630 He was transferred to Metz but held no teaching post there.
1630-1644 The General in response to requests from the Irish Mission allowed White to return to Ireland. Very little is known with certainty about his career on the Irish Mission. There is no mention of his name again in the sources until 1637 when the CATS simply recapitulated his past career but gave no hint of his address or occupation that year. It also said that his was in poor health. That Winter he wrote to the General asking that the Will which he had made at Dilingen before his final profession should be implemented to the benefit of the Irish Mission. His well-known letter to John Colgan O.F.M., 31 January 1640, implies that he had been engaged in research work ever since his return to Ireland and that he had spent the previous decade for the most part at Dublin where he had access to the library or Archbishop James Ussher.
1640 His later years, after the Puritan occupation of Dublin were spent in Galway. Correspondence of 1644 and 1646 indicates that he had a work approved for publication. He died sometime in or after 1646. Stephen White was one of the most remarkable Irish scholars of his time. His ability as philosopher and theologian was widely acknowledged in Spain, Germany and France. But his enduring fame rests upon his pioneering work in unearthing the manuscript treasures that preserved so much of the story of Ireland's past. He transcribed manuscripts for the Bollandists, for John Colgan, for James Ussher. Both the latter acknowledged their indebtedness to him. His magnum opus, the “Apologia pro Hibernia”, did not see the light until two centuries after his death but Lynch had a precis of the work before him when he was writing his “Cambrensis Eversus”.
White was the first Irish writer to voice the national tradition which rejected as spurious the grant of Ireland by Pope Adrian IV to Henry II of England. Though his troubles at Ingolstadt gave him the heaven-sent opportunity of turning to historical research, it is to be noted that his contemporary Irish fellow- Jesuits seem to have had no appreciation whatever of his contributions to Irish historical scholarship. Indeed there is plenty of evidence to hand that he was plagued by members of the Irish Mission with invitations to return during his years at Ingolstadt, Dilingen and Pont-à-Mousson. When he returned to Ireland in 1630 he had very probably little facility in speaking either Irish or English after his forty years abroad. The mission itself was unable to furnish him with the library facilities needed for his research work. Yet taking into account all the successes, misunderstandings and disappointments that mark his career, he will always be regarded as the most eminent Irish Jesuit produced in the Old Society. He died at Galway 23 April 1647.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
White, Stephen
by Terry Clavin

White, Stephen (1574?–1646/7), Jesuit priest, academic, and antiquary, was born in Clonmel, the son of Pierce White. His was a remarkable family, two of his brothers also being priests: James was vicar apostolic of Waterford and Lismore and Thomas White (qv), a Jesuit, was the founder of the first Irish college on the continent. Another brother was deposed as mayor of Clonmel in 1606 for refusing to take the oath of supremacy. He was probably educated in the catholic school at Clonmel before travelling to study at the Irish college at Salamanca founded by his brother about 1590. After graduating BA, he entered the Society of Jesus on 13 October 1596 at Villagarcia. He remained at Salamanca, continuing his studies in theology, and obtained a doctorate of divinity about 1605.

In 1602 he taught a one-year course in humanities at Salamanca, marking the start of a distinguished academic career, and followed this up with a three-year course in mental philosophy. Such was his reputation that he was appointed to the chair of scholastic theology in the University of Ingoldstadt, one of the most distinguished universities in Germany, inaugurating his lectureship on 7 January 1606. In 1609 he went to lecture in the University of Dilingen on the Danube, being first professor of scholastic theology, and librarian of the university, and by 1612 confessor of the religious orders. He remained there for fourteen years, becoming one of the most accomplished theologians in Germany. After departing Dilingen he retired from academic life, being confessor to the Germans at Pont-à-Mousson, Champagne (1623–7), and spiritual father at the college of Metz (1627–9).

After 1611 two factors led him towards the study of Irish history. First, there had been little contact between Ireland and continental Europe since the early middle ages; the little that was known about Ireland tended to be from invariably hostile English sources. Second, Scottish antiquarians, capitalising on the fact that prior to the late middle ages the inhabitants of Ireland had been called Scots, claimed the Irish scholars and missionaries, who were a ubiquitous presence across the continent in the early medieval period, as their own. This opportunistic attempt to deprive Ireland of its saints and scholars, and of its best case for being a civilised Christian nation, did not go unchallenged, not least from White. He was aided in his scholarly labours by his academic contacts. Dilingen received students from abbeys and monasteries all over Germany and beyond, facilitating his access to vast reservoirs of ancient manuscripts relating to Ireland.

White wrote his Apologia pro Hibernia adversus Cambri calumnias between 1611 and 1613, declaring ‘The sole purpose of my writing is to defend the injured reputation of the old Irish whom I, and my fathers, for four hundred years have shared a common fatherland.’ He refuted the allegations of the twelfth-century Welsh author Gerald (qv) of Wales whose Expugnatio Hibernica justified the Norman conquest of Ireland through portraying the natives as barbaric and semi-pagan. The Apologia demolished such allegations but was marred slightly by his highly personalised attacks on Gerald. Although White was of Norman ancestry, he identified with the Gaelic Irish. During his career he wrote many works glorifying Ireland's past and refuting the Scots’ claims. He also transcribed a number of manuscripts on the lives of early Irish saints. However, none of his works was published during his lifetime, partly because of a lack of funds but also because of the politically sensitive nature of the material. A generous scholar, he freely shared his writings and discoveries with his contemporaries; others prospered from his unselfish spadework while he remained in comparative obscurity. His knowledge was such that he was accorded the title of ‘polyhistor’, or walking library.

The Irish Jesuits had frequently requested his transfer to Ireland, and in late 1628 he returned to his homeland, after an absence of thirty-eight years, to teach in a Jesuit college just established in Dublin. However, in January 1629 it was suppressed by the government. He returned to his native diocese of Waterford and Lismore, where the teacher who had lectured in some of Europe's most renowned academic institutions spent his autumn years teaching street children. During the late 1630s he was based in Dublin, and at this time embarked on his most celebrated and remarkable antiquarian collaboration. He several times met James Ussher (qv), Church of Ireland primate of Ireland and one of the most brilliant scholars of his age, who shared White's passion for Irish history. Ussher showed him his library and praised his learning. In return White gave Ussher his manuscripts on the lives of the early Irish saints.

After the start of the 1641 rebellion he fled Dublin to settle in Galway city. By then he was too infirm to carry out any more work or to become involved in the turbulent events of the 1640s. While in Galway he met John Lynch (qv), whose Cambrensis eversus was based on White's Apologia. His most likely date of death is shortly after January 1646 but some accounts have him alive in April 1647.

Burgundian Library, Brussels, xxi, nos. 7658–61; The whole works of Sir James Ware concerning Ireland, ed. and trans. W. Harris (1745–6), ii, 103; John Lynch, Cambrensis eversus, ed. Matthew Kelly (Dublin Celtic Society, 1848–52), ii, 394; Stephen White, Apologia pro Hibernia adversus Cambri calumnias, ed. Matthew Kelly (1849); William Reeves, ‘Memoir of Stephen White’, RIA Proc., xiii (1861); DNB; Edmund Hogan, ‘Worthies of Waterford and Tipperary’, Waterford ASJ, iii (1897), 119–34; William Burke, History of Clonmel (1983), 457–64

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Stephen White 1576-1646
In the estimation of historians and antiquarians, both Catholic and Protestant, Irish and continental, Fr Stephen White was a scholar of the first order. He was a nan of encyclopaedic knowledge, with a bent for antiquities. His contribution to the Annals of the Four Masters and their invaluable help in their compilation is attested warmly and generously by Michael Colgan, the greatest of them.

Born in Clonmel of a family which gave many illustrious sons to the Jesuits, he joined the Society at Villagarcia in 1596, and having pursued a brilliant course in the various continental colleges, professed Philosophy and Theology for many years in Germany and France.

A long wished for project in education, an Irish University, was started in Back Lane Dublin in 1629. Fr Stephen was sent home to profess in it. Its life span was short. For the next ten years Fr White spent most of his time teaching young boys in Waterford.

On the outbreak of the Confederate War he went to Galway, where he died an old man of 72 in 1646.

His works include : “Apologia pro Hibernia’, “Geste Dei”, “De Sanctis et Antiquitate Hiberniae” together with numerous philosophical and theological tracts. A great deal of these works are lost, indeed were never published through fear of exacerbating the English authorities.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
WHITE, STEPHEN. This Irish Father deserves a fuller eulogium than I am able to supply. He was the author of some historical pieces relating to Ireland, in confutation of the assertions of Giraldus Cambrensis. The Rev. John Lynch, who had the custody of this valuable MS mentions it in Chapter I and XIV of his “Cambrensis Evcrsus”, printed in 1662, and expresses his deep regret that a considerable part of it was lost during the Civil Wars. Archbishop Usher, an excellent judge of these matters, in p. 400 of his Primordia, gives F. White the character of being “a man of exquisite knowledge in the Antiquities, not only of Ireland, but also of other nations”. In a letter of F. Robert Nugent, Superior of his brethren in Ireland, and addressed from Kilkenny, the 10th of January, 1646, to F. Charles Sangri, I read what follows.
“I have given the commission to four of our Fathers diligently to examine the works of F. Stephen White, and to forward their judgment to your paternity, conformably to the directions you have recently sent us. His works are various, and as our Fathers live in places very distant from each other, and notwithstanding the most Reverend Bishops, (who are ready to defray the expenses of the printing), as also the supreme Council very earnestly insist, that a certain work of his, “De sanctis et Antiqititate Ibcrniae” be instantly sent to the Press, I find it difficult and next to impossible to resist their reasonable demand, since the Manuscript itself has been perused by several them, and has been pronounced not only worthy of being printed, but highly necessary for the credit and advantage of this Kingdom. Therefore I have written again to the Examiners, that each would privately report their opinion on this work as soon as possible to your Paternity; though all in their letters to me greatly extol it, and declare it most worthy to issue from the Press. But 1 am unwilling to allow any work to be printed that can give just cause of offence to any person : and yet there is less cause of apprehension in this case, as this book merely treats on the Saints and Antiquity of the Kingdom of Ireland”.

Born: 1556, Clonmel, County Tipperary
Entered: 11 June 1593, Villagarcía, Galicia, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)
Ordained: pre Entry Valladolid, Spain
Died: 07 May 1622, Irish College, Santiago de Compostela, Spain - Castellanae Province (CAST)

Older Brother of Stephen - RIP 1647; Uncle of Peter White - RIP 1678; and Thomas White - Ent 30/09/1612, LEFT 12/11/1618; Cousin of William White - RIP 1625

Brother was Mayor of Clonmel
Before he entered he was Rector of Irish Seminary (Salamanca??). Salamanca SAT 1592 “Este Padre es Irlandes y està fuera “T or Y”)??) no se sabe lo particular del” C 08/09/1601
Studied 3 years Casus.
1606 Age 50 Soc 12 - was 9 years Rector of Irish Seminary Salamanca. Helps in Irish, English and Scotch business
1617 Ib CAST Age 60 Soc 24
His portrait is at Irish College Salamanca
In Irish Ecclesiastical Record 1922 pp578-597 there is an article on Fr Thomas White and the Irish College Salamanca. It appears to contain some first hand information and would be read to advantage by anyone wishing to give a life of him (JPR)

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronolgica” :
First Rector Irish College Lisbon 1593
With William White and Richard Conway he took possession of Santiago, Compostella (cf IER September 1874)
Mentioned honourably in a letter of Henry Fitzsimon 26 October 1611 (Irish Ecclesiastical Record March 1873)
Founder of Irish College Salamanca 1592, which was the first, or one of the first establishments the Irish Catholics obtained on the Continent after the Reformation
Juvencius (“Hist SJ” xiii p215) says he was an elderly secular priest at the time, and that he entered the Society, after putting the College (Salamanca) under the charge of our Fathers, under whose charge it remained until 1762 (expulsion of Jesuits from Spain). He was a man of great piety and zeal, and a great pillar of the Irish Church.
(cf his life by William McDonald DD in IER 1873)

Note from Bl Dominic Collins Entry
About a year after he arrived in Spain, he met Fr Thomas White, Rector of Salamanca, and by his advice entered the Society. Two of his fellow novices were Richard Walsh and John Lee

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Priestly education seems to have been provided mostly by an unknown Bishop uncle at Santiago and otherwise at Valladolid (according to Luis de Valdivia who wrote his obituary).
What seems certain is that members of White's family had settled in or near Santiago, e.g. Baiona. The year of Thomas's ordination cannot be determined but if we can trust all the details in the obituary notice it was the Bishop uncle who Ordained him. It was at Valladolid that White first conceived the idea of organising a regime of life for wandering Irish scholars who wished to study for the priesthood. But it was at Salamanca 22 August 1592 that his work was placed on a permanent basis by the generous foundation effected by the King of Spain. All this before Ent 11 June 1593 Villagarcía.

After First Vows the whole of his life as a Jesuit was to be devoted to the education of Priests for Ireland.
1596-1603 First Rector Irish College Salamanca
1604 He visited the General at Rome to discuss the future of Salamanca and ways and means of promoting the Jesuit mission in Ireland. It seems he also visited Ireland that year but his stay cannot have been for more than a few weeks
1606-1608 Rector Irish College Lisbon
1612 Acting Superior at Santiago
1619 Acting Superior at Santiago until his death there 07 May 1622

The foregoing summary of his periods of offices seems almost to indicate periods of enforced leisure after his extensive journeyings in quest of alms for the support of his students or for that matter of any needy Irish student who wished to pursue his Priestly studies. His success as an organiser was known to Dr. Christopher Cusack who repeatedly asked the General to send White to help him with his own work for Irish seminarians in Belgium.

◆ Royal Irish Academy : Dictionary of Irish Biography, Cambridge University Press online :
White, Thomas
by Terry Clavin

White, Thomas (1556–1622), Jesuit and founder of Irish colleges in Europe, was the son of Pierce White of Clonmel and was born into one of the most staunchly catholic families in Ireland. A younger brother Stephen (qv) was a celebrated Jesuit antiquarian. His uncle Peter ran a famous catholic school in Waterford, where Thomas White was probably first taught. By 1582 he was studying theology in Valladolid and in 1593 he became a Jesuit. The city had a small community of Irish scholars at the time, most of whom were in great want. White took them into his house, providing for them out of his own resources. In the summer of 1592 he brought the students before King Phillip II at the royal villa of St Laurence; the king granted them some money. However, White sought another audience with the king, petitioning that he endow the Irish with a college. On 2 August 1592 the first Irish college on the continent was established at Salamanca, with White as its vice-rector and spiritual director.

Thereafter White dedicated himself to organising and furthering Irish academic life in Spanish territory, being also greatly pre-occupied with the Irish colleges founded in Lisbon, Santiago and Seville, acting as rector for the latter two. His stewardship of the college in Salamanca provoked controversy in May 1602 when ‘Red’ Hugh O’Donnell (qv) and Florence Conroy (qv) petitioned on behalf of the provinces of Ulster and Connaught against him. The northerners won out and in 1605 a Spanish superior was appointed. But the new system was not a success and in 1613 White was reinstated as head of the college. Although he never returned to Ireland, he received a steady stream of reports from missionaries there, many of whom were educated in his colleges, who constantly drew attention to the persecution of Irish catholics. He died 28 May 1622 at Santiago.

John Coppinger, Mnemosynion to the catholics of Ireland (1608); Edmund Hogan, Distinguished Irishmen of the 17th century (1894), 48–70; Patrick Power, Waterford and Lismore (1937), 25; T. Corcoran, ‘Early Irish Jesuit educators’, Studies, xxix (1940), 545–60; William Burke, History of Clonmel (1983 ed.), 464–9

Note from Paul Sherlock (Sherlog) Entry
Like many of his contemporaries, he left Ireland for Spain, aged 16, to study at the Jesuit-run Irish College at Salamanca. He landed in Bilbao in May 1612 and reached Salamanca at the beginning of July. Together with Thomas Vitus (Wyse), a fellow-student from Waterford, he was admitted to the Society of Jesus at Salamanca on 30 September 1612

Note from Bl Dominic Collins Entry
He moved to Spain, where he met an Irish Jesuit, Fr Thomas White (qv), at Corunna and, experiencing a change of heart of truly Ignatian proportions, he applied to enter the Society of Jesus. Due to his age and previous career, he was initially refused but was finally accepted as a brother-novice at the Jesuit College at Santiago de Compostela in late 1598

◆ James B Stephenson SJ The Irish Jesuits Vol 1I 1962
EARLY IRISH JESUIT EDUCATORS
Thomas White of Clonmel (1556-1622)

The outstanding figure in the constructive work for Irish Education, done by Irish Jesuits within the century 1540-1640 either within Ireland or abroad, was that of Father Thomas White of Clonmel. The two historians of his birthplace and of his diocese, Canon William Burke (History of Clonmel, 1907, pages 457-469) and Canon Patrick Power (Waterford and Lismore, 1937, page 24), following up the researches of Dr Edmond Hogan SJ, agree in giving the year of Thomas White's birth as 1556, the year of the death of St. Ignatius of Loyola. They also concur in stating that Thomas White and the more celebrated Father Stephen White SJ, (born 1574) were brothers, sons of Pierce White and brothers of James White, Vicar-Apostolic of Waterford; another brother, chief magistrate of Clonmel, was deposed from that civil office in 1606 as being a recusant Catholic. Near relatives, Patrick and Nicholas White, were heavily fined in Castle Chamber, at Dublin Castle, for refusal to attend Anglican services. In the entry lists (1601 1619) of the Irish College, Salamanca, more than one White is set down as a Waterford diocese student, coming from the school of Master John Flahy, who sent some fourteen students to the University of Salamanca in those years. In 1608 John Coppinger (Mnemosynion to the Catholics of Ireland) tells of how Father Thomas White, a Jesuit since 1593, devoted himself to the most practical academic service of organising Irish student life at Valladolid, Salamanca, Lisbon, Seville, and St. James of Compostella.
Was it not great charitie of Father Thomas White, naturall of Clonmel, seeing so many poor scholars of his nation in great miserie at Valladolid, having no means to continue their studie nor language to begge, having given over his private commoditie, did remcollect and reduce them to one place, which he maintained by his industrie and begging ?

Thomas White, as Canon Burke notes, was at Valladolid by 1582. Having in the summer of 1592 presented his assembled students to King Philip II at his Royal Villa of St. Laurence beside the city, he got from the King a large initial sum for housing, an annual grant for maintenance, and this Royal letter :

To the Rector, the Masters, and the Members of the University of Salamanca.

The young Irishmen who have been forming a kind of community in the city of Valladolid have decided to go to your city, in order to avail of the advantages there placed at their service for progress in Letters and Languages. A house has been prepared for them, in which they purpose to live under the direction of the Jesuit Fathers.

Besides providing for them a substantial annual grant, I desire them to deliver to you this letter, to charge you, as I now hereby do, to regard them as highly recommended to you. Favour and assist them to the utmost of your power. They have left their own country and all dear to them there for the service of God our Lord and for the preservation of the Catholic Faith; they declare their determination to return there to preach it and, if need be, to suffer martyrdom for it. They are to have in your University the good reception that they promise themselves. I am certain that you will see to this being done. With your aid and with what I feel sure of from the City of Salamanca (to which also I now write), these young Irishmen will be enabled to pursue their studies in content and freedom, and so will give full effect to their purpose.

Given at Valladolid, this second day of August 1592
Yo el Rey
Hieronimo de Cassell
A Secretis

Over the following thirty years (1592-1622) Thomas White laboured indefatigably at this great Catholic and national service. He was thus the initiator of the Irish Colleges in Spain, rapidly succeeded by those of France, Italy, Flanders, Bohemia. Always associated with the great Catholic Universities, they secured for our students, that fine university training, general and professional, which easily enabled them to outrank over all Europe, as at Paris, Louvain, Salamanca, Prague, the work essayed at the decadent Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and other heretical centres. The prestige thus everywhere achieved for Catholic Irish students, both in academic training and office, as well as through published works, on the lines initiated and on the foundations well laid by Thomas White or Clonmel and his Irish collaborators in Spain, was expanded and enhanced down to the destructive years of the French Revolution. Fr White's death at Santiago, on 28 May 1622, was thus most fittingly recorded by a Spanish pen “

This day, Sunday, at seven in the morning, Our Lord called to the reward of his labours and merits Father Thomas White. He died of fever, at the age of sixty-four and in the thirty-fourth year of his religious life. During that period he had worked with apostolic spirit in the service of God and of the Catholic faith, which, through the means of the Colleges which he had founded in Spain, has been preserved in Ireland. His life and virtues, so well known in the Society of Jesus, cannot receive full justice in this brief letter, His thoughts and desires were all for the glory of God and for the progress of the Colleges for which he toiled unceasingly. On the road and in the duties of an external character on which he was almost constantly engaged, Father White was a singularly recollected man, assiduous in prayer and meditation. Always resigned to the will of God, he never asked Him for anything (so he said shortly before his death) which was not accorded to him. God always blessed his petitions by moving the minds of Chapters, Prelates, and Princes with whom he was brought into contact to aid his work by their alms and gifts; they knew him well for a man of great zeal and rare virtue. He practised great mortification, and even in advanced years kept in use every day the hair shirt and discipline.

He was most simple both in dress and in manner; his usual food every day was a little bread and cheese, which he ate while journeying along the roads. To the lay fold whom he met he gave great edification; to his students he was a living model of piety. Through his efforts many religious institutes were filled with excellent members, and his native country received many holy priests and bishops, who acknowledge that under God they owe everything to Thomas White.

In his last illness he gave great evidence of the holiness of his life; and though death came unexpectedly while he was still organising this College of Santiago, he made very perfect acts of
conformity to God's will, bewailing his not having served Him more fervently. In the fifteen days of his illness he received Holy Communion three times and had Extreme Unction in good time. As we closed the commendation of his soul to God, he peacefully breathed his. last; his countenance retained all the appearance of life, All this gives us a special pledge of heaven; but we are greatly grieved for the loss to the Colleges of this Father, the Protector of his country. His death has caused a profound sensation in this City, where it is deeply lamented.

Father White's opening period of work for the new Irish College at Salamanca extended almost continuously from 1594 to 1605; it was often varied by his apostolic questings, described in this letter of Father de Castro SJ, composed and despatched from Santiago de Compostella on the very day of his holy and happy death. He was again Rector at Salamanca from 1617, and was constantly concerned with the sister Irish foundations : Lisbon stabilised by 1593, Santiago founded in 1612, Séville founded 1619. Midway in those three decades of unremitting toil, King Philip III had given its full formal rank as a foundation of the Spanish Crown to the “Royal College of Irish Nobles” (El Real Colegio de Nobles Irlandeses), the title borne to this day by this ancient and most fruitful foundation for our race and faith.

Timothy Corcoran SJ

◆ James B Stephenson SJ Menologies 1973
Father Thomas White 1558-1622
Fr Thomas White was born in 1558 of a family in Clonmel which gave many priests to the Church. His brother James was Vicar-Apostolic of Waterford, and another brother was the famous Fr Stephen White SJ. Thomas entered the Society when already a priest at 30 years of age.

His name should ever be held in benediction, for it was he who first started the idea of founding Colleges for the Irish on the Continent. In this way, he was instrumental in founding Valladolid, Salamanca, Lisbon, Seville and Santiago. It was he too who petitioned the General to establish the office of Procurator General for the Irish Mission, which post Fr James Archer was first to fill.

Fr Thomas died on Sunday May 28th 1622, 64 years of age after 34 spent as a Jesuit. In his obituary by Fr de Castro we read : “we are left overwhelmed with grief for what all the Colleges have lost in this Father and Protector of his country, and his death has created a profound sensation in this seminary and city, where it is bewailed with tears.

◆ George Oliver Towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members SJ
WHITE, THOMAS.The only occasion that I find this Father mentioned is in a letter of the 22nd of August, 1607. He was then in Spain, with F. James Archer. I cross him again six weeks later. F. Fitzsimon, in the Preface to his Treatise on the Mass, printed in 1611, mentions him.

Born: 1583, County Waterford City, County Waterford
Entered: 1605, Seville, Spain - Baeticae Province (BAE)
Ordained: 1611, Salamanca, Spain
Final Vows: 15 September 1622
Died: 19 September 1625, Irish College, Santiago de Compostela, Spain - Castellanae Province (BAE)

Cousin of Thomas White - RIP 1622 and Stephen White - RIP 1647; Relative of Peter White - RIP 1678 and Thomas White - Ent 30/09/1612, LEFT 12/11/1618

Had read Theology
1614 At Santiago Missioner and Confessor
1617 In Ireland Age 34 Soc 13
1621 In Ireland Age 39 Soc 17 Mission 8. Now Valetudinarian
1622 In East Munster
1625 At Compostella Age 41 Soc 23. Missionary and Superior of Irish Seminary at Compostella
In Carlow College there is a book marked “Missio HIB SJ Waterford Guliemus White”

◆ Fr Edmund Hogan SJ “Catalogica Chronologica” :
A Writer; Brough up in Andalusia;
In the company of Thomas White and Richard Conway he took possession of Irish College at Santiago de Compostella, April 1613, the King having ordered that it should be place under the care of Irish Jesuits.
1613-1622 In East Munster
A good Theologian and Preacher
He is named in a letter of Christopher Holywood (alias Thomas Lawndry) Superior of the Irish Mission 04 November 1611 (Irish Ecclesiastical Record January 1874)

◆ Fr Francis Finegan SJ :
Son of John and Anastatia née Comerton. Cousin of Thomas White (RIP 1622),
Had studied Humanities and Philosophy under John Flahy in Ireland, and then he entered the Irish College Salamanca 06 March 1602 before Ent 1605 Seville
1607-1611 After First Vows he was sent to studies at Royal College Salamanca, was Ordained there c 1611 and then sent to the Irish College Salamanca as Confessor.
After that he was sent to the Irish College Santiago as Minister and on the Missions in Parishes locally
1615-1622 Sent to Ireland and Waterford where he worked as Operarius for seven years.
1623 Sent to Irish College Santiago to succeed his cousin Thomas White as Rector following his death September 1623. He was in declining health and the General decided he should go back to Ireland as soon as his successor could be nominated, but he died in Office 19 September 1625
His Spanish Superiors regarded him as endowed beyond the ordinary for government and preaching .