Theobald Stapleton, () (1589 – 13 September 1647), was an Irish

Roman Catholic priest The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in common English usage ''priest'' re ...

and one of the creators of modern

Irish language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

. During the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Fr. Stapleton sought sanctuary inside St. Patrick's Cathedral upon the

Rock of Cashel The Rock of Cashel ( ), also known as Cashel of the Kings and St. Patrick's Rock, is a historical site located dramatically above a plain at Cashel, County Tipperary, Cashel, County Tipperary, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. History According t ...

and was slain by the Protestant army of Lord Inchiquin during the Sack of Cashel. He was Beatified by

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005. In his you ...

as one of the 17 Irish Catholic Martyrs in 1992.

Life

Theobald Stapleton was born in

County Tipperary County Tipperary () is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster and the Southern Region, Ireland, Southern Region. The county is named after the town of Tipperary (tow ...

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

. He was born into a family of mixed

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and Gaelic Irish descent, as the son of John Stapleton and his wife Fionnuala (née Nic Conmara). Little is known of his career, except that he was a priest living in

Flanders Flanders ( or ; ) is the Dutch language, Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, la ...

. Fr. Stapleton was responsible for the establishment of the Irish College in Seville in 1612. In 1616, he was ordained to the priesthood in Madrid, where he offered his first

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

on 25 March 1616. He taught at the Irish College in Madrid in 1629 In 1639, he published a

catechism A catechism (; from , "to teach orally") is a summary or exposition of Catholic theology, doctrine and serves as a learning introduction to the Sacraments traditionally used in catechesis, or Christian religious teaching of children and adult co ...

Early Modern Irish Early Modern Irish () represented a transition between Middle Irish and Modern Irish. Its literary form, Classical Gaelic, was used in Ireland and Scotland from the 13th to the 18th century. Classical Gaelic Classical Gaelic or Classical Irish ( ...

to promote the use of the vernacular in

Christian literature Christian literature is the literary aspect of Christian media, and it constitutes a huge body of extremely varied writing. History The Christian genre spans a variety of media and art forms that highlight Christian beliefs, narratives, and m ...

. It was the first Roman Catholic book in which the

was printed in antiqua type. The book, published in

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, was called or, in Irish, . Fr. Stapleton stated that during his missionary work in Ireland he became convinced of the need for a catechism in Irish for the proper religious instruction of the uneducated commons. He expressed a love for the

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

Irish language and harshly criticised the

Classical Gaelic Early Modern Irish () represented a transition between Middle Irish and Irish language, Modern Irish. Its literary form, Classical Gaelic, was used in Ireland and Scotland from the 13th to the 18th century. Classical Gaelic Classical Gaelic or C ...

literary language Literary language is the Register (sociolinguistics), register of a language used when writing in a formal, academic writing, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal language. ...

and Dán Díreach strict metre favored by both the

Bard In Celtic cultures, a bard is an oral repository and professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's a ...

ic elite and the

Gaelic nobility of Ireland This article concerns the Gaelic nobility of Ireland from ancient to modern times. It only partly overlaps with Chiefs of the Name because it excludes Scotland and other discussion. It is one of three groups of Irish nobility, the others bei ...

, which Fr. Stapleton accused of having ‘put it under great darkness and difficulty of words, writing it in contractions and mysterious words which are obscure and difficult to understand’ and accordingly bringing the Irish language into ‘contempt and disregard and learning other foreign languages’. Stapleton's catechism was also the first notable attempt to simplify Irish spelling. He advocated and used a simplified and standardized spelling system to encourage literacy among the less educated. In Stapleton's system, silent letters in certain words were replaced, e.g., in the word ('sitting') was replaced by in (as in modern Irish). He also brought the spelling closer to the pronunciation, e.g. by replacing as in ('terror') by , giving ''uafás'' as in modern Irish. However, only authors of devotional literature adopted his spelling system and Classical Gaelic orthography remained in use until the 20th-century.

Death

On 27 September 1647, in the Sack of Cashel, during the

Irish Confederate Wars The Irish Confederate Wars, took place from 1641 to 1653. It was the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of civil wars in Kingdom of Ireland, Ireland, Kingdom of England, England and Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland, all then ...

Fr. Stapleton sought sanctuary inside St. Patrick's Cathedral upon the

, where he was captured by Parliamentarian soldiers under the command of Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin, and, with six other priests, he was put to death on the spot. He is said to have blessed his attackers with holy water moments before his death.

Legacy

According to historian D.P. Conyngham, "It is impossible to estimate the number of Catholics slain the ten years from 1642 to 1652. Three Bishops and more than 300 priests were put to death for their faith. Thousands of men, women, and children were sold as slaves for the

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; Sir W. Petty mentions that 6,000 boys and women were thus sold. A letter written in 1656, quoted by Lingard, puts the number at 60,000; as late as 1666 there were 12,000 Irish slaves scattered among the West Indian islands. Forty thousand Irish fled to the Continent, and 20,000 took shelter in the

Hebrides The Hebrides ( ; , ; ) are the largest archipelago in the United Kingdom, off the west coast of the Scotland, Scottish mainland. The islands fall into two main groups, based on their proximity to the mainland: the Inner Hebrides, Inner and Ou ...

or other Scottish islands. In 1641, the population of Ireland was 1,466,000, of whom 1,240,000 were Catholics. In 1659 the population was reduced to 500,091, so that very nearly 1,000,000 must have perished or been driven into exile in the space of eighteen years. In comparison with the population of both periods, this was even worse than the famine extermination of our own days." Due to his martyrdom,

declared him

Venerable ''The Venerable'' often shortened to Venerable is a style, title, or epithet used in some Christianity, Christian churches. The title is often accorded to holy persons for their spiritual perfection and wisdom. Catholic In the Catholic Churc ...

in 1991 and in 1992 Beatified him, making him Blessed Theobald Stapleton.Blessed Thomas Stapleton
CatholicSaints.info

References

Sources and external links

*Ryan-Hackett, Rita. 1995. ''The Stapletons of Drom, alias Font-Forte, Co. Tipperary''. Killiney: Thornvale.
St. John D. Seymour: The Storming of the Rock of Cashel by Lord Inchiquin in 1647.English Historical Review, Vol. 32, No. 127 (July, 1917)Araltas.comSimplified Spelling System''The Spiritual Rose'' ed. Malachy McKenna
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stapleton, Theobald 1589 births 1647 deaths 17th-century Irish Roman Catholic priests 17th-century Roman Catholic martyrs 24 Irish Catholic Martyrs Catholic Church and minority language rights Christian clergy from County Tipperary Irish beatified people Irish-language writers People of Elizabethan Ireland