Clongowes Wood College was bought by the Jesuits in 1814 at the cost of £16,000. In 1886, the Jesuit-run St. Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, county Offaly, was amalgamated with Clongowes Wood College. The school is dedicated to St. Aloysius of Gonzaga and is twinned with Portora Royal School, Enniskillen.
Murphy; James (1852-1908); Jesuit priest
Rector of Tullabeg: 16 August 1895-23 November 1900; 28 August 1905-21 August1908
The Society of Jesus was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and since then has grown from the original seven to 24, 400 members today who work out of 1,825 houses in 112 countries. In the intervening 455 years many Jesuits became renowned for their sanctity (41 Saints and 285 Blesseds), for their scholarship in every conceivable field, for their explorations and discoveries, but especially for their schools. The Society is governed by General Congregations, the supreme legislative authority which meets occasionally. The present Superior General is Father Arturo Sosa. Ignatius Loyola was a Spanish Basque soldier who underwent an extraordinary conversion while recuperating from a leg broken by a cannon ball in battle (see picture). He wrote down his experiences which he called his Spiritual Exercises and later he founded the Society of Jesus with the approval of Pope Paul III in 1540.
From the very beginning, the Society served the Church with outstanding men: Doctors of the Church in Europe as well as missionaries in Asia, India, Africa and the Americas. Men like Robert Bellarmine and Peter Canisius spearheaded the Counter Reformation in Europe, courageous men like Edmund Campion assisted the Catholics in England suffering under the terrible Elizabethan persecutions and missionaries like deNobili Claver, González, deBrito, Brebeuf, and Kino brought the Gospel to the ends of the earth. No other order has more martyrs for the Faith.
Ignatius Loyola had gathered around him an energetic band of well-educated men who desired nothing more than to help others find God in their lives. It was Ignatius’ original plan that they be roving missionaries such as Francis Xavier, who would preach and administer the sacraments wherever there was the hope of accomplishing the greater good. It soon became clear to Ignatius that colleges offered the greatest possible service to the church, by moral and religious instruction, by making devotional life accessible to the young and by teaching the Gospel message of service to others. From the very beginning these Jesuit schools became such an influential part of Catholic reform that this novel Jesuit enterprise was later called “a rebirth of the infant church”. The genius and innovation Ignatius brought to education came from his Spiritual Exercises whose object is to free a person from predispositions and biases, thus enabling free choices leading to happy, fulfilled lives.
Jesuits were always deeply involved in scholarship, in science and in exploration. By 1750, 30 of the world’s 130 astronomical observatories were run by Jesuit astronomers and 35 lunar craters have been named to honor Jesuit scientists. The so-called “Gregorian” Calendar was the work of the Jesuit Christopher Clavius, the “most influential teacher of the Renaissance”. Another Jesuit, Ferdinand Verbiest, determined the elusive Russo-Chinese border and until recent times no foreign name was as well known in China as the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, “Li-ma-teu”, whose story is told by Jonathan Spence in his 1984 best seller. China has recently erected a monument to the Jesuit scientists of the 17th century – in spite of the fact that since 1948 120 Jesuits languished in Chinese prisons. By the way, no other religious order has spent as many man-years in jail as the Jesuit order.
Jesuits were called the schoolmasters of Europe during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, not only because of their schools but also for their pre-eminence as scholars, scientists and the thousands of textbooks they composed. During their first two centuries the Jesuits were involved in an explosion of intellectual activity, and were engaged in over 740 schools.
Then suddenly these were all lost in 1773. Pope Clement XIV yielding to pressure from the Bourbon courts, fearing the loss of his Papal States, and anticipating that other European countries would follow the example of Henry VIII (who abandoned the Catholic Church and took his whole country with him), issued his brief Dominus ac Redemptor suppressing the Society of Jesus. This religious Society of 23,000 men dedicated to the service of the church was disbanded. The property of the Society’s many schools was either sold or made over into a state controlled system. The Society’s libraries were broken up and the books either burned, sold or snatched up by those who collaborated in the Suppression. As if unsure of himself the Pope promulgated the brief of suppression in an unusual manner which caused perplexing canonical difficulties. So when Catherine, Empress of Russia, rejected the brief outright and forbade its promulgation, 200 Jesuits continued to function in Russia.
That Jesuits take their special vow of obedience to the pope quite seriously is evident from their immediate compliance with distasteful papal edicts. Clement XIV’s Suppression is one example. Another occurred earlier in 1590 when Pope Sixtus V wanted to exclude Jesus from the official name of the Society. Jesuits immediately complied and offered alternate names but Sixtus died unexpectedly before his wish could be carried out. Included among these occasional papal intrusions in the Society’s governance was Pope John Paul II’s appointment of a delegate to govern the Society during Superior General Arrupe’s illness. So edified was he at the Society’s immediate compliance that the pope later lavished extraordinary praise on the Jesuit Order.
The Society was restored 41 years after the Suppression in 1814 by Pope Pius VII. Although many of the men had died by then, the memory of their educational triumphs had not, and the new Society was flooded with requests to take over new colleges: in France alone, for instance, 86 schools were offered to the Jesuits. Since 1814 the Society has experienced amazing growth and has since then surpassed the apostolic breadth of the early Society in its educational, intellectual, pastoral and missionary endeavors.
They form a Jesuit network, not that they are administered in the same way, but that they pursue the same goals and their success is evident in their graduates, men and women of vast and varied talent.
Theodore Cronhelm Tobias, second son of Matthew Tobias (1840-1921) and Elizabeth Cronhelm (1852-1938), was born 7 April 1876 in Sandymount, County Dublin. He married Eileen Muriel Smith (1886-1984) on 18 October 1913. They had four children: James Matthew Howard Tobias (1914-2000); Helen Margaret Tobias (1917-2011); Eirene Davison Galway Tobias (1919-2015); and Barbara Elizabeth Tobias (1924-1996). Theodore Cronhelm Tobias died in Dublin in the year 1959.
Mary Anne Rowe, daughter of Moses Rowe and Sarah Jane Howard, was born 22 November 1813 in County Wexford. She married Reverend James Tobias on 25 March 1834 at Saint Iberius Church in County Wexford. They had eight children: Jane Tobias (1835-1914); Marianne Tobias (b. 1837); Sarah Tobias (1838-1926); Matthew Tobias (1840-1921); Elizabeth Young Tobias (1843-1928); James Tobias (1845-1865); John Duncan Tobias (1851-1878); and Catharine Howard Tobias (1854-1870). Mary Anne Tobias died 11 January 1881 in Belfast, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.
Richard Crosbie, Second son of Sir Paul Crosbie, 4th Baronet of Maryborough, was born at Crosbie Park, County Wicklow, in 1755. As a boy he attended Trinity College, Dublin. In 1780 he married Charlotte Armstrong of Twickenham. They had two children, Edward Crosbie and Mary Crosbie.
Richard Crosbie often discussed the idea of flight with friends and colleagues prior to the Montgolfier brothers invention of the hot air balloon in 1783. The success of the french brothers inspired Richard Crosbie to create his own means of flight, and was determined to become the first person to cross a sea by crossing the Irish Sea using a hydrogen balloon. He first tested his idea by flying a balloon 12 feet in diameter for multiple days in the Ranelagh Gardens, Dublin. After multiple successful tests of flying animals in his balloon, Richard Crosbie became the first man to fly from Irish soil on 19 July 1785. Unfortunately
Richard Crosbie died in 1824.
Elizabeth 'Eliza' Neville was born in Newry, County Armagh, around the year 1795. She married first to a Mister Usher in 1811, and they had two sons: Sheldon Usher (b. 1811), and Richard Usher. Secondly, Elizabeth married Edward William Crosbie around the year 1821. They had three children: William Crosbie (d. 1860); Elizabeth Ellen Crosbie (b. 1827); and Mary Louisa Crosbie.