FITZSIMON, HENRY

Missionary and writer; b. Dublin, Ireland, 1566; d. Dublin, 1643. He was the son of Nicholas, alderman of Dublin, and was related to several notable families of the Pale. He was educated as a Protestant at Oxford, but became reconciled to the Catholic Church through Thomas Darbishire, SJ, in Paris. After further studies at Pont-à-Mousson, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1592 at Tournai. He completed his theological course at Louvain and returned to Ireland in 1597. For two years he labored, with brilliant success, to arrest the growth of Protestantism in Dublin and the Pale. When he was arrested and imprisoned in Dublin Castle, he continued his defense of Catholicism from his cell by engaging in controversy with such opponents as Meredith Hanmer and John Rider. Exiled in 1604, he spent the next 26 years chiefly in the Low Countries where he published many books on theology, spirituality, and history. He was unofficial agent of the Irish mission. For his own safety and that of the Jesuits in Ireland, his return to the mission was opposed by Father Christopher holywood. However, he returned to Ireland in 1630. He was sent to France on business in 1632, but the letter of the Jesuit general forbidding him to return to Ireland arrived too late. Fitzsimon got back to Ireland, but henceforth his ministry had to be conducted secretly and his name disappears altogether from the Jesuit correspondence after 1635. The account of his last years and death dates from after the Cromwellian conquest.

Bibliography: Archives (unpublished) of the Society of Jesus, Rome. e. hogan, Life, Letters and Diary of Henry Fitzsimon (Dublin 1881). c. sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus (Brussels-Paris 1890–1932) 3:766–768.

[f. finegan]