Geoffrey Keating

Seathrún Céitinn (c. 1569 – c. 1644; known in English as Geoffrey Keating) was a 17th-century historian. He was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, and is buried in Tubrid Graveyard in the parish of Ballylooby-Duhill, and became a Irish Catholic priest and a poet.

Biography

It was generally believed until recently that Keating had been born in Burgess, County Tipperary; indeed, a monument to Keating was raised beside the bridge at Burgess, in 1990; but Diarmuid Ó Murchadha writes,

In November 1603, he was one of forty students who sailed for Bordeaux under the charge of the Rev Diarmaid MacCarthy to begin their studies at the Irish College which had just been founded in that city by Cardinal François de Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux. On his arrival in France he wrote Farewell to Ireland, and upon hearing of the Flight of the Earls wrote Lament on the Sad State of Ireland. After obtaining the degree of Doctor of Divinity at the University of Bordeaux he returned about 1610 to Ireland and was appointed to the cure of souls at Uachtar Achaidh in the parish of Knockgraffan, near Cahir, where he put a stop to the then-common practice of delaying Mass until the neighbouring gentry arrived.