Theobald Mathew (temperance reformer)

Theobald Mathew ( born October 10, 1790 Thomastown Castle, near Golden, County Tipperary, † December 8, 1856 in Cobh ) was an Irish Catholic priest. He founded in 1838 the Association of abstainers ( Knights of Father Mathew ) and thus became the pioneer of the movement for alcohol abstinence.

Life

Theobald Mathew was born into a Catholic landowning family in Tipperary, which could keep thanks to the patronage of the Duke of Ormond in the 17th century and the conversion of the family head to the Church of Ireland in the early 18th century their property despite the Restoration and the penal laws. Despite the conversion, the heads of families were regarded as crypto- Catholics, who were then able to repeatedly push through a large majority of the Catholic population in the elections to the House of Commons itself. Theobald's father, James Mathew was a cousin of the first Earl of Landaff, Francis Mathew (1744-1806), and served as his agent.

Theobald Mathew began his studies at St Patrick 's College in Maynooth, but this had to leave in 1808 and then entered the Capuchin Order in Dublin at. In 1814 he was ordained by the Dublin Coadjutor Daniel Murray as a priest and then added to Cork. In 1828 he was Provincial of the Irish Capuchins.