William Bathe

William Bathe S.J.
Born	2 April 1564 Dublin, Ireland
Died	17 June 1614 (aged 50) Madrid, Spain
Occupations	Jesuit priest, musicologist, writer

William Bathe (2 April 1564 – 17 June 1614) was an Anglo-Irish Jesuit priest, musician and writer.

Life

Born in Dublin, Bathe lived at Drumcondra Castle, County Dublin, a member of a leading Anglo-Irish family. He was the eldest surviving son of John Bathe, Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland, and his first wife Eleanor Preston, daughter of Jenico Preston, 3rd Viscount Gormanston and Lady Catherine Fitzgerald; his paternal grandfather was James Bathe, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer, whose second wife, William's grandmother, was Eleanor Burnell of Balgriffin His brother John Bathe was an Irish representative at the Royal Court in Madrid in the early 1600s. When William's father died in 1586 the family were among the biggest landowners in Dublin, although their wealth and influence notably declined in the next generation.^{: 16} Upon on his father's death, William inherited the family estates, but on entering the priesthood he passed them to John, the next brother in age, in 1601.

Bathe was trained as a musician and linguist at Oxford, where he wrote A Briefe Introductione to the True Art of Musicke (1584), which was revised as A Briefe Introduction to the Skill of Song (c.1596) – the first printed treatise on music in the English language. Following a long-standing family tradition, he also studied law at the Inns of Court in London. For a time he enjoyed the favor of Queen Elizabeth I, to whom he presented a harp of his own design. The Queen made him a number of grants of land, thus adding further to the extensive Bathe holdings: but royal favour ceased after 1598, when Elizabeth discovered that William had been ordained a priest. The decision of a third Bathe brother, Luke, to become a priest did nothing to restore the family to favor (under the name Father Edward, Luke became a prominent member of the Capuchin order). Apart from the religious issue, the close friendship between Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone and Sir William Warren, who married William's widowed stepmother Jenet Finglas, raised serious questions about the family's loyalty to the English Crown during O'Neill's rebellion, popularly known as the Nine Years War. William is not known to have visited Ireland after 1601.

William Bathe taught languages in Europe and wrote one of the world's first language teaching texts, Janua Linguarum (The Door of Tongues, 1611), a juxtaposition of phrases in Latin and Spanish. It proved so popular that within twenty years it had been translated into nine languages. The Moravian educator Comenius based his work Janua linguarum reserata on this text.

For a period of time Bathe was rector of the Irish College at Salamanca.

He should not be confused with his cousin Sir William Bathe of Athcarne Castle (died 1597), who was a judge of the Irish Court of Common Pleas.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

William Bathe — Writer on music and education, b. at Dublin, Ireland, 2 April, 1564; d. at Madrid, 17 June, 1614. His parents, John Bathe and Eleanor Preston, were distinguished both by their lineage and by their loyalty to the Catholic Faith. He went to Oxford about 1583 and while a student there wrote "A Brief Introduction to the Art of Music" (London, 1584). Another treatise from his pen, "A Brief Introduction to the Skill of Song", was published at London in 1600. These writings and his skill as master of various instruments, especially the Irish harp, won him the favour of Queen Elizabeth to whom he was related through the Kildare family. His own inclinations, however, were towards the religious life. From the English court he went to Louvain where he studied theology. On 6 August, 1595 (1596) he entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Tournai. His later studies were pursued at St. Omer and completed at Padua. In 1601 Bathe was selected by the father general to accompany Father Mansoni, the Apostolic Nuncio, to Ireland. This mission led them first to the Court of Spain and while there they learned that peace had been concluded between Spain and England and that the journey to Ireland was no longer necessary. Bathe remained in Spain, living at Valladolid and later at the Irish College in Salamanca. It was here that he wrote his principal work "Janua Linguarum" (Salamanca, 1611). It was designed to facilitate the study of languages and thus to aid missionaries, confessors, and students both young and old. For this purpose, 1330 short sentences were grouped under certain headings, the Latin and Spanish on opposite pages, with an index giving the translation of the Latin words - in all about 5300. The work went through many editions in which its method was applied, by various combinations, to eleven languages, including Greek and Hebrew. It was printed at London (1615), Leipzig (1626), Milan (1628), Venice (1655), and by 1637 it had been published in Bohemian, Illyrian, and Hungarian. An English edition (London, 1617) bore the title, "The Messe of Tongues (Latin, French, English, Hispanish)". It naturally found imitators, and among these the great work by John Amos Comenius holds first rank. In the preface to his "Janua Linguarum Reserata" (1631), Comenius acknowledges his indebtedness to Bathe, while in the work itself he adopts and develops the plan which the Jesuit had originated. Bathe is also credited by some of his biographers (Alegambe, Sherlock) with a treatise on "The Mysteries of Faith" and another on the "Sacrament of Penance". Sommervogel, however, takes a different view. To his industry as a writer Bathe added an unflagging zeal for the spiritual welfare of his fellowmen, the relief of suffering, and the instruction of the poorer classes. He had just been invited by the King of Spain to give the spiritual exercises to the members of the Court when death ended his labours.

SOMMERVOGEL, Bibl. de c. de J.; MACDONALD in The Irish Eccl. Record, X, 527; HOGAN, Distinguished Irishmen of the Sixteenth Century (London, 1894); COOPER in Dict. of Nat. Biog.; PACE, Bathe and Comenius, in Cath. Univ. Bull. (Washington, 1907), XIII.

Bibliography

• Pulver, Jeffrey, "The English Theorists 10: William Bathe", in: The Musical Times vol. 75 (1934), pp. 900–902.
• Rainbow, Bernarr, "Bathe and his Introductions to Musicke", in: The Musical Times vol. 123 (1982), pp. 243–247.
• Nixon, Paul J., "William Bathe and His Times", in: The Musical Times vol. 124 (1983), pp. 101–102.
• Ó Mathúna, Seán P., William Bathe, S.J., 1564–1614. A Pioneer in Linguistics (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1986).
• Karnes, Kevin C. (ed.), A Brief Introduction to the Skill of Song by William Bathe (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).

External links

• Bathe, William (1611). Ianua linguarum, siue Modus maxime accommodatus quo patefit aditus ad omnes linguas intelligendas (PDF) (in Latin and Spanish). Salamanca: apud Franciscum de Cea Tesa.