Daniel Binchy

Daniel Binchy I Clongowes 1910-1916

Daniel Binchy (1900-89), historian and diplomat, was a native of Charleville, County Cork, who attended Clongowes in 1910-16. He studied at UCD, where he was auditor of the Literary and Historical Society, and was called to the bar in 1920. His scholarly interests took him to the Continent where he secured his D.Phil magnum cum laude at Munich University and completed an archival programme at the École Nationale des Chartes in Paris, before returning to a professorship in UCD. This was interrupted in 1929-32, when he served as the first Irish minister to Germany. Returning to UCD, he was dean of the law faculty for a number of years. He retained an interest in diplomatic affairs, contributing articles on leading German political figures to Studies and publishing his highly regarded Church and State in Fascist Italy (1941). He was an associate of the great Gaelic scholars, Thurneyssen and Bergin, travelling annually with the latter to Dunquin to perfect his knowledge of Irish. Moving for a time to Oxford, he returned in 1950 to a professorship at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, where he spent the rest of his career. His major contribution to scholarship is his six-volume Corpus Iuris Hibernici (1978), a transcription of the main manuscripts of early Irish law, which is the foundation of all subsequent scholarship on this topic. He wrote much else besides, always with lucidity and clarity, including a memorable and authoritative analysis of the fraught debate on St Patrick. He was an outstanding scholar, with an international reputation and honorary degrees from many universities.