Background
Edmund Ignatius Rice was born on June 16, 1762 at Westcourt, near Callen, Kilkenny, Ireland to Robert Rice and Margaret Rice.
Edmund Ignatius Rice was born on June 16, 1762 at Westcourt, near Callen, Kilkenny, Ireland to Robert Rice and Margaret Rice.
Rice's education, like that of every other Irish Catholic of the day, was greatly compromised by the 1709 amendment to the Popery Act, which decreed that any public or private instruction in the Catholic faith would render teachers liable to prosecution, a measure that was not reformed until 1782. In this environment, hedge schools proliferated. The boys of the Rice family obtained an education at home through Patrick Grace, a member of the small community of Augustinian friars in Callan. As a young man, Rice spent two years at a school which, despite the provisions of the penal laws, the authorities suffered to exist in the City of Kilkenny.
He entered the business of his uncle, an export provision merchant in Waterford, in 1779 and succeeded him in 1790. In г796 he established an organization for visiting and relieving the poor, and in 1802 . began to educate the poor children of Waterford, renting a school and supporting two teachers. In 1803 he gave up his business and, joined by a number of friends, began to systematize his plans. Others, like-minded, opened schools at Dungarvan and Carrick-on-Suir. The little society numbered nine in r808, and meeting at Waterford took religious vows from their bishop, assumed a "habit" and adopted an additional Christian name, by which, as by the collective title "Christian Brothers, " they were thenceforth known. Schools were established in Cork (1811), Dublin (1812), and Thurles and Limerick (1817). In 1820 Pope Pius VII issued a brief sanctioning the order of "Religious Brothers of the Christian Schools (Ireland)" the members of which were to be bound by vows of obedience, chastity, poverty and perseverance, and to give themselves to the free instruction, religious and literary, of male children, especially the poor. The heads of houses were to elect a superior general, and Rice held this office from 1822 to 1838, during which time the institution extended to several English towns (especially in Lancashire), and the course of instruction grew out of the primary stage. The Irish Christian Brothers have some hundred houses in Ireland with 300 attached schools and overpupils. There are also industrial schools and orphanages, and the institute has branches in Australia, India, Gibraltar and Newfoundland.
In 1785, at age 23, Edmund married Mary Elliot. In 1789, Mary died in childbirth, leaving Edmund with a disabled daughter, Mary.