Peter Keenan Guilday was an American Roman Catholic priest and church historian.
Background
Guilday was born on March 25, 1884, in Chester, Pennsylvania, the second son and second in a family of twelve children of Peter Wilfred Guilday and Ellen Teresa (Keenan) Guilday. His father came from Waterford, Ireland; his mother, of Irish descent, was a native of Chester. A foreman in a textile plant, the elder Guilday earned enough to raise his large family in a reasonably comfortable manner.
Education
Guilday was educated in a Chester parochial school and at the Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia. In 1902 he enrolled at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in the Overbrook section of Philadelphia as a candidate for the priesthood. After completing his studies in philosophy and theology, he was awarded a scholarship to the American College at the University of Louvain in Belgium for his final two years' study of theology. There, on July 11, 1909, Guilday was ordained to the priesthood. Guilday returned to the United States and spent nine months as a curate in Philadelphia churches and then returned to Europe for graduate work in history - briefly at the University of Bonn and then at Louvain, where his major professor was Canon Alfred Cauchie, to whom he was always deeply devoted. Upon the publication in 1914 of his dissertation, "The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent, 1558-1795, " he was awarded the doctorate by Louvain.
Career
On returning to the United States in the fall of 1914, Guilday was assigned to the faculty of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C. , at the request of its rector, Bishop Thomas J. Shahan, himself a church historian. Guilday began as instructor in history and rose through successive promotions to professor in 1923. Realizing that the history of the Catholic church had, at that time, little professional standing in the United States, having languished since the death of John Gilmary Shea in 1892, Guilday decided to concentrate on that field. His contributions to it, during his thirty-three years at Catholic University, took a variety of forms. The earliest was the Catholic Historical Review, a quarterly journal launched in April 1915, to which Bishop Shahan lent the prestige of his name as editor-in-chief; five of the university's professors served as editors, but Guilday had the most active role. The first six volumes of the Review were devoted exclusively to the history of American Catholicism, but after 1921 the scope was widened to embrace the history of the Catholic church throughout the world. Guilday continued as the principal editor until 1941, when failing health compelled his practical retirement, though he remained nominally the editor-in-chief. A second major contribution was the founding of the American Catholic Historical Association, organized on Guilday's initiative in December 1919. The association held annual meetings of scholars and teachers to further interest in Catholic history, then largely neglected by professional historians, and to coordinate the work of local Catholic historical societies. Guilday served as its secretary until 1941, and the Catholic Historical Review became its chief organ. By the time of its founder's death the original group of fifty members had grown to about 800. At Catholic University, Guilday inaugurated a graduate program in church history that was for many years unique in American Catholic higher educational circles. Between 1922 and 1943, thirty-five of the doctoral dissertations he directed were published. His own writings gave great impetus to the revival in American Catholic history. Once he had become firmly established in a field that he was first compelled to master himself, a steady stream of scholarly publications flowed from his pen, beginning with The Life and Times of John Carrol, Archbishop of Baltimore (1922) and followed by An Introduction to Church History (1925), a manual of historical method for beginners; The Life and Times of John English, First Bishop of Charleston (1927), perhaps his best work; and the useful general account, A History of the Councils of Baltimore 1791-1884 (1932). Besides these publications, Guilday edited in 1923 the joint pastorals of the American hierarchy and wrote the only complete biography of John Gilmary Shea (1926). Formal recognition of Guilday's achievements included eight honorary degrees, and decoration by the king of Belgium for his efforts toward the restoration of the Louvain library. In 1935 he was made a domestic prelate by Pope Pius XI. The latter years of Guilday's life were clouded by a period of suffering from diabetes marked by failing eyesight and the amputation of one leg and part of the other foot. He died of pneumonia in Providence Hospital in Washington, D. C. According to his expressed wishes, his funeral took place from the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception; he was buried in the university lot in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Washington.
Personality
Guilday was a man of medium height, rather stout in his years of vigorous health, with a handsome and dignified bearing. His ability as a speaker brought him many invitations for sermons and lectures, in which he displayed a forceful delivery and a fine command of language. To his students he was a kindly mentor, open and friendly in manner. He was at his best in introducing them to the literature in the field, by stimulating them to research, and in correcting the early drafts of their graduate theses. But he offered little or no content in his courses, believing that to be the student's responsibility; for that reason a number of students found his classes a disappointment.