Fr John Silke was an historian whose first love was English – the subject in which he excelled in the 1940s in Maynooth, when JRR Tolkien was the extern examiner there.
However, his prize-winning history essay at Maynooth on the Reformation came to the attention of UCD history professor Robin Dudley Edwards and this led him to an MA thesis in history in UCD in 1954.
A life of historical study followed, starting with a research scholarship in Spain in 1956-57. A pioneering UCD PhD on the Spanish preparations for the Battle of Kinsale was completed in the early 1960s. It placed the Spanish intervention firmly in the context of wider European rivalries, appeared in book form in 1970 and was reprinted as a modern history classic by Four Courts Press in 2000.
For much of his life, Dr Silke was a solo scholar, operating without the benefit of attachment to a university history department. He nevertheless made a significant contribution to historical scholarship in Ireland and opened up important fields of study: his Kinsale publication was described in 2002 by Spanish historians as a “fundamental point of reference” for 16th-century Spanish-Irish links.
Proficient in several languages, his many research interests included the Irish and Irish colleges abroad, the Flight of the Earls, and the history of the Raphoe diocese. He contributed to the New History of Ireland and the British Dictionary of National Biography, and published extensively on Irish and church history and on historical figures such as St Colmcille, Manus and Red Hugh O'Donnell and Peter Lombard.
John Joseph Silke was born in Creeslough, Co Donegal, in May 1926 into a family of five children. His father John J was an agricultural inspector from Kilkenny who married a local teacher, Susan McGinley from Feymore, and did significant work with local farmers in developing the seed potato industry in Donegal. In 1929, John Silke snr achieved a world record yield of seed potatoes with the Arran Banner potato.
Fr John was educated at St Eunan’s College, Letterkenny, and St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. Ordained in 1952 by Archbishop McQuaid, he taught in the 1950s and 1960s at St Eunan’s and from 1966 to 1973 at Harriman College and Manhattan College in New York.
He spent the years from 1973 to 1980 in Rome, working as archivist at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome and teaching church history at the Angelicum University. His 1975 guide book to Rome on places of Irish interest, Relics, Refugees and Rome, became a collector's item.
In 1983, he became the first parish priest of Glenswilly, near Letterkenny and developed strong friendships in Raphoe with clergy of all denominations. Heart disease led to his resignation as parish priest in 1992.
He worked subsequently as archivist of the diocesan archives in Letterkenny and, in 2009, became dean of the cathedral chapter.
In recent years, he wrote an illustrated history of the diocese of Raphoe, a book on the life and work of his father, From Courleigh to Creeslough, and – together with his archives colleague, Mrs Moira Hughes – two books on Raphoe history, with the second volume appearing in 2015.
He remained all his life a diligent scholar, whose historical learning was much respected.
In his funeral homily, Bishop Philip Boyce noted how Fr John could easily recall, without consulting any book, the parish where a priest, long since dead, had been stationed, the year he died and where he was buried.
While living in the beautiful seaside village of Portnablagh, Fr John continued to work actively right up to his final illness. He died in January in Italy in his 90th year after becoming ill while on holiday there.
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