# De Lacy O'Leary

De Lacy Evans O'Leary (1872–1957) was a British Orientalist who lectured at the University of Bristol and wrote a number of books on the early history of Arabs and Copts.

## Personal life

De Lacy Evans O'Leary was born in Devon in 1872, the eldest child of Henry O'Leary (1831–1908), a Mauritius-born Anglo-Irish former captain in the New Zealand militia, and Julia Hornsey (1841–1884). On his father's side, O'Leary was descended from Irish Catholics of Limerick, and included one of the generals in Wellington's Peninsular Campaign. Brought up as a Protestant and educated at Bristol Grammar School, O'Leary converted to Roman Catholicism in about 1888 and began to train for the priesthood at Prior Park College near Bath, before returning to the Church of England in 1890.
He never married, and was an active freemason.

## Career

O'Leary studied at the University of London (1891–95) before becoming a minister in the Church of England, and later undertook further studies towards a Master of Arts at Trinity College Dublin (1905). He was awarded second prize in Trinity College’s Elrington Theological Prize (1903) for an essay on the Epistle of St James, and the following year the Elrington Theological Prize itself for the essay "An Examination of the Apostolical Constitutions and of the cognate documents, with special view to those which have recently been made accessible".
O'Leary was special lecturer at the University of Bristol from 1908 until 1957, teaching Aramaic, Syriac, and Hellenistic Greek. He was the first chairman of the Bristol University Convocation, which represents graduates of the university, between 1910 and 1928. During World War I he was Captain-Chaplain of the university's Officer Training Corps and in 1916 served as a chaplain to the British Expeditionary force in Egypt.
O'Leary was made Inspector of Schools in religious knowledge for the Diocese of Bristol and vicar of Christ Church in the poor Barton Hill district of Bristol from 1909 until his retirement in 1946. Despite the large population of his parish, church attendance was poor and declined during his tenure. There was controversy about his curacy of the parish, which led to questions in the House of Lords in 1952 and an appeal to the Privy council. After World War II he retired from his parish and went to live in Weston-super-Mare with his sister, although he continued to visit the university occasionally. The church was later closed and torn down.

## Works

O'Leary published several Coptic liturgical manuscripts. These included:
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1923). Islam at the Cross Roads. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1923). The Coptic Theotokia. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1924). Fragmentary Coptic Hymns from the Wadi n'Natrun. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1926–1928). The Difnar (Antiphonarium) of the Coptic Church (2 vols). London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1930). The Arabic Life of St. Pisentius.
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1936). The Ethiopian Church: Historical Notes on the Church of Abyssinia. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Retrieved 15 March 2013.
He wrote books about Christian and Coptic literature. These included:
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1909). The Syriac Church and Fathers. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. ISBN 978-1-931956-05-5. Retrieved 15 March 2013.
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1912). Studies in the Apocryphal Gospels of Christ's Infancy. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1923). Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages. Routledge, Trench, Trubner.
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1926). Colloquial Arabic: with notes on the vernacular speech of Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, and an appendix on the local characteristics of Algerian dialect. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner. Retrieved 15 March 2013.
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1937). The Saints of Egypt. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
He also wrote a number of books about Arabic history, including:
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1922). Arabic Thought and Its Place in History. London. ISBN 978-0486427621.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1923). Arabic History and Culture. Routledge. ISBN 9780415242851. Retrieved 15 March 2013.
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1923). Short History of the Fatimid Khalifate. London and New York.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1927). Arabia Before Muhammad.
* O'Leary, De Lacy (1947). How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)