Daniel Rock

Who was Daniel Rock?

Daniel Rock was an English Roman Catholic priest, ecciesiologist and antiquarian. He was educated at St. Edmund's College, Old Hall, where he studied from April, 1813, to December, 1818. There he came under the influence of the Rev. Louis Havard from whom he acquired his first interest in liturgy, and was the intimate friend of Mark Aloysius Tierney. He was then chosen as one of the first students sent to reopen the English College at Rome, where he remained until he took the degree of D.D. in 1825. He had been ordained priest, 13 March 1824. On his return to London he became assistant priest at St. Mary's, Moorfields, until 1827, when he was appointed domestic chaplain to John, Earl of Shrewsbury, with whom he had contracted a friendship based on similarity of tastes while at Rome. He accordingly resided at Alton Towers, Staffordshire, till 1840, with the exception of two years during which Lord Shrewsbury's generosity enabled him to stay at Rome collecting materials for his great work, Hierurgia or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which was published in 1833. He had previously published two short works: Transubstantiation vindicated from the strictures of the Rev.