Lynch (Lince), Dominic (Domingo) (1622–1697), Dominican priest and theologian, was born 4 August 1622 in Co. Galway, the son of Peter Lynch and Mary Skerret. He was a member of the illustrious Lynch family of that county: his paternal grandparents were Peter Lynch and Mary Kirwan, and his maternal grandparents were Thomas Skerret and Maria Lynch. In 1652 his parents and many of their relatives, together with other leading catholic families, chose to quit Galway and suffer the loss of their wealth and properties there rather than conform to protestantism. Dominic's family then resided in a tower-house at Shrule on the borders of Galway and Mayo, as tenants of the marquess of Clanricard.
Lynch entered the Dominican order at St Mary's priory, Galway (c.1638), but then went to Spain; he studied at the royal convent of San Pablo, Seville, in the province of Betica, and was ordained priest there in 1646. He held a succession of appointments at San Pablo, as lector de Visperas (1662), sacrae theologiae praesentatus and lector de Prima (1663), and regent of studies (from 1664); his kinsman James Lynch (qv), an alumnus of the Irish college at Seville, witnessed his becoming a master of arts. There was a long connection of Irish Dominicans with San Pablo and the graduate Colegio Mayor de Santo Tomás throughout the seventeenth century; in the eighteenth century Santo Tomás numbered among its Irish diocesan students Thomas Hussey (qv), first president of Maynooth College (1795–8) and bishop of Waterford and Lismore (1797–1803), and the republican Father John Murphy (qv) (1753–98).
Lynch was regent and professor of divinity at Santo Tomás from May 1674 until 1682. His selection occasioned the sending from Seville to Galway of Francis de Ayora OP, notary apostolic, to establish the purity of the pedigree (limpieza de sangre) of Lynch's family; any admixture of Jewish, Moorish, or Turkish blood, or the existence of family members who were penitents or ‘new converts’ constituted a disability for holding status or office under Spanish civil and ecclesiastical law. The Lynch family pedigree in Galway dated from the late thirteenth century and its principal guarantors were William Burke OP, prior of Gaway and then provincial in 1674, on behalf of the Galway corporation records, James Lynch, by now archbishop of Tuam, and Daniel Nelly, vicar and collegial of the church of St Nicholas in Galway. The depositions made in August–September 1674 reveal the formidable and intriguing web of Dominic Lynch's social and ecclesiastical family connections. His relatives included the archbishops of Tuam Nicholas Skerrett (c.1580–83) and James Lynch; Andrew Lynch (qv), bishop of Kilfenora (1648–81); Walter Lynch (qv), dean of Tuam, sometime warden of Galway and its collegiate church, and bishop of Clonfert (1648–63); Francis Kirwan (qv), bishop of Killala (1645–61); Dr James Fallon, vicar general of Killala; Dr Charles Fallon, provost of Killala; Michael Lynch, vicar apostolic of Kilmacduagh; Stephen Lynch OSA, prior of Dublin; Nicholas Lynch (qv) OP; Richard Lynch (qv) SJ, rector of the Irish college, Seville (1644–7); Stephen Lynch OFM, active in Rome; Richard Martin (qv) and Patrick Darcy (qv); Sir Richard Blake (qv); Geoffrey Brown (qv); Sir Robert Lynch (qv), baronet; Sir Henry Lynch, baronet, married to the eldest daughter of Lord Mayo; Colonel Maurice Lynch; and Matthew Lynch, warden of Galway. Among his kinswomen one was married to the earl of Clanricard, one to The O'Shaughnessy, one to a head of the O'Flahertys, and another to Sir Terence O'Brien, son of the earl of Thomond. Besides his positions at Santo Tomás, Lynch officiated as synodal judge of the archbishop of Seville. James II (qv) wished to make him his personal theologian, but Lynch declined this honour.
Lynch was held in such esteem in his adopted country that Nicholas Antonio in his Bibliotheca Hispaniae ranked him among the most significant writers of Spain. He was the author of a four-volume work of Thomist philosophy, which earned him a European reputation, entitled Summa philosophiae speculativae iuxta mentem et Doctrinam D. Thomae et Aristotelis (Paris, 1666–86): i: Complectens primam partem philosophiae rationis, quae communiter nuncupatur dialectica (1666); ii: Complectens duae partes, quae communiter nuncupantur logica (1667); iii: Comprehendens teriam partem philosophiae rationalis, in qua agitur de praedicabilibus, praedicamentis, et de posterioribus (1670); iv: Complectens primam partem physicae naturalis (1686). Lynch had also completed a comprehensive Cursus theologicus, which was lost in a shipwreck on its way to a Paris publisher.
Lynch died 11 December 1697 at Santo Tomás and his solemn funeral oration was pronounced there on 20 December; it was published in pamphlet form at Seville in 1698. Dominic Lynch was one of many Irish Dominicans who distinguished themselves internationally as teachers and academics in Dominican studia generalia, as well as acting as theological and spiritual advisers to the higher ecclesiastics and nobility of Europe. Prominent members of the Lynch family, displaced by the enforcement of anti-catholic penal laws, became firmly established in Seville's public life in the eighteenth century. One was Peter Lynch (Pedro Lince de Verastegui), first síndico personero of Seville in 1766 (or, in contemporary terms, defensor del pueblo), who dramatically, if briefly, challenged the political status quo and championed social justice.