Abstract
Although in many ways the seventeenth century was at least as turbulent as the sixteenth, by this time the ideological outlook of the various protagonists had become much more clearly defined. The ‘Old Irish,’ ‘Old English,’ ‘New English,’ and ‘Colonists,’ had all evolved into definable groups, each with its own political and religious agendas. In the middle of the political turmoil stood the Catholic Church in Ireland — focus and symbol of the power struggle between church and state; the forces of tradition versus innovation; and the conflict between the colonizers and the colonized. What was at stake was the entrenchment of a fully confessionalized institutional church — not merely an official, but scarcely recognized, Protestant Church, and not just survivalist Catholicism. Thus on both sides the stage was set for a new form of conflict. No longer was it a dispute over somewhat vaguely understood ideological and theological positions, that is, the popular reformation of the sixteenth century. Rather, by the seventeenth century the religious situation of Ireland had developed into a sharply etched conflict in which a militantly self-aware state Protestantism clashed with a militantly self-aware Tridentine Catholicism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Patrick F. Moran, History of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin Since the Reformation, (Dublin: James Duffy, 1864), 225.
Patrick Corish, The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Dublin: Helicon, 1981), 19.
For a full analysis of the composition of the seventeenth-century Irish episcopate see Donal Cregan, ‘The Social and Cultural Background of a Counter-Reformation Episcopate, 1618–60,’ in Studies in Irish History; Presented to R. Dudley Edwards, ed. Art Cosgrove and Donal MacCartney (Dublin: University College, 1979). Of the thirty-seven bishops identified by Cregan in this study, he concludes that nineteen were Old Irish and eighteen were of Old English stock, although he emphasizes that given the mixed family backgrounds of many of the bishops, it is very difficult to accurately categorize them as one or the other.
Some vague conclusions as to the family background of the Irish clergy may be drawn from the lists we possess of novices in the Irish religious colleges and from an incomplete list of names of ‘Jesuites, Seminary Priestes, and Fryers,’ drawn up by one of the royal administrators in 1613. Trinity College, Dublin (T.C.D.) MS 567, ff. 32r–35v. Although many of the names are impossible to identify, of the 255 names given in the T.C.D. manuscript, sixty-five appear to be definably Old Irish and eighty-four Old English. Although many are not identified as to whether they were secular clergy or religious, of those which are, it seems that Old English names slightly predominate among the secular clergy and Jesuits, whereas Gaelic names are the more common among those identified as ‘Franciscan Fryers.’ This pattern would make sense, given the geographical and social context of pre-Reformation clergy in Ireland, and it seems to be suported by the lists of those professed or in novitiates in the various religious orders. For example, all but two of the eighteen men on the Irish Jesuit Mission in 1613 were of Old English blood. Of the sixty-eight names of novices received at the Irish Franciscan College at Louvain from 1607 to 1617 only twenty-two are identified as coming from Meath and Leinster (hence almost certainly Old English), as opposed to thirty-two from what would have been the heavily Gaelic regions of Ulster, Munster and Connaught. For this list of names see Brendan Jennings, ed., Louvain Papers, 1606–1827 (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1968), 54–8.
For a full discussion of the Roman administrative procedures see Cathaldus Giblin, ‘The Processus Datariae and the Appointment of Irish Bishops in the Seventeenth Century,’ in Father Luke Wadding Commemorative Volume, ed. The Franciscan Fathers (Dublin: Clonmore and Reynolds, Ltd., 1957), 508–616.
Brendan Jennings, ed., Wadding Papers, 1614–38 (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1953), 324.
For a contemporary account of this house see Malachy Hartry, Triumphalia Chronologica Monasterii Sanctae Crucis in Hibernia, ed. Denis Murphy (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and Walker, 1891). A fascinating analysis of this account may be found in Bernadette Cunningham and Raymond Gillespie, ‘Holy Cross Abbey and the Counter Reformation in Tipperary,’ Tipperary Historical Journal 4 (1991). I am grateful to the authors for allowing me to consult this article in typescript before its publication.
Patrick F. Moran, ed., Spicilegium Ossoriense: Being a Collection of Original Letters and Papers Illustrative of the History of the Irish Church from the Reformation to the Year 1880 (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1874–84), 1: 177.
The best available general survey of the Franciscan order in Ireland is Patrick Conlan, Franciscan Ireland: the Story of Seven Hundred and Fifty Years of the Friars Minor in Ireland (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1978), although much more detailed material concerning a limited time-span can be found in
Benignus Millett, The Irish Franciscans, 1651–1665 (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964).
To date the Franciscans remain the most thoroughly researched of the mendicant orders in Ireland. Peter O’Dwyer’s study The Irish Carmelites (Dublin: Carmelite Publications, 1988)
is worth consulting as is F. X. Martin, Friar Nugent: a Study of Francis Lavalin Nugent, (1569–1635), Agent of the Counter-Reformation (Rome: Capuchin Historical Institute, 1962) which explores the role of the Capuchins in Ireland.
Also of value is Thomas Flynn, The Irish Dominicans, 1536–1640 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1993). The material in this study has long been unavailable, and I am grateful to Fr Flynn for allowing me to read his unpublished dissertation prior to the publication of his book.
A very interesting account of Irish Franciscan monasteries can be found in a report written by Donatus Mooney in 1617. He conducted an official visitation while Provincial of the Order, and his observations provide an unusual glimpse into early seventeenth-century Ireland, although he seems to have been more concerned with the church buildings and furnishings than with the friars themselves. Father Mooney’s account is now in the Bibliotheque Royale in Brussels, but an edited version can be found in Brendan Jennings, ‘Brussels MS. 3947: Donatus Moneyus, De Provincia Hiberniae S. Francisci,’ Analecta Hibernia 6 (November 1934): 12–131.
For a description of the role of the Sodality in Ireland see John MacErlean, The Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ireland, a Short History, (Dublin: ‘Irish Messenger’ Office, 1928).
Henry Fitzsimon, Words of Comfort to Persecuted Catholics, Written in Exile, Anno 1607, ed. Edmund Hogan (Dublin: Gill and Son, 1881), 56.
Helga Hammerstein, ‘Aspects of the Continental Education of Irish Students,’ Historical Studies 8 (1971): 146.
The author of the Hiberniae Sive Antiquiores Scotiae Vindiciae estimated the total number of clergy in Ireland in 1620 to be around eight hundred, of which one hundred were Franciscans, thirty Jesuits, twenty Bernardines, a few Dominicans and Augustinians, and four or five Capuchins. Cited by Patrick Moran, ‘The Bishops of Ossory from the Anglo-Norman Invasion to the Present Day,’ Transactions of the Ossory Archaeological Society 2 (1880–3): 280.
Barnaby Rich, A New Description of Ireland (London: Printed for Thomas Adams, 1610), 13.
A comparative analysis of the two texts may be found in Breandán Ó Buachalla, ‘Annála Ríoghachta Eireann is Foras Feasa ar Eirinn: An Comhthéacs Comhaimseartha,’ Studia Hibernia 22–3 (1982–3): 59–105.
An interesting and detailed analysis of this work in the context of Tridentine ideologies can be found in Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Geoffrey Keating’s Eochair Sgiath an Aifrinn and the Catholic Reformation in Ireland,’ in The Churches, Ireland and the Irish, ed. W. J. Shiels and Diana Woods (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 133–43.
A modern edited version has been done by Osborn Bergin, Trí Bhior-Ghaoithe an Bháis (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1931).
See Bernadette Cunningham, ‘Seventeenth Century Interpretations of the Past: the Case of Geoffrey Keating,’ Irish Historical Studies 25 (1986): 116–28.
Geoffrey Keating, Foras Feasa ar Eirinn (Dublin: Irish Texts Society, 1902), 1: 124.
For the most succinct statement of this argument on the Protestant side see James Ussher’s 1624 treatise, ‘A Discourse of the Religion Anciently Professed by the British and Irish,’ in Volume 4 of Charles Richard Elrington and J. H. Todd, The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, D.D., Lord Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland (Dublin: Hodges, Smith and Co., 1864).
It was this theological appropriation of the Gaelic past which partially stimulated a mini-Renaissance in Irish antiquarianism on the part of several Protestant Irish clergymen, most notably, James Ussher and James Ware. Regardless of the reasons prompting their interest, they were important figures in the preservation of Gaelic manuscripts and antiquities. For an interesting analysis of Ussher’s ambivalent attitude toward the Gaelic Irish see Joseph Leersen, ‘Archbishop Ussher and Gaelic Culture,’ Studia Hibernia 22–3 (1982–3): 50–8.
The most accessible version of this work is that edited by Patrick Moran, The Analecta of David Rothe, Bishop of Ossory (Dublin: Gill and Son, 1884).
Edward Rogan, Synods and Catechesis in Ireland, c. 445–1962 (Rome: Pontificia Universitate Gregoriana, 1987), 31.
This is not the place for a detailed analysis of the extremely complicated political events of the 1640s. For a good overview see Nicholas Canny, From Reformation to Restoration (Dublin: Helicon, 1987),
chapter 7, and Michael Perceval-Maxwell, The Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994).
See also Jane H. Ohlmeyer, Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms: The Career of Randal MacDonnell, Marquis of Antrim, 1609–1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and idem, Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). and idem, Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
There is a six-volume edition in Latin of the correspondence and reports of Rinuccini’s embassy edited by Stanislaus Kavanaugh, Commentarius Rinuccinianus, de Sedis Apostolicae Legatione ad Foederatos Hiberniae Catholicos per annos 1645–9 (Dublin: Irish Manuscript Commission, 1832–49).
A much more accessible version can be found in Annie Hutton’s translated and abridged text, The Embassy in Ireland of Monsignor G. B. Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo, in the Years 1645–1649 (Dublin: Alexander Thorn, 1873).
For a general overview and transcripts of letters not available elsewhere, Patrick F. Moran, Memoir Of the Most Reverend Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, 2nd ed., (Dublin: Browne & Nolan, 1895) is still useful.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1997 Samantha A. Meigs
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Meigs, S.A. (1997). The Entrenchment of a Confessional Church. In: The Reformations in Ireland. Early Modern History: Society and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25710-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25710-2_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-25712-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-25710-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)