The Consolidation of Irish Catholicism within a Hostile Imperial Framework: A Comparative Study of Early Modern Ireland and Hungary

Abstract

The religious persecution of the Irish in the Early Modern period for their fidelity to Rome was a core belief of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholic Irish nationalism. Nor was it merely confined to the often surprisingly rich and source-based, if highly slanted, historiography of figures such as M. J. Brenan, Thomas Walsh, D. P. Conyngham and M. V. Ronan.¹ On the contrary, detailed disquisitions on the ‘horrors of the long, black night of the Penal Laws’ could emerge in the most surprising of media, such as a newspaper like An Camán, which was primarily funded by a sports organisation, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).² For several of the journalists who worked on this paper, the religious history of the early modern period was a crucial backdrop to their understanding of the struggle between British imperialism and Irish nationalism. In a special Christmas 1933 issue of An Camán, for instance, one of its occasional contributors, ‘Dalcassian’, declared: ‘England’s perversion from the faith created a further gulf between the two civilizations [of Ireland and England] and realizing that a national creed rooted on a glorious past would perpetuate national memories … she determined to destroy them.’³ Persecution thus represented a twin assault on both religion and national identity but, providentially, the defence of the first would allow for the revival of the second: ‘Dalcassian’ noted: ‘One aspect alone of the life of the nation came unscathed throughout the long night of persecution – the ancient faith’.⁴