This essay examines interpretations of contemporary and historical Ireland through the eyes of Irish seminary students resident at the Irish College in Paris, c.1870–1900. It interrogates the extensive print holdings of the Old Library, in addition to select items in the Irish College archives, to illuminate student perceptions of Ireland's past and present. This study locates the experience of ‘reading’ Ireland in the Irish College, Paris, at the intersection of seminal political changes in Ireland and France, the epicentre of European debate between religion and secularism and along the frontier of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The period 1870–1900 was denoted by compelling political, religious and social tensions in both Ireland and France. These years witnessed the emergence of mass politico-cultural mobilisation in Ireland through the Home Rule, Land League and Gaelic League movements. The Irish Catholic Church both embraced and eschewed these campaigns. These decades also marked the consolidation of the French Third Republic. France developed a constitutional democracy which emphasised republican secularism over religion, to the diminution of Catholic influence in public life. Moreover, this period also prompted rich debate over the role of the Church in the modern era. The First Vatican Council was established to situate the Catholic Church more definitively within a European society increasingly influenced by the ideas of rationalism, liberalism and materialism. Meanwhile, the period under review also offers an opportunity to weigh the impact of the Cullenite revolution, the Irish Church's instrumental, institutional conformity to Roman Catholic practices, devotions and doctrines, on an Irish religious community at the heart of an increasingly secular France. This study investigates the impact of these layered influences on interpretations of Ireland at the Irish College in Paris between its centenary and the end of century.

Scope and Content

The Old Library at the Irish College in Paris is an invaluable repository from which to elicit the nuances of Irish student perspectives of Ireland. The loss of its original collections during the French revolution necessitated the assembly and arrangement of new titles for the student population. What items were acquired in this re-collection process?