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The Tridentine Evolution of Modern Irish Catholicism, 1563–1962: A Re-examination of the ‘Devotional Revolution’ Thesis1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Thomas G. McGrath
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Extract

Professor Emmet Larkin of the University of Chicago is undoubtedly the most prolific historian of nineteenth century Irish Catholicism. The author of numerous volumes on the period 1850–91 and of several challenging essays he is perhaps best known for his original, stimulating and provocative article entitled ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–75’ published in 1972. In that article Professor Larkin put forward the thesis that Archbishop Paul Cullen championed the consolidation of a ‘devotional revolution’ in post-Famine Ireland. Up to the 1840s, he claimed, there was only a small but perceptible change and increase in devotional practices in Ireland. The effects of the Famine were seen by him as the key to this ‘devotional revolution, bringing about a dramatic improvement in the ratio of priests to people through the death or emigration of the disadvantaged who were in any case disinterested in religion and least amenable to clerical control. Indeed ‘what achievement there was before the famine… was largely confined to that “respectable” class of Catholics typified by the Cullens and Mahers in Carlow who were economically better off’. The advent of the reforming Paul Cullen as papal legate to the Synod of Thurles, 1850, and subsequently as archbishop of the most important see, Dublin, from where he organised the church in an ultramontane fashion and introduced many Italian devotional practices to Ireland, coupled with the consequences of the Famine, had a decisive effect in shaping Irish Catholicism and accomplishing a post-Famine ‘devotional revolution’.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 512 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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Footnotes

1

This article is based on a paper read at a seminar in Armagh on 10 March, 1990 on the current state of ecclesiastical history in Ireland to mark the sesquicentenary of the laying of the foundation stone of Armagh Catholic Cathedral and subsequently printed by the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society in Ó MuiríRéamonn (ed.); Irish Church History Today (Armagh, 1991).

References

Notes

2 Larkin, Emmet ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–1875’ in American Historical Review, 88, no. 3 (June, 1972), pp. 625–52,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. p. 627.

3 Ibidem, p. 639.

4 Ibidem, p. 625.

5 See also where Larkin inquires ‘Why did the Irish people respond so readily to the reform of their church and become virtually practising Catholics within a generation’ (p. 648); ‘…the Irish people were transformed as a people—men and women alike—into practising Catholics’ (p. 651); ‘Most of the two million Irish who emigrated between 1847 and 1860 were part of the pre-famine generation of nonpractising Catholics, if indeed they were Catholics at all’ (p. 651).

6 Connolly, S. J., Religion and Society in Nineteenth Century Ireland (Dundalk, 1985), p. 67.Google Scholar

7 Miller, D. W., ‘Irish Catholicism and the Great Famine’ in Journal of Social History, 9, 1 (1975), pp. 81–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Miller, D. W., ‘Irish Catholicism and the Historian’ in Irish Economic and Social History, 13, (1986), p. 116 fn. 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 See introduction, unpaginated, to Larkin, Emmet, The Historical Dimensions of Irish Catholicism (New York, 1976)Google Scholar.

10 Hynes, Eugene, ‘The great hunger and Irish Catholicism’ in Societas, 8, no. 2 (Spring, 1978), pp. 137–56.Google Scholar

11 Connolly, S. J., Priests and People in Pre-famine Ireland, 1780–1845 (Dublin, 1982)Google Scholar.

12 Ibidem, p. 98; see also p. 273 and his Religion and Society in Nineteenth Century Ireland, p. 54.

13 Connolly, , Priests and People, pp. 271–2.Google Scholar

14 Keenan, Desmond J., The Catholic Church in Nineteenth Century Ireland (Dublin, 1983), p. 2.Google Scholar

15 Ibidem, pp. 243, 252.

16 Kerr, Donal A., Peel, Priests and Politics (Oxford, 1982), p. 51 Google Scholar; see also his ‘Under the Union Flag: The Catholic Church in Ireland, 1800–1870’ in Ireland after the Union (Proceedings of the second joint meeting of the Royal Irish Academy and the British Academy; Oxford, 1989), p. 38.

17 See introduction to a new edition of Larkin, Emmet, The Historical Dimensions of Irish Catholicism (Washington, 1984)Google Scholar. The term ‘new orthodoxy’ was used by M. A. G. Ó Tuathaigh in his contribution ‘Ireland, 1800–1921’ to Lee, Joseph (ed.), Irish Historiography, 1970–1979 (Dublin, 1981), p. 102.Google Scholar

18 Connolly, S. J., Religion and Society in Nineteenth Century Ireland (Dundalk, 1985), p. 58.Google Scholar

19 Hoppen, K. T., Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland, 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1984), p. 197 Google Scholar; see also the same author’s Ireland since 1800 (London, 1989), p. 69.

20 Larkin, , ‘Devotional Revolution’, p. 627.Google Scholar

21 Ibidem, pp. 627–630. ‘The principal vices among the clergy were drunkenness, women and avarice’ (p. 632). See also Larkin, Emmet. ‘The Problem of Irish Clerical Avarice in the Nineteenth Century’ in Eire-Ireland, 24 (Fall, 1989), pp. 33–41.Google Scholar

22 Bolster, Evelyn, A History of the Diocese of Cork: from the Penal Era to the Famine (Cork, 1989), p. 172.Google Scholar

23 Bishop Plunkett to Propaganda Fide, Rome, 6 February 1826 in Archives of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, Rome, Scritture riferite nei congressi, Irlanda, vol. 24, 579–584 (On microfilm in the National Library of Ireland, pos. 5418).

24 Bishop Doyle to Propaganda Fide, Rome, 13 May 1829 in Archives of the Congregation of PropagandaFide, Rome, Scritture riferite nei congressi, Irlanda, vol. 25,160–161 (On microfilm in NLI, pos. 5419).

25 Kerr, Donal A., ‘James Browne, Bishop of Kilmore, 1829–65’ in Breifne, 6, no. 22 (1983–4), pp. 109–154 Google Scholar at p. 133.

26 Larkin, , ‘Devotional Revolution’, pp. 635–6 Google Scholar; Miller, D. W. ‘Irish Catholicism and the Great Famine’ in Journal of Social History, 9, 1 (1975), pp. 81–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 See Corish, Patrick J., The Catholic Community in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Dublin, 1981), pp. 107–8 Google Scholar; and also The Irish Catholic Experience (Dublin, 1985), pp. 166–7.

28 Miller, D. W., ‘Irish Catholicism and the Historian’ in Irish Economic and Social History, 13, (1986), p. 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Corish, Patrick J., Catholic Community, p. 110 Google Scholar; Ó Laoghaire, Diarmuid, Ár bPaidreacha Ducháis (Dublin, 1975)Google Scholar; Carleton, William, Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (Dublin, 1841)Google Scholar.

30 Larkin, , ‘Devotional Revolution’, p. 638.Google Scholar

31 McGrath, Thomas G., Religious Renewal and Reform in the Pastoral Ministry of James Doyle, O.S.A., Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, 1819–1834 (NUI, Ph.D., 1987), pp. 273–96.Google Scholar

32 Ibidem, pp. 240–72.

33 Larkin, , ‘Devotional Revolution’, p. 636 Google Scholar; Keenan, Desmond J., The Catholic Church in Nineteenth Century Ireland (Dublin, 1983), pp. 115–124 Google Scholar; McGrath, Thomas G., Religious Renewal and Reform, pp. 108–122 Google Scholar; Whelan, Kevin, ‘The Catholic Parish, the Catholic Chapel and Village Development in Ireland’ in Irish Geography, 16 (1983), pp. 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Larkin, , ‘Devotional Revolution’, pp. 644–5.Google Scholar

35 Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire, ‘Mary in Irish Spirituality’ in Maher, Michael (ed.), Irish Spirituality (Dublin, 1981), p. 54 Google Scholar; Corish, , Catholic Community, p. 108.Google Scholar

36 Donal A. Kerr, ‘The Early Nineteenth Century: Patterns of Change’ in Malier, (ed.), Irish Spirituality, p. 140.Google Scholar

37 Corish, , Catholic Community, p. 89.Google Scholar

38 Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire, ‘Mary in Irish spirituality’ in Maher, (ed.), Irish Spirituality, pp. 47–56 Google Scholar; Corish, , Catholic Community, p. 108.Google Scholar

39 Fearghus Ó Fearghail, ‘The Catholic Church in County Kilkenny, 1600–1800’ in Nolan, William, Whelan, Kevin (ed.), Kilkenny: History and Society (Dublin, 1990), p. 211.Google Scholar

40 See article 26 of ‘An Act for the Relief of His Majesty’s Roman Catholic Subjects’ quoted in Norman, E. R., Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London, 1968), p. 137.Google Scholar

41 Larkin, , ‘Devotional Revolution’, p. 649.Google Scholar

42 Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Seathrún Céitinn (c. 1580–c. 1644): an cúlra stairiüil’ in Dúchas (Dublin, 1986), pp. 56–68; John Bossy, ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Ireland, 1596–1641’ in Williams, T. D. (ed.), Historical Studies, 8, (Dublin, 1971), p. 171.Google Scholar

43 Historical geographer Professor William J. Smyth has noted that ‘John O’Donovan’s Ordinance Survey letters are full of the stories of the early Irish saints, monks and bishops that impressed themselves so deeply on the topographies and the minds of the people of pre-Norman Kilkenny’. See his ‘Territorial, Social and Settlement Hierarchies in Seventeenth Century Kilkenny’ in Nolan, William, Whelan, Kevin (ed.), Kilkenny: History and Society (Dublin, 1990), p. 134 Google Scholar. On the idea of Catholicism’s association with holy places see Davis, Natalie Z., ‘The Sacred and Body Social in Sixteenth Century Lyon’ in Past and Present, 90(1981), pp. 40–70 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A European perspective on the Tridentine impact on popular culture can be approached through the following works and their bibliographies: Burke, Peter, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Davis, Natalie Z., Society and Culture in Early Modern France (London, 1975)Google Scholar; longer term views can be found in Delumeau, Jean, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire (London, 1978)Google Scholar and Bossy, John, Christianity in the West 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar.

44 See John Bossy, ‘The Counter-Reformation and the People of Catholic Ireland, 1596–1641’, p. 165; Colm Lennon, ‘The Counter-Reformation in Ireland, 1542–1641’ in Brady, Ciaran and Gillespie, Raymond (ed.), Natives and Newcomers (Dublin, 1986), p. 89 Google Scholar; Fearghus Ó Fearghail, ‘The Catholic Church in County Kilkenny, 1600–1800’, pp. 206–207.

45 See Patrick J. Corish, ‘Two Centuries of Catholicism in County Wexford’ in Whelan, Kevin, Nolan, William (ed.), Wexford: History and Society (Dublin, 1987), p. 244 Google Scholar; and also his The Irish Catholic Experience (Dublin, 1985), pp. 254–55.