The Most Traversed Bridge: A Reconsideration of Elite and Popular Religion in Late Medieval Ireland

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 120-129
Author(s):  
Salvador Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Medieval Ireland

Recent years have witnessed the study of late medieval religion change and develop almost beyond recognition. In particular, the phenomenon of ‘popular’ or ‘traditional’ religion has increasingly been placed under the microscope. A succession of studies has questioned the view that an unbridgeable chasm existed between the religious sensibilities of the privileged echelons of society (the higher clergy and members of the nobility) and those of the lower social orders. The apparent sea-change in our understanding of how many expressions of belief and devotion were shared across a wide social spectrum has led, however, to more questions than answers.

Historical revisit: Mythistory and the making of Ireland: Alice Stopford Green's undoing

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (166) ◽  
pp. 349-373
Author(s):  
Angus Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Transnational Networks ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
National Tradition ◽  
United Front ◽  
Medieval Ireland ◽  
Historical Practice

AbstractThe publication in 1908 of The making of Ireland and its undoing, 1200–1600 by the London-based Irish historian, Alice Stopford Green, provoked a controversy that reveals much about the deepening political tensions at the heart of historical practice in the decade before 1916. Stopford Green took a deliberately controversial approach to the rewriting of medieval Ireland that triggered a bombardment of both positive and negative reactions. Supporters of Irish home rule applauded the work for its innovative analysis and contemporary relevance. But the book elicited a flurry of exasperation from a united front of ‘history men’, who dismissed Stopford Green and her work as ‘political’ and largely fictitious. Anticipating the reaction from a profession that was predominantly sympathetic to a unionist interpretation, Stopford Green had a well-prepared plan that harnessed both her gender and her transnational networks of influence to maximise the dissemination of her radical reimagining of the late medieval Gaelic world. By understanding these deeper strategies of defiance, Alice Stopford Green's history might be reclaimed as a key intervention in the structuring of both Ireland's national tradition and collective consciousness in preparation for independence.

The Nativity of Christ

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linden Bicket
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Fine Art ◽  
Late Medieval

This chapter explores Brown’s depiction of the babe of Bethlehem in his winter ‘homilies’, or festive journalism. The chapter examines Brown’s fusion of the folkloric and magical rituals of late medieval popular religion with the modern short story form. It outlines Brown’s knowledge of nativity poetry, fine art, and drama, and studies the ways in which he inserts these earlier traditions into his nativity poetry and prose. It focuses especially on the Eucharistic implications of Brown’s nativity poetry.

Traditional Religion, Popular Piety, or Base Superstition? The Cause for the Beatification of Teresa Higginson

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Davies
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Great Flexibility ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Shared Beliefs ◽  
Religious System ◽  
The People ◽  
The Relationship

Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars has reinvigorated the debate over the nature of late mediaeval religious practice and belief, examining the ‘richness and complexity of the religious system by which men and women structured their experiences of the world, and their hopes and aspirations within and beyond it.’ Duffy questions the assumption that there was in that period a wide gulf between ‘popular’ and ‘élite’ religion. In so doing he has not only illuminated the religious practices and beliefs of late mediaeval England but he has stimulated discussion about the relationship between ‘popular’ and ‘élite’ religion in other periods. Duffy eschews the use of the term ‘popular religion’, which he argues carries questionable assumptions about the nature of ‘non-popular’ religion and about the gap between the two. He prefers ‘traditional religion’, on the grounds that it does greater justice to ‘the shared and inherited character of the religious beliefs and practices of the people…’ ‘Traditional religion’ while being rooted in inherited and shared beliefs was, nevertheless, capable of great flexibility and variety.

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