Professionalization Abroad

Chapter 1 analyzes the profound importance of continental education in shaping the clerical leadership of Irish Catholicism in the Early Modern period. While not all clergy were educated abroad, formation in continental seminaries emerged as a key aspect of both the Catholic hierarchy and the guardians and preachers of the regular clergy. This system of clerical provision was based on the evolution of a somewhat haphazard network of continental colleges, but the decentralized nature of the system may in fact have conferred significant advantages. While impossible to determine the precise influence of this development, the evidence suggest that it was of profound importance in confirming the nature of the Catholic identity of most of the population.

The Established Church

Chapter 4 provides an overview of the role played by migration in creating the Church of Ireland and its body of adherents. It discusses the manner in which secular Protestants derived great benefit from their religion and the manner in which they came to emphasize religious ‘reliability’ as a touchstone of loyalty, and the central role of the rebellion of 1641 in developing Irish Protestants’ understanding of their situation and role in Ireland. The chapter demonstrates the profoundly migratory character of Early Modern Irish Protestantism and the manner in which its leadership was dominated primarily by British-born bishops and then secondarily by New English migrants, to the almost complete exclusion of figures of native provenance. As a result, both the church and its community acquired a migrant stamp which contributed to its evangelical inefficacy in Ireland.

Confessional Mobility of Secular Catholics

Chapter 3 analyzes how religion structured and inflected the migration and internal movement of Catholics. It explores the confessional dimension of the periodic exodus of large numbers of mercenary soldiers and the development of Catholic mercantile networks in exile. It also examines how famine and war resulted in displacement of large numbers of Irish Catholics, some of whom found refuge on the continent, but many of whom perished without record.

Continuities through Change, 1641–85

Chapter 2 analyzes the reorganization of Irish Catholicism after the massive disruption of the Cromwellian conquest and settlement. It argues that the leadership chosen to spearhead this movement continued to reflect an emphasis on continental formation and commitment to a post-Tridentine understanding of religious reform. While the Cromwellian period clearly represented a significant caesura in the effective functioning of the Catholic church in Ireland, it did not alter the basis outline of Catholic organization.

Conclusion

The Conclusion of this book argues that on a whole series of levels, different types of mobility proved profoundly influential in shaping the evolution of Ireland’s different confessional communities and identities. It also discusses the limitation of Irish source material in some respects, and the potential applicability of the theme of mobility to other areas of Europe and the world.

The Impact of Mobility on the Imagination of Protestant Identity

Chapter 9 argues that practically the entire corpus of Irish Protestant writing of the seventeenth century is susceptible to a reading as migrant literature. It offers a series of brief case studies of particular authors and texts to demonstrate the ubiquity of migrant experience in shaping this literary production. The chapter concentrates in particular on Sir John Temple’s The Irish Rebellion, arguing that this became the ur-text of Protestant identity in Ireland, and highlights the manner in which this book gave an enduring voice to the displaced refugees of the 1641 rebellion. Other authors discussed include Andrew Stewart the Presbyterian historian, John Vesey, and his portrayal of John Bramhall, Sir James Ware, and James Ussher.

Practices of Religious Mobility

Chapter 7 analyzes the importance of quotidian patterns of mobility in sustaining and elaborating confessional identities. Of central importance in this regard was regular Sabbath worship, and the decline of many non-conformist sects in the island can be linked to the sheer difficulties which they experienced in this regard post-1660. The chapter also argues that the different confessions produced particular rituals of mobility which helped both to buttress the sense of internal cohesion within the community and which operated as an important signifier of group identity to outsiders. In this regard, pilgrimage emerged as a key constituent of Catholic practice and experience, while Covenant-swearing and interparochial communions may have had a similar function for Ulster Presbyterians.

The Mobility of Protestant Dissent

Chapter 5 examines the establishment of non-conformist Protestantism in Early Modern Ireland, concentrating principally but not exclusively on Ulster Presbyterianism, by far and away the most significant of these groupings in terms of numbers and permanence within the religious ecology of the island. It demonstrates the almost entirely migrant provenance of these non-conformist communities and the transnational dimension of their ministerial provision. It also examines how traditions of mobility relating to Covenant-swearing and interparochial communion helped to sustain a distinctive religious identity and the manner in which the mobility of largely Scottish migrants provided the vector for the spread of Presbyterianism. The Interregnum proved a hinge point in the establishment of other forms of non-conformist Protestantism, but their importance largely diminished in the course of the Restoration, although a distinctive Irish Quaker community managed to spread in the island during this period.

Migrant Consciousness and Catholic Confessional Identity Texts

Chapter 8 argues that migrants and exiles played a critical role in the elaboration of notions of Catholic identity in Ireland. It concentrates in particular on three authors from the early seventeenth-century—Peter Lombard, David Rothe, and Philip O’Sullivan Beare—who helped develop the notion that the Irish population was inherently Catholic and inscribed this idea in a particular delineation of history in which St Patrick and medieval Irish saints figured prominently. Close analysis of these texts reveal the profound influence of exilic experience on the writing of these various authors, and the ideas which they put forward came to exert an enduring influence on the self-understanding of Irish Catholics.

Introduction

This is a book about the intersection between processes of mobility and religious identity and practice in Early Modern Ireland. The period between c.1580 and c.1685 was one of momentous importance in terms of the establishment of different confessional identities in the island, and processes of mobility played a key role in the development, articulation, and maintenance of separate religious communities. Part I of the book examines the dialectic between migration and religious adherence, paying particular attention to the transnational dimension of clerical formation which played a vital role in shaping the competing Catholic Church of Ireland and non-conformist clergies. Part II investigates how more quotidian practices of mobility such as pilgrimage and interparochial communions helped to elaborate religious identities and the central role of figurative images of movement in structuring Christians’ understanding of their lives. The final chapters of the book analyze the extraordinary importance of migratory experience in shaping the lives and writings of the authors of key confessional identity texts. The book argues that migrants and exiles, hitherto underestimated or taken for granted, were of crucial significance in forging the self-understanding of the different religious communities of the island.