Ireland Flashcards
Who queries whether there even was a ‘Reformation in Ireland’ or an ‘Irish Reformation’?
Bottigheimer
What does ‘Reformation’ denote?
The suppression of Roman authority and the acceptance of Protestant liturgies and theologies
What is Bottigheimer’s overarching argument about the Irish Reformation?
There was an attempt in Ireland, but in the most conventional sense it failed
Who challenges who for suggesting that the Reformation took longer to fail in Ireland than is usually thought?
Bradshaw challenges Canny
What does Bradshaw argue about the Irish Reformation?
That it is wrong to argue that it failed eventually (as opposed to rapidly) or narrowly (as opposed to decisively)
Who compares the Irish Reformation to the Welsh?
Bradshaw
Who thinks that Bradshaw’s challenge of revisionism has gone too far?
Bottigheimer
What does Bottigheimer see as decisive in the Irish Reformation?
The alignment of political forces and the degree to which religious heterodoxy served or hindered the agenda of a local prince/elite
Who sees Protestant printing in Ireland as exhibiting a siege mentality?
Boran
Which two historians have argued that ultimately Irish resistance to the Reformation was not unusual?
Bottigheimer and Lotz-Heumann
Why does Murray think the Englishry of the Pale rejected Protestantism and the Reformation?
Saw reform movement as irreconcilable with Palesman’s traditional english culture and medieval Catholic identity
How does Murray view the actions of English deputies in Ireland?
Interventionist - abandoned a persuasive strategy long before Bradshaw argues
What hinders any study of the Irish reformation?
Dearth of sources - absence of churchwardens’ accounts and lack of visitation records - thus reliance on State papers
What were the most obvious features of pre-Reformation Catholicism in Ireland?
Rural and abject poverty
What was one major problem with the prevailing poverty of churches in Ireland?
Difficult to serve large and sprawling parishes
What was distinctive about the type of clergy in Ireland?
Increasingly common for sons of priests and bishops to follow fathers in profession
Out of what did superstition grow?
Low levels of learning in Gaelic society - not irrational superstition, but accorded with needs of a non-literate and pre-industrial society
What had revived in Ireland before the Reformation?
Mendicant orders e.g. Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians
What shows the strength of the orders in Ireland?
Reportedly feared and even adored by nobles
What were in steep decline by the Reformation?
Monastic orders
How many communities had 6 monks or more?
Six
What had the Gaelic Church been castigated for?
Pervasive secularisation and failure to observe canonical norms esp. regarding marriage and sexuality
What suggests a pre-Reformation religious recovery?
Increased number of lay confraternities and third order groups. Growing number of chantries founded and lay inevstment in church
What else can we read into improvements in church-life before the Reformation?
Increased prosperity and political stability
Who defended and preserved the English ecclesiastical order and canonical rectitude? What was this in line with?
Dean Aleyn, Laudabiliter
What did St Leger try to persuade the senior clergy of?
That the royal supremacy was compatible with the essential elements of their religious and cultural ethos
What about St Leger’s background meant he was willing to be conciliatory and follow modest reofmr?
Erasmian humanist
How does St Leger’s background contrast with later deputies? Who argues this?
Militant Calvinists who foloowed aggressive campaign methods. Murray
What did Protestantism become in Ireland?
“Faith of the Ascendancy”
What fraction were Catholic?
3/4
Where was opposition to Reformation legislation more muted than in England?
Grey’s Parliament
What did the Commons reject a bill for? After what did opposition collapse?
To dissolve 13 monasteries
Concessions from the king
When did the Irish enact ecclesiastical legislation?
September 1537
When did the evangelical phase of the Henrician Reformation end? What did this reinforce?
May 1539 - 6 articles
Transubstantiation, communion under 1 species, private masses clerical celibacy
When was there action against images?
1539
When did the Irish Parliament pass the Act of Uniformity?
1560
What proviso did the Irish Act of Uniformity include?
Church functionaries who did not know English could conduct services in Latin
What did spiritual renewal go hand in hand with?
Anglicization and military conquest
What explains the jurisdictional success of the Henrician Reformation in Ireland?
Continuity and innate loyalty of the colonial community
Who was the authoritarian Bishop of Dublin?
George Browne
Who advocated progress by consent, explanation and education?
Bishop Staples of Meath
In how many dioceses did Henry receive recognition? How?
24/32
From pre-Reformation bishops, by successfully nominating bishops himself, or confirming later papal provisos
Where was the campaign confined to before 1541?
Pale, Wexford, Ormond, royal towns
What did Browne move to try and achieve?
From outward conformity to more positive acceptance of royal supremacy
How many recusants were there in Welsh dioceses by 1603?
803
When did the English parliament authorise a Welsh Bible and when was it completed? When were the scriptures translated into Welsh?
1563
1588
1563
How can the Observant movement be described in Ireland?
Numerous, widely dispersed, pastorally dynamic, respected by the laity of all degrees and well attuned to vernacular as mode of evangelisation
What does Bradshaw argue is the most important reason for the failure of the Reformation?
Success of Observant movement
What about the observants made their policy so successful, according to Bradshaw?
Rooted Tridentine Roman Catholicism in the cultural hertiage
What Observant friars in particular played a prominent role in Ireland?
Franciscans
What is the flaw in Bradshaw’s stress on the impact and role of the Observants?
Observant reforms in other parts of Europe equated with resistance to Catholicism e.g. Luther product of an observant house
What does Bottigheimer argue is central to the survival of the Observant orders? How does he view this?
Lassitude and inefficiency of the dissolution of the religious orders. An effect rather than cause of Reformation’s failure
Whose role does Bradshaw also think was important?
Local elites - esp given lack of a paid bureaucracy
On what grounds does Bradshaw challenge Bottigheimer’s view of the elites?
That they were exclusively concerned with material interests
What made elites vulnerable to a properly coordinated campaign?
Intellectually isolated
What system had enabled colonial lords to recruit and maintain private armies, making them ‘entrenched warlords’?
Coyne and livery
How can Ireland be viewed relative to England?
Ireland as a representation of England i.e. that English representations of Ireland were in fact representations of England also
What does Ellis see as a “terrible mistake and failure inevitable”?
Attempt to apply traditional English strategies of law and government to non-English people
What claimed that the ancient British monarchs would liberate the Welsh?
Barbic prophecy
What ideology took root within the colonial community in the 15th century?
Separatist ideology which asserted the autonomy of the Irish lordship
Who have stressed that unlike in Scotland, the Irish Reformation was a colonial import, rather than an indigenous movement?
Boran and Gribben
Who tried to promote a moderate version of the English Reformation, only to be hindered by vested interests preventing implementation?
Sir Henry Sidney
What determined the government’s ability to enforce ecclesiastical reforms?
Value of benefices and size of parishes
What were far less valuable in Ireland and what was the significance of this?
Benefices; meant that clerical talent was more likely to be thinly spread, since better qualified clergy would gravitate towards wealthier dioceses/leave for England
What were the reasons for the lack of evident anti-clericalism or anti-papalism?
Secularism, ignorance and popular indifference
What made it less likely that a “national opposition” would develop?
Real differences in religious life between the lordship’s more settled parts and Gaelic Ireland?
Where was an irish Franciscan college set up? When was a catechism first published by one of its graduates?
Louvain
1611
What papal bull had given England rule in Ireland, and the duty of enforcing Gregorian reforms?
1155 Laudabiliter
Who has shown that there was a papal bull re. Ireland in 1555, which was the result of “local and clerically based initiative”?
Murray
Who has stressed the divergence of views between London and Dublin between 1603-33?
Ford
When does Barnard see Irish Protestantism as becoming irreparably fragmented?
Mid-17th century wars
Who argues that 1641 was a turning point for sectarian strife?
Gillespie
What form does Bottigheimer see political resistance as taking?
Patriotism and precocious longing for national sovereignty
What does Bottigheimer criticise?
Essentialist agendas which emphasise what is distinctive about the Irish experience and minimises/overlooks what is shared with other parts of Europe
Who have shown that the Old English were neither unanimous nor precipitous about changing national allegiance?
Clark and Ellis
