TY - CHAP
T1 - 'Universal Martyrdom': Resistance and Religion in 1650s Ireland
AU - Redmond, Joan
PY - 2021/11/12
Y1 - 2021/11/12
N2 - The 1650s was, by most measurements, a disaster for Irish Catholicism. The English Parliament’s conquest of Ireland was followed by widespread dispossession, dislocation and death, with the decade often characterised as one of great religious persecution. The Catholic clergy were especially hardly hit. Yet amidst this suffering, Irish Catholics sought not only to comprehend the devastation around them, but to defend and even strengthen their cause in the face of seeming disaster and the triumph of English Protestantism. To do this, they turned to the supernatural: to miracles wrought by martyrs, to the providential deaths of persecutors, and apparitions from the divine. These stories not only shored up a dispirited and beleaguered faith, but provided opportunities for Irish Catholics to criticise – and even mock – Protectorate policies. Miracles and other occurrences highlight the close connections between Catholic and Protestant vocabularies of violence, resistance and providence, even as these accounts also sought to place the Irish experience into a broader international context, one of persecution and survival, that established undoubtedly their righteousness and the justness of their cause.
AB - The 1650s was, by most measurements, a disaster for Irish Catholicism. The English Parliament’s conquest of Ireland was followed by widespread dispossession, dislocation and death, with the decade often characterised as one of great religious persecution. The Catholic clergy were especially hardly hit. Yet amidst this suffering, Irish Catholics sought not only to comprehend the devastation around them, but to defend and even strengthen their cause in the face of seeming disaster and the triumph of English Protestantism. To do this, they turned to the supernatural: to miracles wrought by martyrs, to the providential deaths of persecutors, and apparitions from the divine. These stories not only shored up a dispirited and beleaguered faith, but provided opportunities for Irish Catholics to criticise – and even mock – Protectorate policies. Miracles and other occurrences highlight the close connections between Catholic and Protestant vocabularies of violence, resistance and providence, even as these accounts also sought to place the Irish experience into a broader international context, one of persecution and survival, that established undoubtedly their righteousness and the justness of their cause.
KW - Ireland
KW - Violence
KW - Religion
KW - Cromwellian conquest
KW - Politics
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9780367767280
T3 - Themes in Medieval and Early Modern History
BT - Miracles, Political Authority and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern History
A2 - Rowley, Matthew
A2 - Hodgson, Natasha
PB - Routledge
ER -