Abstract
This is a very impressive history of an Irish diocese. Liam Kelly is to be warmly congratulated on presenting such a strikingly detailed and convincing account of the Catholic Church in an extensive part of Ireland during a turbulent period from which no diocesan archive has survived. He has succeeded in mastering and deploying an unexpectedly significant volume of evidence, much of it garnered, edited, and published by generations of scholars, to produce a book that offers important insights into the religious and social history of the people in one diocese in Ireland over seven centuries. It also offers a template for future studies of the Church in other dioceses whose archives are so fragmentary that the prospects of writing their history might have seemed impossible—until now.
The diocese of Kilmore encompasses County Cavan and much of County Leitrim. Fr Kelly traces the formation of the diocese as part of the 12th-century reforms. The story is told in greater detail than one might have expected thanks to the involvement of Tighearnán Mór Ó Ruairc and his wife, Derbforgaill, two of the most remarkable individuals in the long history of Bréifne. Kelly illustrates his discussion with colour photographs of the Romanesque doorway at Kilmore cathedral, and the Bréifne crozier, which were contemporaneous with the formation of the diocese. In fact, the book as a whole is illustrated with almost 60 photographs, many of which are visually striking and all of which enhance the text very considerably.
The later middle ages are a challenging period for Irish church historians because of the nature of the evidence that survives, yet Kelly succeeds in providing a more detailed picture of the medieval diocese of Kilmore than was ever achieved before. His chapter on ‘Kilmore on the eve of the Reformation’ is particularly interesting and important because he highlights a great wealth of local manifestations of the religious revival that has recently been discovered in other parts of late medieval Ireland. He concludes that, ‘when one considers all the church building, the establishment of the diocesan cathedral and chapter in 1455, the developments of the Franciscan friaries of Cavan and Creevelea, the explosion in devotional writing and vernacular lives of the saints and the work of individuals like [Bishop] Thomas MacBradaigh and William O’Reilly [the first Gaelic minister provincial of the Franciscans], it become clear that the Church was vibrant and that reform was already well underway within the diocese in the decades before Henry VIII split with Rome’ [p. 186].
Kelly succeeds is conveying something of the confusion caused by the extension of the Tudor Reformations to Ireland. He quotes the Armada survivor, Francisco de Cuellar, writing that ‘the great majority of their churches, monasteries and hermitages have been demolished at the hands of the English … and made them drinking places for cows and pigs.’ In one monastery de Cuellar found a ‘church and images of the saints burned and completely ruined, and twelve Spaniards hanging within the church by an act of the Lutheran English’ (p. 200). Nonetheless, Kelly highlights the stories of a number of men who were born in the diocese around the mid-16th century and went on to be stalwarts of the Counter-Reformation, including Eoghan Ó Dubhthaigh, OFM, who was praised for preaching around Ireland ‘like an apostle’ by his contemporary, Archbishop Dermot O’Hurley of Cashel, who was tortured and executed by the English in 1584, (p. 215), and Conn O’Rourke, OFM, and Patrick O’Healy, OFM, who were also executed by the English. Key to the survival of Catholicism in Kilmore was yet another Franciscan, Richard Brady, bishop of Kilmore (1580–1607), who vigorously oversaw the ministry of the Church across the diocese despite the wish of English officials to ‘make an example’ of him.
This book looks at the establishment of Church of Ireland diocese of Kilmore in tandem with the Ulster plantation. From its inception it was staffed by British clergymen, who ministered to congregations drawn from England and Scotland. Some local priests were allowed to keep their benefices until such time as they could be replaced by Protestant ministers. Of the six local men who held benefices in 1617 one, Nicholas O’Gowan, was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and most probably a Protestant. He subsequently changed his name to ‘Nicholas Smith,’ a reflection, perhaps, of the English character of the Jacobean Church of Ireland. As for the Irish people, Kelly quotes Alan Ford’s judgement that the ‘main interest’ of many of the British ministers was to exploit them as a source of ‘income from tithes and dues’ (p. 252).
The main story in this book, however, is the resilience of Catholicism in Kilmore thanks to the sacrifices made by its members—lay men and women as well as clergy. Despite being proscribed by the crown, and deprived of its churches, real estates, and its claim to tithes which were transferred to the Church of Ireland, a network of Mass houses was established across the diocese from early in the 17th century, with priests to minister to the parishioners around them. That network was destroyed under the aegis of Cromwell and again under William of Orange. Priests were imprisoned, and exiled or killed, yet the ministry of the Catholic Church was maintained even in the most shocking circumstances. This book tells the stories of quite a number of individuals of courage and conviction, such as Charles Meehan, OFM, who was hanged by crown officials, then revived before being castrated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered in 1678 after declaring that ‘he wished to be a good priest and would die on it’ (p. 370). Yet mostly Kelly tells the story of ordinary people maintaining their faith in extraordinary times.
Liam Kelly has demonstrated what an outstanding historian can achieve. His book should not sit only on the shelves of ‘church historians.’ It ought to be read by anyone interested in Ireland’s past, in the story of its people, their lives, their beliefs, and the forces that shaped them. Kelly reminds us of experiences that were crucial in making the people of Ireland who they were.