Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons,eds,The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities,1600–1800

Reviewed by: Eamon Darcy, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

The events of 4 September 1607, when two leading Irish nobles Rory O’Donnell and Hugh O’Neill left Ireland and fled to Europe, proved a pivotal turning point in Irish history. From an English colonial perspective it freed vast sections of Irish land for appropriation; yet, when looking from the Continent, their migration, called the ‘Flight of the Earls’, emphasized links between Irish Catholics and their co-religionists in Europe. This collection of essays seeks to use this event as a lens through which we can view the experience, perception and shaping of Irish people, their outlook and their identities in the early modern period.

The first section – entitled ‘The Labyrinth of Baroque Europe’ – sketches the sometimes frosty and insincere receptions the earls received as they travelled the Continent. Joseph Bergin blames wider European issues of state building and confessionalization for their treatment. Colm Lennon teases this argument out by retracing the diplomatic struggles between England and Spain over the earls. In the face of such pressures, how did they lobby European powers for support? Leading figures, most notably Hugh O’Neill – the earl of Tyrone – spoke openly of their desire to defend the Catholic Church in Ireland. Religious persecution, however, was only one factor in the spectrum of causes of migration from Ireland (and Scotland). Chapters by David Edwards, Steve Murdock and Richard Marks (although this chapter is confusingly placed in a section entitled ‘Self Preservation and Refashioning’) show the range of reasons why Irish and Scottish people went to Europe.

Section II, ‘Making the Irish Catholic’, begins with Bruno Boute’s chapter and shows how Peter Lombard (the newly appointed archbishop of Armagh) had actively supported Hugh O’Neill’s armed insurrection in the name of the Catholic faith in the 1590s; however, recognizing that this rather militant policy did not fit Paul V’s views on Anglo-Papal relations, Lombard performed a volte-face and subsequently proposed a more moderate path for the toleration of Catholicism in Ireland. Without doubt, wider European politics shaped events and causes pursued in Ireland, a theme discussed throughout the book. European concerns with Catholic and Jesuit education after the Council of Trent also shaped the curricula implemented in various Irish colleges on the Continent, and some evidence has survived that helps us recapture Irishmen’s experiences there. One chapter provides a list of materials related to Ireland in the Strahov Abbey Library in Prague, while another details the painstaking process through which the Irish college in Salamanca was slowly constructed into a defined campus. An interesting piece by L. W. B. Brockliss makes some important caveats, however. Despite the radical changes in clerical education Brockliss downplays the influence of these continentally trained clerics in Ireland, first suggesting that many Irish priests had never visited the Continent, and secondly, that those who had rarely wanted to return. Finally, Brockliss points out that French Jesuit teachers in the light of peasant opposition subsequently dropped their attempts to educate the laity and argues that this too may have been the case in Ireland. His chapter is more suggestive than demonstrative, but provides some food for thought.

The third section, ‘Ireland in the baroque imagination’ shows how the wider Continent was aware of the heated religious climate in Ireland. A mural in a Benedictine church in Germany commemorated the massacre of Benedictine monks in a Limerick monastery during the Desmond rebellions. These German Benedictines drew parallels between their own experience and the religious persecutions experienced in Ireland during the 1570s and 1580s. One Irishman, Walter Butler, would gain notoriety for the portrayal of his role in the assassination of Albrecht von Wallenstein, duke of Friedland in Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy of 1799.

The fourth section, ‘Self-preservation and Refashioning’, inter alia details social attitudes invested in the Irish and Latin languages (Gráinne Mac Laughlin) and shows how exiled poets drew upon memories of Ireland on the Continent (Ruairí Ó hUiginn). The main emphasis throughout this section is that Irishmen had a distinctive European identity that was both a product of, and an attempt to break away from the troubles of the Atlantic Archipelago. For example, Jason Harris’s article shows that Scottish authors on the Continent appropriated Ireland’s reputation as the island of saints and scholars for their own homeland, thereby illustrating the vibrant European dimension to Irish history.

This book is not without its faults, however. Like any edited collection of essays, some chapters are stronger than others. That said, it brings a fresh perspective to key themes of Irish history and not just to the causes and course of the flight of the earls. Consequently, the title of the book is problematic; perhaps it should have been Refashioning Irish Identities in Europe, 1600–1800. This book discusses much more than the Ulster earls, and contextualizes the experience of Irish (and Scottish) men on the Continent within the wider issues of European intellectual and political developments. There is a hint in this volume that the tired Anglo-Irish prism that discusses the ‘civilizing’ of Ireland should be viewed within wider European intellectual and political developments. Recent years have produced book titles such as Making Ireland British and Making Ireland English, one wonders could there be an argument for Making Ireland European? Nonetheless, The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe is a riveting collection of essays that greatly enriches our understanding of early modern Ireland and Europe.