The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland

Description

Ireland is riven by sectarian hatred. This simple assumption provides a powerful explanation for the bitterness and violence which has so dominated Irish history. Most notably, the troubles in Northern Ireland have provided fertile ground for scholars from all disciplines to argue about and explore ways in which religious division fueled the descent into hostility and disorder. In much of this literature, however, sectarianism is seen as, somehow, a 'given' in Irish history, an inevitable product of the clash of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, something which sprang fully-formed into existence in the sixteenth century. In this book leading historians provide the first detailed analysis of the ways in which rival confessions were developed in early modern Ireland, the extent to which the Irish people were indeed divided into two religious camps by the mid-seventeenth-century, and also their surprising ability to transcend such stark divisions.

Alan Ford is Professor of Theology at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of The Protestant Reformation (1997) and editor, with James Maguire and Kenneth Milne, of As by Law Established: The Church of Ireland since the Reformation (1995). John McCafferty is Director of the Micheal O Cleirigh Institute at University College Dublin. He has published articles on late medieval and early modern Ireland.

'This is a most welcome collection that adds new and refreshing insights into the complex and many-layered history of Ireland in this period.' Contemporary Review 'Unexpected but illuminating comparisons are made with, for example, Transylvania and the Balkans ... Welcome, too, is the use of European intellectual currents - Weber and Durkheim - to comprehend Irish experiences ... ideas of sectarianism and confessionalisation originated among scholars seeking to make better sense of what happened in Germany ... same forces animating and sometimes dividing the post-Tridentine Church agitated Ireland ... the collection, mining rich materials, offers much to ponder.' Journal of Ecclesiastical History