An Irish Reformation

[EvolvedSaurian]

Alright, what are the possibilities for Ireland going Anglican or Protestant in during the Reformation? I can think of two ideas off-hand: Either a mass conversion to the Church of Ireland or a reformer similar to and perhaps inspired by Knox.

Anyone know of any events that might cause one or both of these things to happen? Effects thereof? What would a non-Catholic Ireland be like culturally?

For the purposes of this WI, disregard plantings as options.

 

[Thande]

The problem is with the state of society in the Catholic parts of Ireland: you had a rich landowning class, and those intelligent and aspirational members it produced mostly went to England because that meant they could get real political power or arts/sciences patronage; you had the Catholic Church, which was very powerful; and you had a very uneducated peasant class who largely relied on the local priest for both literacy and views of the outside world.

Which is basically why English and British authorities had this worry (even after education and social mobility in Ireland had actually improved years later) that if the Pope said 'X' then all the Irish peasantry would do exactly what their local priest said and jump to it.

That's not really the kind of society that lends itself well to Protestantism. It would be like trying to do it in, say, the south of Italy, or Poland perhaps.

On the other hand, an Anglo-Catholic (or rather Hiberno-Catholic) national church, like the early Anglican Church under Henry VIII, is a possibility. The only way I can see that happening is if Henry VIII made Ireland a separate kingdom under his illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy, as he planned at one point, and then FitzRoy follows his dad's lead. The problem would be centralising power over the clergy, given the problems of communication in Ireland in this period.

 

[EvolvedSaurian]

On the other hand, an Anglo-Catholic (or rather Hiberno-Catholic) national church, like the early Anglican Church under Henry VIII, is a possibility. The only way I can see that happening is if Henry VIII made Ireland a separate kingdom under his illegitimate son Henry FitzRoy, as he planned at one point, and then FitzRoy follows his dad's lead. The problem would be centralising power over the clergy, given the problems of communication in Ireland in this period.

Okay, now that's an interesting idea. So if FitzRoy'd lived longer, the crowns would have separated? Seems odd, even if Wiki is right in Hank the Eighth doting on his only recognized son. Of course, the English crown would've reverted to FitzRoy upon his father's death...

What can realistically be done to improve communications? Would the Irish accept FitzRoy as King?

This is one of the more interesting ideas I've heard in a while.

And, as an aside, didn't Poland nearly go Protestant for a time? It was borderline, IIRC.

 

[DJB001]

On FitzRoy...

FitzRoy as king would be a figurehead at best...His father wouldn't give him enough power/resources to make it stick; the Anglo-Irish magnates would accept fitzRoy as long as he didn't actually try to be king; and the Gaelic lords would simply ignore the whole thing until someone arrived on thier doorstep with an army to force an obesience (Then they go back to ignoring the whole thing until the army came back a few years later).

Any power he had would be totally dependent on the good will of the Anglo lords of the Pale and, more to the point, the earls of Kildare, unless Henry VIII came up with a lot more money, resources and troops than any of his predecessors ever managed.

To the issue at hand...

I'm not sure I totally agree with Thande's analysis, though. Everything he said applies from about 1650 on; well after the final English conquest. You can't think of Ireland as anything resembling a unified kingdom before 1600 or so. It was a patchwork of small lordships that distantly recognised the King of England as Lord (not King) of Ireland...Think the HRE at its absolute worst.

The early Tudors had no real desire to waste the resources actually conquering Ireland...they had bigger fish to fry. So they lurched from policy to policy in both religion and politics, always reacting and never being pro-active. The problem was that none of the things they did try (Buying off the Gaelic Irish with Anglo-titles; appointing English Lords Lieutenant with army; appointing English Lords Lieutenant without an army; the occaisional forays in force; appointing a great Anglo-Irish magnate as Lord Lieutenant etc.) worked to their satisfaction. Ireland just wasn't high enough on the list of priorities to warrant a consistent policy. By the time they did settle on a policy religious "nationalism" had become entrenched on both sides and the Elizabethan conquest was the result.

One possibility for an Anglican Ireland would be a continuation of a more consistent policy of Surrender and Regrant for the Gaelic lords, coupled with a slice of the monastic pie and a conversion to Anglicanism. If you could get a credible O'Neill or O'Donnell or de Burgh candidate to convert and make thier claims to their lordship stick, then you can do a divide and conquer strategy. Once a couple of lords shift allegiance, and is seen to do well from the bargain, then others will follow. It worked well enough with the major Anglo-Irish magnates (The Ormonds and the Kildares) but got overtaken by events before the crown could slowly tighten the screws on the Gaelic lords.

So...a consistant application of a more hands-off policy of Surrender and re-grant that isn't overtaken by other events. Sounds like you need Edward VI to live a good bit linger than he did and avoid the religious see-saw of the 1550s and 1560s.

Just my thoughts on it,

David

 

[Faeelin]

If Ireland did get a national church in the 16th century, what would the language be?

 

[Thande]

If Ireland did get a national church in the 16th century, what would the language be?

That's a good question. I think Gaelic was still the most widely spoken language in the 1500s but I don't think it was codified as a written language as it was spoken mostly by the illiterate poor. English is a possibility if they want to identify strongly with the Anglican Church. I suppose if the existing clergy remain powerful, and if they want to de-emphasise the shift to the people, they might keep using Latin...

 

[DJB001]

Gaelic was completely codified and used as a written language by about the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, so there`s no problem on that score. There`s a large corpus of wrtiiten work on everything from poetry to Brehon laws, so it`s not the language of the illiterate poor in the sixteenth century. Translating a bible would be no more difficult for Gaelic than it was for English.

One problem I see with language choice is ethnic identities. A Gaelic language church would be seen as a Gaelic-Irish Church and rejected to a large extent by the Anglo-Irish, just on principle, even if virtually everybody understood the language. Remember, Gaelic wasn`t fully stamped out as a day-to-day language until the nineteenth century.

Maybe this is a question of what kind of reformation are we talking about: Crown-driven Anglican or reformist *Knox-led Lutheranism or Calvanism. The first would probably tend towards English as a liturgical language, the second to Gaelic.

However, if a national church was to have any chance at all, the language would almost have to be Gaelic.

Now you`ve got my mind running down the path of a Lutheran Gaelic Ireland, a Catholic Anglo-Ireland, a Calvanist planter population and a Anglican aristocracy.

David

 

[EvolvedSaurian]

If Ireland did get a national church in the 16th century, what would the language be?

Irish Gaelic, of a certainty.

That's a good question. I think Gaelic was still the most widely spoken language in the 1500s but I don't think it was codified as a written language as it was spoken mostly by the illiterate poor. English is a possibility if they want to identify strongly with the Anglican Church. I suppose if the existing clergy remain powerful, and if they want to de-emphasise the shift to the people, they might keep using Latin...

What DJB said, plus the fact that the Church of Ireland was the first to print an Irish-language bible. The Book of Common Prayer (IIRC) was kept in English, which put off a good few people, as I understand.

Gaelic was completely codified and used as a written language by about the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, so there`s no problem on that score. There`s a large corpus of wrtiiten work on everything from poetry to Brehon laws, so it`s not the language of the illiterate poor in the sixteenth century. Translating a bible would be no more difficult for Gaelic than it was for English.

One problem I see with language choice is ethnic identities. A Gaelic language church would be seen as a Gaelic-Irish Church and rejected to a large extent by the Anglo-Irish, just on principle, even if virtually everybody understood the language. Remember, Gaelic wasn`t fully stamped out as a day-to-day language until the nineteenth century.

Actually, English wasn't doing all that well among the Anglo-Irish, with English from England observers commenting on how few still spoke or understood it. I don't think they'd have any problems with church services being held in Irish. Of course, I'm sure it's possible for Irish to be replaced by English, once most of the population is firmly Anglican.

 

[proximefactum]

I'm of the conviction that Protestant Ireland would have went Reformed, likely some version of Presbyterianism. Why? Well, considering how rapidly the Irish took to Jansenism, it seems a good cultural fit. Although, the Irish also trained their priests in France like the recusant English did, so maybe that's more the reason why.

I highly doubt, however, that the Irish would have went Protestant due simply to cultural reasons and a desire to differentiate themselves from the English in some way. Same thing happened in Poland: Catholicism became (and still is) a very potent part of national identity given that the country was/is sandwiched between a Protestant state (Prussia/modern Eastern Germany) and an Orthodox state (Russia).