Perceptions of St Patrick in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

Ever since the Reformation, the clash of croziers has been heard fairly regularly in Ireland as the two largest Christian churches here engage in periodic wrangling over which is to be considered the more authentic and legitimate. St Patrick, as the representative figure of the early Irish church, emerges as a key symbol in these extended contests. On the one hand, the saint was claimed by the seventeenth-century Church of Ireland as its founder, as the man who had established an indigenous, independent, anti-Roman church in fifth-century Ireland, a proto-protestant whose authority descended in an unbroken line to the established church of the day. Simultaneously and on the other hand, Patrick was claimed by the counter-reformation catholic church as the miracle-working champion of traditional Irish sanctity, the man who established a branch of the Roman church in what soon became the land of saints and scholars, a true descendant of St Peter and a son ever loyal to Rome. Bridget McCormack's short but interesting book sets out to consider these double perceptions of St Patrick in Ireland in the eighteenth century, a period not previously deemed to be of much interest in such studies, falling as it does between the theological controversies of the seventeenth century and the brash recruiting of the bearded, Tridentine patriarch as the mascot of nineteenth-century Irish nationalism. However, McCormack's meticulous and well-researched investigation opens up interesting and previously unexplored aspects of the subject and, in doing so, casts valuable light on eighteenth-century Ireland.

Particularly absorbing are McCormack's chapters on popular perceptions of the saint and the celebration of St Patrick's day. Here she has made use of Irish-language material and of the rich and under-utilized resources of folklore and folk culture. Combined with the accounts of visitors to Ireland, these resources show the vigorous continuation of a medieval cult of St Patrick--observed by some protestants as well as by catholics--until almost the end of the century. St Patrick's Purgatory was, of course, the most famous site for pilgrimage, for visitors from the continent as well as for the people of Ireland, but many other sites and events connected with the saint are described. McCormack also gives many fascinating details about the way St Patrick's day was celebrated, in London as well as in Ireland, throughout the century; she reminds us that Swift noted the wearing of crosses in London on St Patrick's day in 1713 ("I thought all the world was Irish"), and goes on to list other manifestations of traditional, national rejoicing: levées and balls in Dublin castle, the ringing of church bells, the giving of dinners. Lord Charlemont wore a tuft of shamrock in his hat when sitting for Joshua Reynolds in 1751, for instance, and the Order of the Most Illustrious Knights of St Patrick was established on the saint's day in 1783. Meanwhile, at the other end of the social scale, though the catholic church struggled to ensure that the celebrations following the religious ceremonies on St Patrick's day in both town and countryside did not decline into debauchery, it did not have universal success. As Faulkner's Dublin Journal noted in 1756: "One nominal saint ... makes thousands of real sinners."

Another area where McCormack's book makes a useful contribution to our understanding of eighteenth-century Ireland is in her account of attempts by Irish catholics to face up to the problem of what she calls "Patrick and the protestant nation." Relationships between the protestant church and the protestant state were particularly close throughout the eighteenth century in Ireland, and the penal laws ensured that, by definition, one could not be both a catholic and a loyal citizen. As the century progressed, however, divisions became less absolute and many liberal catholics, particularly those who still retained any land, believed that Irish catholics should, in their own interests, move towards some accommodation with the ruling protestant establishment. Being an Irish catholic--at least a middle-class one--became less a matter of doctrine and more one of politics. Charles O'Conor, for instance, "created an image of a practising catholic who did not adhere to the absolutist views attached to the papacy" (31). Protestant fears about the political aspirations of Rome was the problem, and the enduring differences in denominational perceptions of St Patrick was one of the ways in which this problem most clearly manifested itself. O'Conor and others sought to allay protestant fears about the effect of granting catholic relief. To bolster his arguments, O'Conor set about re-interpreting the national saint--to such an extent that the St Patrick who emerged from his work "could be mistaken for a Church of Ireland one" (31). McCormack follows this interesting subject in some detail and alerts us to the fact that we need to look again at the historiography of late eighteenth-century Ireland.

Like many of the studies of eighteenth-century Ireland published in recent years, McCormack's is strictly limited in scope. But this very limitation allows her to provide precisely the sort of detailed, closely-researched study that throws light not only on her own subject but on the wider field of inter-church rivalry in eighteenth-century Ireland. Her account of the popular practices around the celebration of the feast of St Patrick is very valuable in this context, and the book as a whole can be warmly recommended to those interested in Irish life and thought in the period.