The uses of literacy, the ability to read and write, are central to the construction of popular culture. Cultural historians have long been engrossed with the reading habits of ordinary people, hoping to find clues to their knowledge, beliefs, expectations and fantasies. Yet the forms and functions of popular writing have been largely ignored. This … Read more
On 6 November 1922, with the Civil War raging and his political judgement seriously questioned, Eamon de Valera typed a carefully worded ‘private’ letter to the Roman Catholic archbishop of Melbourne. It was a critical moment. Two weeks earlier, on 22 October, the cardinal primate of Armagh, together with his fellow bishops in Ireland, had … Read more
‘This is the golden hour. Therefore be prepared.’ Thus did Austin Stack admonish the District Registrars throughout Ireland when, on 9 August 1921, he sent them detailed instructions on the procedures and regulations of the Dáil Courts. No one was left in any doubt where the real authority lay: henceforth the parish and district courts … Read more
The concentration by historians on the more exciting events of the last two decades of the eighteenth century has contributed to the neglect of Lucas, and where he has been noticed he has frequently been portrayed as an extravagantly antiCatholic bigot. Hence R.R. Madden described him as ‘a bigot of rampant, puritanical, intolerant principles’, while … Read more
Medieval Ireland was, according to contemporaries, a country divided into two ‘nations’. On the one hand there were the descendants of the Anglo-Norman settlers of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, on the other the successors to the older Gaelic Irish population. The church reflected this division and was split into two sections, one … Read more