Ulster 1641: Aspects of the Rising ed. by Brian Mac Cuarta, S.J. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 283 final period ofJeanne de Chantal's life, a period ofconsolidation and expansion for the Visitation foundations, which by 1640 numbered eighty-two. It was likewise a time of sorrow, with the deaths of her last three founding companions . Most of the letters are directed to superiors and sisters of the Visitation communities. They deal with admissions and formation of new members, community problems, relationships with authorities, and temporal affairs. There is also a subtantial correspondence with major ecclesiastical and secular figures of the period, among whom are Vincent de Paul, Princess Christine of France ("Mme. Royale"), the Jesuits Etienne Binet and JeanBaptiste St-Jure, Charles de Condren, and Marie de Combalet, sister of Cardinal Richelieu. Perhaps the most intimate correspondent of this period is "Mère Angélique" Arnauld (1591-1661) of Port-Royal, who in 1619 had been refused ecclesiastical permission to transfer to the Visitation order. The saint confides to the abbess her inner pain and prolonged spiritual desolation, because she no longer has "any creature in the world that I can trust, except you" (p. 447). The ten letters presented here bear witness to Jeanne's heroic struggle in the midst of severe temptations against the faith. She admits that while she speaks to others of God, she feels only disgust for spiritual things. Nonetheless, she chooses to pray by means ofwordless surrender and a "simple gaze of the heart." What emerges from these letters is a strong personality, an ideal yet realistic woman of God who brings her own distinctive, mature interpretation to Salesian mystical teaching. Until recently, Jeanne de Chantal has remained largely unknown to scholars, overshadowed by Francis de Sales as his spiritual daughter and collaborator. This superb edition of her correspondence balances out the picture by revealing a spiritual leader moving in her own light, endowed with originality, initiative, and administrative genius. It will be an indispensable tool for historians and researchers in the French spiritual tradition. One earnestly hopes that an English translation has been foreseen. Janice Farnham, RJ.M. WestonJesuit School of Theology Cambridge, Massachusetts Ulster 1641: Aspects of the Rising. Edited by Brian Mac Cuarta, SJ. (Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies; the Queen's University of Belfast. 1993. Pp. xi, 238. £15.) For a couple of generations the Irish historical scene has been fascinated by what has come to be called "revisionism," "scientific history," the belief that the past "as it really was" can be sought, and found, in a kind of aseptic mental laboratory. What have been euphemistically dubbed "the troubles" of the last twenty-five years have generated two opposing stances: on the one hand an insistence on the need for this aseptic revisionism; and on the other 284 BOOK REVIEWS a growing realization that the historian just cannot live in an ivory tower, above the pains of mankind. It is not surprising, then, that very recently there have been two studies of the Ulster rising of 1641, for this still casts a long shadow over our present discontents. This volume is a collection of essays edited by Brian Mac Cuarta, who is both a highly competent historian and associatedwith theJesuit mission in Portadown, County Armagh, which had been at the very storm-center of the events of 1641 and still bears the scars. It hangs together better than many such collections. Four master-themes are addressed: the place of the rising in the general political evolution of what became the United Kingdom; the motives of the insurgents; die massacres; and the legacy left to the future. The first point receives illuminating treatment from John McCavitt and Michael Percivall-Maxwell. The conclusion which emerges is diat had it not been for the Ulster rising the odds were in favor of Charles I getting his problems under control and being able to prorogue what became the Long Parliament, with unforeseeable but undoubtedly immense consequences. As for the motives of the insurgents, die picture emerging from the essays by Michelle O'Riordan and Raymond Gillespie would seem to be of two cultures blending, the "only difference" being that one went to Mass, the other to service, the native learned class completely fossilized in a vanished past...