Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland by Raymond Gillespie (review)

556book reviews of the cycle, they suggest, was inspired by the wish to reaffirm sacramental and monastic traditions in the period following the Council. They can find no narrow library iconography here. While their introduction claims without qualification that Zelotti's paintings at Praglia (including those in the church itself) "constitute an important achievement, comparable in size and complexity to that of Paolo Veronese at San Sebastiano in Venice," they are more modest and more cautious about their interpretation of the library program itself. They present a working hypothesis, they say. "Right" or not, their discussion will further the study of Renaissance library rooms and library cycles. That is not to state that this book is without its faults. Although one might say that their larger argument seems reasonable and will further discussion, there are any number of vague or questionable statements that give one pause. In general the authors were ill-served by their copy editor, who allowed some awkward moments to get by (as in"there occurred an activation of" [p. 24]), but I would guess that they are responsible for others. In their eagerness to connect the library paintings to the Benedictine "tradition of books," for example, they "point out that most manuscripts and early printed codices were illustrated"(p. 26). That's a characteristically art-historical distortion: students of the history of the book know better. James F. O'Gorman Wellesley College Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland. By Raymond Gillespie. [Social and Cultural Studies in Early Modern Europe.] (Manchester University Press. Distributed by St. Martin's Press, NewYork. 1997. Pp. x, 198. $5995.) "This book is about the reality of the religion which survived in the lives of the people in sixteenth and seventeenth century Ireland," writes the author, who has divided his material into six chapters, using an impressive range of sources and providing excellent footnotes. There are many insights into popular belief and practice (both Catholic and Protestant), based on the conviction that religious experience and belief are more fundamental than religious institutions and that belief does not need to be aberrant to be "popular."Most people learned their religion from their mothers, a process which the author regards as innately conservative. There were tensions between lay belief and church doctrine , between lay concern about devotion and clerical concern about organization . Catholic and Protestant churches offered intellectual systems which were in dialogue with the religious needs of communities and individuals, but Catholics were offered far more symbols. BOOK REVIEWS557 The author emphasizes the universal belief in providence, in the sacredness of times and places, and in wonders. Few people in early modern Ireland lived far from a holy place. The recurring tendency to resort to astrology and other signs was common to both Protestants and Catholics, neither group being passively receptive of orthodox theological ideas, but rather forging a genuinely lay spirituality. Gillespie gives many interesting examples of popular practices, such as soldiers carrying written prayers on their persons for protection, and the thirty-four holy days of obligation observed by Catholics. The description of religious customs includes the Independents, who were very important in midseventeenth -century Ireland. Any reader of this book must have a sound knowledge of Irish history from the Reformation to the death of Queen Anne. The arrangement of material within each chapter moves backward and forward,without any chronology,and so the narrative is often confusing. "Anglican" is used as shorthand for the Established Church of Ireland, though in that era it was decidedly Protestant and often Calvinist in its theology. The problem of preaching both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation in a bilingual country is never discussed. Gillespie says that the regular clergy were seen as having access to greater spiritual power, but one regular, whom he often cites, the English Jesuit William Good, has his writings attributed to the early seventeenth century (they were published byWilliam Camden in 1610),whereas his work in Ireland was early in the reign of Elizabeth I, to whose era his remarks are most applicable. The body of St. Francis Xavier is said to be at Michelle in Flanders, rather than in Goa. Gillespie rejects the idea...