A Hidden Church: The Diocese of Achonry, 1689–1818, and: The Diocese of Kilmore, 1800–1950 (review)

A Hidden Church: The Diocese of Achonry, 1689-1818. By Liam Swords. (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: The Columba Press. 1997. Pp. 464. £30.00.)

The Diocese of Kilmore, 1800-1950. By Daniel Gallogly. (Bréifne: Bréifne Historical Society; Cavan: County Cavan Genealogical Research Centre. 1999. Pp. xvii, 466.)

These two diocesan histories of Achonry (Ah con' ree) and Kilmore (Kill more') in Ireland are very different from each other, and they are therefore very difficult to compare. The volume on Achonry is about the eighteenth century, while that of Kilmore is concerned with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The former, moreover, is essentially a social history, while the latter is a more traditional ecclesiastical history. What they do have in common, however, is the very high level of competence of their authors as historians. Both volumes are very well researched and written, and from an aesthetic point of view both are nicely produced and illustrated, the Achonry volume especially so. They are each, in fact, significant contributions to the rapidly burgeoning body of work dealing with the modern Irish Church.

The volume on Achonry is all the more remarkable because it posed a very serious research challenge since there are literally no diocesan archives for the eighteenth century. Father Swords, therefore, has had to recreate the history of the diocese from a whole series of disparate sources, which he has rendered whole with great historical sensitivity and imagination. His research, which has encompassed ecclesiastical and lay archives in England, France, Ireland, and Italy, is very impressive, and it is hard to believe that there remains a piece of evidence about Achonry that he has not discovered. The disparate nature of the evidence has resulted in Father Swords wisely adopting a thematic rather than a chronological approach, which has allowed him to mobilize his materials to their best advantage in terms of context and text.

The end result is nothing less than a stunning representation of "A Hidden Church" in Achonry by way of the genre of social history. Indeed, Father Swords goes a long way to prove in this volume that social history is history, for there is hardly an aspect of the life of the people of Achonry that he has not addressed. Politics, Penal Laws, the Land, Life and Leisure, the Protestant Churches, Education, Priests, Sacraments, Popular Religion, Church Structures, Episcopal Ambitions, and finally the emergence of the "Hidden Church" in the early nineteenth century, are all recreated and integrated for the reader in a credible synthetic whole. All of this, moreover, is attended to with a shrewd and thoughtful assessment of the vagaries of human nature as well as a sad wistfulness on the passing of the religious way of life of the Gael.

The volume on the diocese of Kilmore, on the other hand, given its chronology, is much better served in regard to local archival material. The late Father Gallogly, however, has also made extensive use of a wide range of sources from Rome to Dublin, and the result is a thoughtful and convincing appraisal of religion in the diocese of Kilmore between 1800 and 1950. The narrative is essentially chronological in nine chapters covering the whole period, with two final and very valuable thematic chapters dealing with "Priests and People" and "Kilmore Churches." In his narrative Father Gallogly is particularly instructive on the vexed question of the timing of the Devotional Revolution. He sees it substantially as a post-Famine phenomenon. "Parish retreats or missions," he points out, "Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Forty Hours Adoration, devotion to the Sacred Heart, Nine Fridays, Marian devotions, Stations of the Cross did not become a standard part of the devotional repertoire of the people until the decades following the Famine when religious practice became increasingly structured and church-centered" (p. 63).

Father Gallogly is...