Catholic Reformation in Ireland: The Mission of Rinuccini, 1645-1649 (review)
The mission of GianBattista Rinuccini, archbishop of Fermo, to Ireland as papal nuncio in the later 1640's has long been recognized in scholarly circles as important in terms of its political and diplomatic effects. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin's study represents a major advance in its contextualizing of Rinuccini's Irish sojourn in the post-Tridentine European Catholic milieu. This approach affords him the opportunity to reassess the progress made by the Counter-Reformation in Ireland in the three decades between the establishment of a resident episcopacy in Ireland in 1618 and the nuncio's arrival in 1646, and also to examine the personal values and preconceptions that he brought to bear from the center to the periphery of the Catholic world of Europe.
One of the principal contributions of the author is his clear demonstration that the Catholic reforms initiated by Trent had been successfully implemented [End Page 975] in many of the dioceses ruled by Gaelic Irish bishops, in spite of difficulties such as their problematic jurisdiction within the Stuart kingdom of Ireland, the shortage of ecclesiastical resources due to the confiscation of diocesan and monastic property, and the internal rivalries within and between the regular and secular clergy. It is cogently argued here that Rinuccini found much to admire in the disciplinary rigor of the Gaelic bishops' regime and their reverential attitude to worship. The nuncio's own writings on the subject of the place of religion in the state and the proper conduct of bishops and clergy are very effectively adduced to explain both this reaction, and also the vehemence of his rejection of any diminution of the Roman Church's position during the political imbroglio at the heart of the peace negotiations between the Kilkenny confederates and Ormond, the lord lieutenant.
Rinuccini's ideal of the public, self-confident expression of Catholic belief and worship and his insistence on the full restoration of church property brought him into conflict with the Old English confederates who wished to come to terms with the royalist cause in England and Ireland as a means of ensuring toleration. Ó hAnnracháin's analysis of the nuncio's formation in the Roman and civil law elucidates his forensic examination of the history of the breakdown of relations between the Italian and the peace-making coterie within the confederation of Kilkenny. This explains, for example, his exasperation with the constitutional and common law milieu in which those whom he disparagingly called the "Ormondites [Ormonisti]" operated. Mutual distrust and incomprehension were crystallized in the parties' diametrically opposed views on the efficacy of private worship. Interestingly, the author posits a "Jansenist or seigniorial" version of Catholicism among the Old English elite, though this concept is not really elaborated upon here.
The title of the book, which seems odd if applied only to the period, 1645-1649, is fully justified as it brilliantly measures the Catholic renewal in Ireland against the benchmark of continental Tridentine reform. Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin's extensive researches in a range of archives in many countries and in documents in many languages represent a scholarly tour de force. Using the prism of Rinuccini's Italian Catholic perspective, the author's comparison of the work of the Counter-Reformation missioners in the island with that of their counterparts in many other parts of Europe, brings the subject into the historiographical mainstream.
