IRELAND AND REFORMATION.

Erinfan

Why Ireland was the only country of the Northern Europe which rejected absolutely and pernanently this great religious revolution called REFORMATION?


How is it that, to speak generally, the nations of Northern Europe embraced Protestantism so readily, while those of Southern Europe refused to receive it, or were only slightly affected by it?

According to the theorists who attribute the success of Protestantism in the North of Europe to a higher civilization and a more ardent love of freedom, the contrary characteristics should distinguish those nations which remained faithful to the Catholic Church, and particularly the Irish.

Was the lack of a higher civilization and more ardent love for freedom really the cause, then, for Ireland's undergoing so many sacrifices merely for the sake of her religion?

Irish, as they allege, have been forever priest-ridden.

baalthor

Erinfan wrote: »

According to the theorists who attribute the success of Protestantism in the North of Europe to a higher civilization

Like 16th century Scotland ? The "ärsehole of Europe" :-)

Fratton Fred

Is France not considered northern Europe. They didn't exactly embrace Protestantism.

robp

Erinfan wrote: »

Why Ireland was the only country of the Northern Europe which rejected absolutely and pernanently this great religious revolution called REFORMATION?


How is it that, to speak generally, the nations of Northern Europe embraced Protestantism so readily, while those of Southern Europe refused to receive it, or were only slightly affected by it?

According to the theorists who attribute the success of Protestantism in the North of Europe to a higher civilization and a more ardent love of freedom, the contrary characteristics should distinguish those nations which remained faithful to the Catholic Church, and particularly the Irish.

Was the lack of a higher civilization and more ardent love for freedom really the cause, then, for Ireland's undergoing so many sacrifices merely for the sake of her religion?

Irish, as they allege, have been forever priest-ridden.

Question 2: There were no abuses of the Catholic church like in England to justify reformation.

Any person would acknowledge that some abuses are inevitable. It would be wise to change the question to were abuses in Ireland less extreme or perceived to be less extreme.

I wonder exactly what is higher civilization. Assuming it is as clear cut as you imply I would question if the claim of higher civilization in areas which became protestant can be backed up? I suspect not. To examine this I checked the numbers of books (incuabula) published in various parts of Europe before 1501. The German speaking regions combined printed less than Italy. If you include future Catholic Italy and France against future Protestant Germanic regions, England and Scandinavia there is far more books being produced in catholic regions. This simple calculation is actually bias in favour of protestant regions, as it groups catholic South Germany with Protestant regions. You need to allow for population to do this properly but you get the point.

The Reformation happened in Germany probably because it’s political structure. It was not the single most advanced region in Europe. It was only one of a group.

Manach

A begging question type initial post that reflects a quaint and narrowly focused world view that made the sect of protestanism so dismissable by the Irish during that time, and having the English try and convert the "heathen" Irish at sword point hardly helped.

Reekwind

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Is France not considered northern Europe. They didn't exactly embrace Protestantism.

Which exposes the problem with the reductionist question posed by the OP. It took a decades of religious war, plus centuries of autocratic counter-reformation, to determine whether the French "embraced Protestantism". Similarly, Austria, heartland of the supposed southern Catholic monarchies, was essentially Protestant by the mid 16th C before a determined Hapsburg counter-offensive restored the Church's position

So geography was irrelevant. Of far more relevance was, as robp suggests, the political structures and institutions. Put broadly, where a governing authority converted to Protestantism then the population followed, where the ruling institutions remained firmly Catholic then the Counter-Reformation was a success

markesmith

Don't know.

Didn't penetrate rural Ireland I'd say mainly because of the language - no Protestant prayer books in Irish, etc.

Also, we hadn't the need to adopt Protestantism over a divorce case.

The Idyl Race

Don't know.

A bit of historical accuracy with the thread questions would be nice.

Here's a few tit-bits for you:

From Rome's perspective, Ireland was a feudal fiefdom under the delegated lordship of the King of England. Whatever about the existence of Laudabiliter being debated nowadays, like the Donation of Constantine its existence was taken for granted. Rome had taken on itself to abolish the Irish High Kingship, a move that was part and parcel of Rome's view of itself as the Head of Christendom, because it wanted the twelfth century reforms of Church organisation to be pushed through.

On Henry's break with Rome, he didn't want to have Rome claiming its feudal territory back. The declaration of the Kingdom of Ireland in the Irish Parliament was part of Henry's constant shoring up of his own power. In modern terms, he was a Eurosceptic who spent five years repatriating particular powers from Rome to himself.

All but two of the Irish bishops went along with the Irish Parliament's acceptance of Henry's headship of the Church in Ireland. That was about the only change that happened as everything remained as it was everywhere, and only in Dublin in his son Edward VI's reign was there any attempt at what would now be recognised as Protestantism. As the Irish Church outside the pale remained order based rather than parish based, nothing was really noticed at all.

Language was the real barrier to the reformation in Ireland. It wasn't until the seventeenth century that any real attempt to translate the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible into Irish, and the flexibility of the order priests and a lack of a parish system reporting to a diocese meant that top down reforms never would have trickled down to the local level.

Then of course there was the matter of Pius V declaring Elizabeth a heretic and Philip II of Spain the rightful King of Ireland and England, with the coterminous Council of Trent. Ireland became simultaneously mission and war territory. While some chieftains, such as Shane O'Neill converted or were brought up in the New Religion, however the stage was set for the disastrous combination of religious identity and political allegiance.

crockholm

Casting aside the self-hatred,
The reformation was'nt as clear cut and followed immediately as some would have you believe in scandanavia, many people clung to the old faith for well over 100 years despite the state sponsored religion, it became mandatory to attend the local service in rural Sweden,in an attempt to make sure the new religion was being adhered to.
Swedes being swedes,still kept vestiges of the old religion, check out "luciadagen"dec.13
Their new king,seeing the practical advantage of being a figurehead,though Lutheran,unsure of what a lutheran service consisted of ,had his Coronation using the old catholic method.

Farmer Pudsey

Don't know.

Ireland had an oral tradition in that during the 12-16 centruary little enough was written down so written bibles were rare and one's in Irish not in existance. It was also constantly at war either with England or internally. Due to this no Chieftian was going to give an advantage to another by changing religions. Outside the Pale the Ireland was a series of little kingdoms with England in minimal control until after the battle of Kinsale. Many of these Chieftians looked to Catholic Countries for support at first Spain and then France After that England was more intrested in genocide rather than reformation. Even the Old English remained Catholic it was not until after Cromwell and William III that Ireland was firmly in English control.

Towards the end it was an element of it it was seen as bad by England it had to be right.

thecommietommy

Don't know.

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Is France not considered northern Europe. They didn't exactly embrace Protestantism.

Also Poland, Bavaria, Belgium, Austria etc And it wasn't a north/south black and white scenario, for example the Netherlands was about 1/3 Catholic.

Erinfan

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Is France not considered northern Europe. They didn't exactly embrace Protestantism.

In part yes.

The territory that lies north of the river Loire ;an imaginary line between Nantes and Orleans and to the east border of France is considered to be in the north of Europe.

Geographically and culturally it is understandable.


Although the majority of the french population is Roman catholic there exist a strongs protestant communities in Alsace (a former dependency of Germany) , in Brittany and in the Cevennes.

crockholm

Open to correction here, but was not the more southern area's of france more embracing of the reformed faith, La Rochelle springs to mind.

Peregrinus

France, Poland and Ireland are all examples of countries which could have gone either way in the Reformation; in the event they all ended up as predominantly Catholic. Whether you see this as a series of unrelated historical accidents or as a pattern with some underlying cause is a matter for debate.

Broadly speaking, you've got a "wedge" of countries which adopt a more-or-less Lutheran flavour of Protestantism in central and Northern Europe - North Germany, the Scandinavian countries, England. (Anglicanism, of course, was influence by both Lutheran and Calvinist ideas, but I think it's fair to say that when the dust settled there was more Lutheranism than Calvinism.)

To the west of this you have a string of areas influenced by Calvinism - much of Switerland, parts of France, England to some extent, Scotland. Further west again, and turning south, you have Catholic France, Spain, Portugal.

Moving east again you have Catholic Italy and the Adriatic coast, continuing until you reach Orthodox areas (where no flavour of Protestantism ever made signficant inroads). Then going north you have Hussites and Anabaptists until you reach Catholic Poland, sandwiched between Lutheran Prussia and Orthodox Russia.

It's not too much of a stretch to see Western Europe as a pie, divided into more or less wedge-shaped slices - Lutheran, Calvinist, Catholic - with some Hussite and Anabaptist crumbs falling off here and there. The centre of the pie, from whcih the slices radiate, is somewhere at the junction of Italian- and German-speaking areas - round about the city of Trent, say, in Northern Italy. Which probably explains why the Council of Trent was held there.