Foras Feasa ar Eirinn and the Historical Origins of Irish Catholic Identity

Abstract

The way Irish people think about themselves is influenced by, and influences, the way they think about the past. Their communal memories and perceptions of the past are shaped, to a significant extent, by the choices that were made by past historians when they selected from the available evidence and told the story of the past as they saw it. Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (c.1634), itself a summary and selection of earlier historical writing, has been particularly influential in dictating the Irish historical canon for many generations down to the mid-twentieth century. Conscious of the persuasive power of historical narrative, Geoffrey Keating (c. 1580-1644) molded his account of the ancient origins and emergence of the Irish Catholic community to serve the needs of seventeenth-century Irish Catholics. The particular combination of myth, religion, and history popularized in Foras Feasa largely defined Irish Catholicism for over three centuries. 1