Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530–1700: Suppression, Migration, and Reintegration by Bronagh Ann McShane (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530–1700: Suppression, Migration, and Reintegration by Bronagh Ann McShane James E. Kelly Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530–1700: Suppression, Migration, and Reintegration. By Bronagh Ann McShane. (Woodbridge: Boydell Press 2022. Pp. xv, 324. $115.00. ISBN: 9781783277308.) Long considered nearly impossible due to the disparate nature of the sources, Bronagh Ann McShane has produced the first overarching study of Irish women associated with religious orders in the early modern period. Gathering evidence from mentions scattered throughout a range of materials, McShane successfully traces various forms of Irish female religious commitment from the dissolution of religious houses in the 1530s and 1540s to the end of the seventeenth century, including both those at home and in mainland Europe. Her opening two chapters consider the suppression and survival of female religious life during the Henrician dissolution of the monasteries. McShane judges the reformation in Ireland to have been far less systematic than that in England, though, unlike their male equivalents, it did manage to crush institutional expressions of female religious life. Having to rely on some conjecture to draw conclusions about what happened to the women after their convents were dissolved, McShane uncovers evidence of different types of religious life being adopted, including as tertiaries affiliated to male mendicant orders, and the short-lived but pioneering Catholic Reformation experiment that was the Mná Bochta (Poor Women), who worked alongside the small Jesuit mission in an active apostolate. Fairly heavy on detailed financial records and Irish family history, these two chapters are followed by a shift in focus to look at migration, and those women who went abroad to pursue their vocations. Really hitting her stride, McShane tracks several Irish women who made the journey to mainland Europe. Some entered local convents, though a number headed to English houses established in exile, especially the Poor Clares at Gravelines. Nevertheless, a Dominican convent was [End Page 405] founded for the Irish nation at Lisbon. Intriguingly, it seems to have been markedly different from the exile English convents; both enjoyed local support, though the Irish Dominican convent appears to have been wealthier than the majority of English ones, and was a popular destination for Portuguese nun recruits as much as it was for Irish women. The final section examines the return of professed female religious life to Ireland. The slightly more tolerant 1630s witnessed a cautious return, which flourished under the Catholic confederacy of the 1640s before being crushed during the Cromwellian wars. Following the restoration of the monarchy with Charles II in 1660, McShane outlines attempts at again fostering female religious life in the country that reached greater heights under the Catholic toleration that followed the accession of James II. However, the Glorious Revolution and the Williamite wars halted official advancement, McShane judging, though, that it was nowhere near as traumatic as the Cromwellian period, and female religious life continued in Ireland into the eighteenth century. Tracing down these stories across a variety of sources is an impressive achievement that should not be underestimated. At times, the book's shifting focus affects its wider definitive positioning, whether to go all out for Irish national history, the history of the Catholic Reformation, or gender history. There is also a question at the book's heart: as McShane acknowledges, the formation of Irish women religious in exile English convents was "pivotal" (p. 249); yet the question of why there was not an equivalent exile movement for Irish women religious is not answered. With far greater numbers of Catholic women in Ireland, why was it that the English conventual movement was so much bigger? That this book raises such a question is testament to McShane's convincing achievement. Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530–1700, fills an obvious gap in the scholarship and, proving that it can be done, should encourage others to work on early modern Irish women religious. James E. Kelly Durham University James E. Kelly Durham University Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press