This book explores the endeavors and activities of one of the most prominent early modern Irishmen in exile, the Franciscan Luke Wadding. Born in Ireland, educated in the Iberian Peninsula, Wadding arrived in Rome in 1618, where he would die in 1657. In the "Eternal City," the Franciscan emerged as an outstanding theologian, a learned scholar, a diplomat, and a college founder. This innovative collection of chapters brings together a group of international scholars who provide a ground-breaking analysis of the many cultural, political, and religious facets of Wadding’s life. They illustrate the challenges and changes faced by an Irishman who emerged as one of the most outstanding global figures of the Catholic Reformation. The volume will attract scholars of the early modern period, early modern Catholicism, and Irish emigration.

This volume explores the career and life of Luke Wadding, one of the most prominent Irishmen of the early-modern period. It assesses the many roles played by Wadding at the Papal Curia, and how he succeeded to build a network of influential and wealthy figures around him.

Demonstrates how, far from being peripheral, the stable communities of conventual religious in mainland Europe acted as important centres of religious and secular activity in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation. This collection aims to explore new perspectives on the British and Irish conventual, mendicant and monastic movements in mainland Europe and rediscover their roles and wider impact within early modern European Catholicism. Building on recent scholarship, the book addresses a historiographical imbalance, which has led to an over-emphasis being placed on the role of the Society of Jesus in the development of British and Irish Catholicism following the Protestant Reformation. The stable communities of religious in mainland Europe also acted as important centres of religious and secular activity. This volume explores the ways in which British and Irish conventuals and monastics, both men and women, engaged with the seismic religious and philosophical developments of the early modern period, such as the Catholic Reformation and the Enlightenment in mainland Europe, as well as important political developments at 'home', exploring the connections between centres and peripheries. Building on recent movements within the field to 'decentralise' the Catholic Reformation and recognize the international nature of Catholicism, the volume aims to change the perception that the activities of British and Irish religious were 'peripheral', bringing the islands' experience in line with work on their European confreres and the broader global network of the religious orders.

This book reconstructs the efforts that were made to establish a missionary network between the two Irish Colleges of Rome, Ireland, and the West Indies during the seventeenth century. It analyses the process which brought the Irish clergy to establish two dedicated colleges in the epicenter of early modern Catholicism and to develop a series of missionary initiatives in the English islands of the West Indies. During a period of great political change in Ireland, continental Europe and the Atlantic region, the book traces how and through which key figures and institutions this clerical channel was established, while at the same time identifying the main obstacles to its development.

Imagining Ireland's Pasts describes how various authors addressed the history of early modern Ireland over four centuries and explains why they could not settle on an agreed narrative. It shows how conflicting interpretations broke frequently along denominational lines, but that authors were also influenced by ethnic, cultural, and political considerations, and by whether they were resident in Ireland or living in exile. Imagining Ireland's Past: Early Modern Ireland through the Centuries details how authors extolled the merits of their progenitors, offered hope and guidance to the particular audience they addressed, and disputed opposing narratives. The author shows how competing scholars, whether contributing to vernacular histories or empirical studies, became transfixed by the traumatic events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they sought to explain either how stability had finally been achieved, or how the descendants of those who had been wronged might secure redress.

Ireland was England's oldest colony. Making Empire revisits the history of empire in Ireland—in a time of Brexit, 'the culture wars', and the campaigns around 'Black Lives Matter' and 'Statues must fall'—to better understand how it has formed the present, and how it might shape the future. Empire and imperial frameworks, policies, practices, and cultures have shaped the history of the world for the last two millennia. It is nation states that are the blip on the historical horizon. Making Empire re-examines empire as process—and Ireland's role in it—through the lens of early modernity. It covers the two hundred years, between the mid-sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century, that equate roughly to the timespan of the First English Empire (c.1550-c.1770s). Ireland was England's oldest colony. How then did the English empire actually function in early modern Ireland and how did this change over time? What did access to European empires mean for people living in Ireland? This book answers these questions by interrogating four interconnected themes. First, that Ireland formed an integral part of the English imperial system, Second, that the Irish operated as agents of empire(s). Third, Ireland served as laboratory in and for the English empire. Finally, it examines the impact that empire(s) had on people living in early modern Ireland. Even though the book's focus will be on Ireland and the English empire, the Irish were trans-imperial and engaged with all of the early modern imperial powers. It is therefore critical, where possible and appropriate, to look to other European and global empires for meaningful comparisons and connections in this era of expansionism. What becomes clear is that colonisation was not a single occurrence but an iterative and durable process that impacted different parts of Ireland at different times and in different ways. That imperialism was about the exercise of power, violence, coercion and expropriation. Strategies about how best to turn conquest into profit, to mobilise and control Ireland's natural resources, especially land and labour, varied but the reality of everyday life did not change and provoked a wide variety of responses ranging from acceptance and assimilation to resistance. This book, based on the 2021 James Ford Lectures, Oxford University, suggests that the moment has come revisit the history of empire, if only to better understand how it has formed the present, and how this might shape the future.

In Exiles in a Global City, Clare Carroll explores Irish migrants’ experiences in early modern Rome (1609-1783) and interprets representations of their cultural identities in relation to their interaction with world-wide Spanish and Roman institutions. This study focuses on some sources in Roman archives not previously considered by Irish historians. The book examines a wide array of cultural productions—Ó Cianáin’s account of O’Neill’s progress from Ireland to Rome, Luke Wadding’s history of the Franciscan order, the portraits at S. Isidoro, the first printed Irish grammar, the letters of Oliver Plunkett, the records of a hospice for converts, Charles Wogan’s memoir, and reports on the national college—for how they transformed emerging senses of an Irish nation.