The Poor Clares monastery on Nuns’ Island was the location this week for the launch of a comprehensive book on the history of women in religious orders.
The work, entitled Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700 is the first comprehensive study of the lives and experiences of women religious for that period, shows how many young Irish women ignored the State’s official proscriptions of religious life and found ways to circumvent them.
Professor John Mc Cafferty of UCD History Department launched the book and said that author Bronagh McShane has vividly brought the difficult decisions these women made back to the historical stage.
“She proves that there is no aspect of the Irish experience from 1500-1700 that did not touch on their extraordinary choices”
The Abbess of the Galway Poor Clares Sr. Colette said the sisters were so happy to have a launch of Bronagh’s book in the monastery. “Her work brings the exploits of our early sisters to a wider audience and is a good read for anyone interested in this neglected area of Irish women’s history,” she said.
The experiences of the Galway Dominicans and the Kylemore Benedictines are also examined in the book and as the author herself observes in the introduction, “the picture that emerges is one of spirited and resilient individuals and communities who grappled with countless challenges but whose perseverance prevailed.
The book gives readers a unique understanding of the lives and experiences of Irish women religious during the early modern period, highlighting how an expanding nexus of female houses facilitated the perpetuation of European Counter-Reformation devotion in Ireland.
It investigates the impact of the dissolution of the monasteries on women religious and examines their survival in the following decades, showing how, despite the state’s official proscription of vocation living, religious vocation options for women continued in less formal ways.
Bronagh McShane explores the experiences of Irish women who travelled to the Continent in pursuit of formal religious vocational formation, covering both those accommodated in English and European continental convents’ and those in the Irish convents established in Spanish Flanders and the Iberian Peninsula.
Further, this book discusses the revival of religious establishments for women in Ireland from 1629 and outlines the links between these new convents and the Irish foundations abroad. Overall, this study provides a rich picture of Irish women religious during a period of unprecedented change and upheaval.
The book can be purchased at a 50% discount at boydellandbrewer.com by using the promo code BB150 before January 31 2023.
