Migratory flows (16th–19th century)

Ulster: the last bastion of British anti-popery

The 1921 partition sets the 98% Catholic Irish Republic apart from the Protestant majority entrenched in the “Province” – alongside a Papist minority. Placed at a demographic disadvantage on the scale of the island, the Protestants developed a paranoid siege mentality. Thus, belonging to their community – the declared superiority of which was deemed essential to its security – came to take precedence over the person, their rights, conditions and prospects. Even poor Protestants considered themselves superior to the Catholics for the reason pure and simple that they belonged to the dominant group. Far from being understood as a democratic verdict, the political majority was experienced as the rule of numbers. Any reform towards equal rights would come to be perceived by the Protestants as discriminatory towards them. Political parties were formed along this social cleavage and politics became “ethnic” in order to secure an ongoing Protestant majority in Northern Ireland. Cronyism became the norm in local administration, the police, teaching, employment and housing, causing Catholic exasperation and, starting in 1966, demonstrations towards obtaining their full rights.

Anti-Catholicism can be traced right back to the Reformation. By the mid 19th century, the feeling had been institutionalised in a sort of national mindset wherein Papism[1] was seen as an obstacle to authentic Britishness. Their Majesties' loyal subjects considered the Catholics devoted to the Pope because, in his 1570 Regnans in Excelsis Bull excommunicating Elisabeth I[2], Pius V had released the Catholics from the oath of allegiance given the sovereign. This contributed heavily to their image as potential traitors to the fatherland. The Irish elites' calls for support to Catholic monarchs, be they Philip II[3], Louis XIV[4] or Louis XV[5], did little to dispel Protestant prejudice. Though no longer faith-driven, Catholic pleas for foreign help still aroused fears of rear attacks launched on the main island from an Irish bridgehead. Memories of the 1798 atrocities and of Revolutionary General Humbert's expedition loomed large in the rationale for a Union between Ireland and England as duly passed in 1801. Imperial Germany's delivery of weapons for the Irish Easter Rising of 1916, closely followed by the decimation of almost exclusively Protestant Ulster regiments on the Somme, came to reinforce that foreboding. And the Republic's policies during WWII would justify it : the lights shining in the self-declared neutral Irish Republic helped Luftwaffe bombers to locate blacked-out Belfast. As for the Catholic Diaspora, it was perceived as stirring up the violence at home : the convents, seminaries and other Irish establishments scattered about from Holland to Portugal, until most of them got shut by French Revolutionary armies, were seen as hotbeds of fanaticism stoked up by the Jesuits[6] rather than places for the education of the young in their faith, or the training of clergy (who would later return secretly to the island). Later, Noraid (Irish Northern Aid), outwardly an American charity would be nailed as a donor to the IRA (Irish Republican Army).

Unconditional acquiescence to papal authority translates for those Protestants into submission to a foreign power, that is a theological error and worse still a shameful abdication of individual freedom and principled loyalism. Hence the rallying cry of « No Popery ! » that vindicates the promotion of individualism and anti-absolutist liberalism. In Protestant traditions, the cleavage between lay people and their clergy is more blurred, sometimes more egalitarian ; they share education and political loyalties ; it is an essentially moral leadership that distinguishes the latter. As if the sorry lack of democracy epitomised by the primacy granted to priesthood were not enough, the Catholic Church was further accused of stultifying the believers. The Protestants' indictment rests upon the ‘sacrilegious' cult of the saints, ‘idolatry' of the Blessed Virgin Mary and blind superstitions accepting of any old miracle, or venerating early martyrs' relics. The Catholic Church was suspected of perversely pressurising its congregations for ulterior motives. Its clergy's sexual morality was brought into question. Already in 1532, Article 32 Of the Marriage of Priests attacked the unnatural situation imposed on priesthood by compulsory celibacy. While homosexuality received little attention before the 20th century, stories of priests abusing their housekeeper or of chaplains seducing their charge in the religious houses entrusted to them enjoyed an unbroken success in books and pamphlets. Regular and secular clergy suffered equal opprobrium and Protestant writers, painters and cartoonists declared open season on the convent and the confessional.

The men of no popery

http://www.iol.ie/~fagann/1798/orange.htm

Protestant anxiety regarding those institutions came to the fore more than ever after the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 when they were seen as a threat against daughters and wives. If orgy scenes got less of an airing than they had done in the gothic novels of the 18th century's last decades, attention turned to innocent young girls locked for the rest of their life, separated from their family and from society. Mothers superior were accused, for good measure, of seeking to appropriate the nuns' personal wealth forcibly detaining them once, having ‘come to their senses', they wished to be released. As for the confessional, it was tainted with spiritual abuse, improper talk, indeed alleged immoral acts. As would some secular French, the Protestants had reservations about women's vote in their belief that it would come under the direction of the Catholic priest (and the nefarious powers a certain English literature had endowed him with), thus trespassing on the father or husband's authority in matters educational, familial, political, or indeed purely sentimental. Even when sectarianism stopped at the open acknowledgment of its connection with sexual issues, it occasionally let it slip dimly in the vocabulary it resorted to. Thus truth – Protestant truth, that is – was routinely associated with the love of purity whereas lies and duplicity – quintessentially Catholic – went hand in hand with sexual drive and prostitution. Some of the classical insults levelled by Protestants at the Roman church have rejoiced in the Book of Revelation's dire warnings against the « whore », the         « scarlet woman of Babylon ».

The reasons called upon in support of mistrusting the Catholics were reinforced by stereotyped images of the Celts' unbridled sexuality, and their inclination towards irrationality and violence. The 1641 bloodshed and the Moonlighters[7]' exactions are summoned in evidence along with the pre-independence civil war and later IRA outrages. These disturbing, restless, rash ‘sub-humans', given monkey-like attributes by Punch magazine fully deserved the rigours of the Inquisition[8] rather than the protection warranted by habeas corpus[9]. With such a populace, and thus abandoned to its own devices, politically ‘backwards' Ireland was sure to lag behind economically as did many a Catholic nation in the 17th and 18th centuries ; that's what a simplified reading of Max Weber's theses in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism lead one to believe. Post-independence, the Northern Protestants' worse forebodings seemed vindicated first by the unrest then by the new Republic's options : De Valera[10] presided over a protectionist state subject to the censorship of the Register of Prohibited Publications that would cause the likes of Beckett and Joyce to leave the island. The Church, whose role was enshrined in the constitution, regimented education, health, lifestyles so that from the sixties on, the bans on divorce, contraception and abortion brought the country into sharp contrast with liberal Britain and its fast evolving society. Accordingly, it was imperative for the North to protect itself from its impoverished ‘backward-looking' neighbour, the more dangerous since its constitution claimed the entire island of Ireland as its national territory.

  1. Papism

    Disparaging term the Protestants use to refer to Catholicism, thus referenced as the pope's following.

  2. Elisabeth I (1533-1603)

    Daughter of Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn, who was sentenced to death on a charge of adultery. She became queen of England after the untimely death of her half-brother Edward VI (1547-1553) and her elder half-sister Mary Tudor (1553-1558).

  3. Philip II (1527-1598)

    Born in Valladolid, he was given a strict education and is known for his ascetic piety. He shouldered political responsibilities from an early age. In 1556, a few months after his father Charles V's abdication, he inherited an immense empire embracing Spain and its colonies. At home pushed for centralisation and unification. Abroad he waged war against France, then England and he had to quell a rebellion in the United Provinces. He incarnates both the Spanish Golden Age and the weaknesses which were the downside of might : costly wars, population flight to the American continent's colonies, Morisco exodus. King of Spain from 1556, he succeeded his father Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. During his reign he fought the European Protestant powers, notably England but his attempt to invade the country by sea (with the Invincible Armada) failed.

  4. Louis XIV (1638-1715)

    King of France from 1643 when he was still in his minority. Son of Louis XIII and grandson of Henry IV he started to rule in his own right in 1661. His political pursuit of prestige was conducted on several fronts : monarchic centralisation thereby weakening the aristocracy's role, cultural drive, military campaigns. He liked to be known as Louis the Great but, his death found France much weakened.

  5. Louis XV (1710-1774)

    King of France whose early popularity was marred by later mismanagement of the country's finance and loss of colonies. Besides projects against the United kingdom, he supported convents and institutions on his own territory whence English and Irish Catholics plotted the spiritual re-conquest of the two Islands.

  6. Jesuits

    Religious order which has the particularity to make a special vow of obedience to the pope. They are a noted presence in the fields of education, scientific and spiritual research and mission.

  7. Moonlighters

    Murderous armed groups conducting violent night operations against landlords during the 1880s land wars.

  8. Inquisition

    Institution set up by Pope Innocent III in the 13th century in order to fight “heresy”. First used against the Cathars or Albigensians, it became in the 15th and 16th century the instrument the Spanish church used, with the assent of the monarchs, to fight “heterodoxy” in all its forms, notably targeting the “new Christians”. We had here an institution that made it possible to transcend the mere union of the crowns (Castile and Aragon) to give Spain the Identity its two sovereigns wished for it. In a wider sense: an arbitrary and biased administration of justice.

  9. Habeas corpus

    Principle arising from the habeas corpus act voted by Parliament in 1679 according to which any person under arrest must be presented before a judge within 3 days. It is designed to curb arbitrary measures since the judge may have the person released.

  10. Eamon De Valera (1882-1975)

    Born in New York the son of a Spanish father and an Irish mother, he grew up from the age of two in the home of his peasant farmer Irish grand-parents. Thanks to a scholarship, he was able to study in a Catholic institution and to qualify as a maths teacher. He joined the Gaelic League then the Irish Volunteers. His involvement in the 1916 Easter Rising, leading to his arrest and death sentence turned him into a national hero.

    Amnestied in 1917 he was elected as an MP and became president of Sinn Fein. Having originally rejected the December 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty that created the Irish Free Sate, he eventually advocated it against the background of a civil war that set Catholics against each other. His party, Fianna Fáil won the 1932 elections and in 1937 De Valera had a new constitution adopted that established Eire ; thrice the head of government (1932, 1951 and 1957) he would be President of the Republic in 1959 and 1966.

PrécédentPrécédentSuivantSuivant
AccueilAccueilImprimerImprimer Richard Tholoniat, Professeur émérite à l'Université du Maine (France) Paternité - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de ModificationRéalisé avec Scenari (nouvelle fenêtre)