Devotional Landscapes

Reconstructing the relationship of the inhabitants of early modern Ireland with the natural world and its Creator is both a difficult and a straightforward task. At one level those who lived in Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant, had much in common with other contemporary Europeans, and they shared similar ideas about the existence of God, his actions in creating the world and how that world worked. At another level the relationship between the inhabitants of early modern Ireland and the natural world is rather different from that observable in other places. In terms of pilgrimage, the inhabitants of Ireland before the Reformation in the early sixteenth century had litde interest in visiting corporeal relics, and body parts of saints were in short supply in Ireland by comparison with other European countries. Rather, the devout preferred to visit places in the natural world that had reputed associations with a saint, such as a well created by a saint or a cave where he had lived. Why this should be so is difficult to explain, but it certainly created an experience of the natural world which, though not unique to Ireland, was certainly more intense there. In turn, this affected local religious experiences as they were reshaped through the process of religious change in the early modern period, giving a particular hue to the local forms of religious devotion practised by both Catholics and Protestants. This essay aims to reveal something of the distinctive traits of local religion that formed as a result of the conscious interaction of the inhabitants of Ireland with God’s creation

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Early modern period · Geography · Natural (archaeology · Pilgrimage · Protestantism · SAINT · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Irish and British Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Tourism and Spaces

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