Prior to the nineteenth century, the experience of popular Catholicism in Ireland was associated with extended pilgrimages and with rituals performed at thousands of holy wells. The study of popular religion in Ireland has for centuries been dominated by a model which sees these practices as remnants of an archaic and largely pagan tradition inherited from a distant Celtic past. In Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion, sociologist Michael P. Carroll refutes this model and offers a fresh perspective. ...
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Prior to the nineteenth century, the experience of popular Catholicism in Ireland was associated with extended pilgrimages and with rituals performed at thousands of holy wells. The study of popular religion in Ireland has for centuries been dominated by a model which sees these practices as remnants of an archaic and largely pagan tradition inherited from a distant Celtic past. In Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion, sociologist Michael P. Carroll refutes this model and offers a fresh perspective. These rites were not ancient at all, Carroll explains; they arose in the wake of the Reformation as ordinary Catholics attempted to merge ideas imported from Counter-Reformation Europe with distinctively Irish traditions. The variant that resulted provided a religious experience that appealed to all levels of Irish Catholic society, in both rural and urban areas -- peasants and city dwellers alike thought pilgrimages essential to their identity as Irish Catholics. In the years just before the Famine, however, the structure of society changed, and the appeal of this variant would ultimately dissolve. A social, historical, and psychological study of religion, history, and literature in Romantic Ireland, Irish Pilgrimage: Holy Wells and Popular Catholic Devotion is the unique story of people struggling to express their religious identities in ways that were both impeccably Catholic and yet distinctively Irish.
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Seller's Description:
First edition. ix+226 pages with index. Illustrated. Cloth and boards. Fine in like dustjacket. The study of pre-19th-century religion in Ireland has been dominated by a model which sees the extended pilgrimages and rituals performed at holy wells as remnants of an archaic, pagan tradition. The author of this study argues these rites were not ancient, but arose in the wake of the Reformation as ordinary Catholics attempted to merge ideas imported from Counter-Reformation Europe with distinctively Irish traditions. The variant that resulted provided a religious experience that appealed to all levels of Irish Catholic society, in both rural and urban areas-peasants and city dwellers alike thought pilgrimages essential to their identity as Irish Catholics. In the years just before the Famine, however, the structure of society changed, and the appeal of this variant would ultimately dissolve. A social, historical and psychological study of religion, history and literature in Romantic Ireland, the book is the story of a people struggling to express their religious identities in ways that were both impeccably Catholic and yet distinctively Irish.
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Seller's Description:
Fair. A readable copy. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Dust jacket may be missing. Pages can include considerable highlighting markings writing but cannot obscure the text. May be an Ex-lib. copy and have standard library stamps and or stickers. May NOT include discs or access code or other supplemental material. We ship Monday-Saturday and respond to inquiries within 24 hours.
