In the article, I talk about the French Catholic bishops' mission to Ireland in October 1916. When war was declared, there was an unprecedented rapprochement between the church and state in France. The Union Sacrée, as it was known, brought together the French State, Churches, trade unions and other organisations in a move that had never been seen on such a scale before in France's history.
The churchmen who visited the country wanted to meet with their confreres in Ireland and impress on them the need for manpower on the side of the Allied Powers in their fight with the Central Powers. They visited Dublin, Maynooth and the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, Armagh.
One of the visitors wrote newspaper articles about the visit in the French catholic newspaper, La Croix and also in a catholic magazine. These articles were later gathered together and published in the form of a pamphlet, called Notre Visite en Irlande (7-14 Octobre 1916).
Front cover of Pierre Batiffol's Notre Visite en Irlande, available on Gallica. Read it here.
No comments:
Post a Comment