Forged in the fire of persecution: Edmund rice (1762-1844) and the counter-reformationary character of the Irish Christian Brothers

Abstract

From the dawn of Catholic Emancipation to the eve of the Great Famine, the life of Edmund Ignatius Rice (1762-1844) spanned a critical age in the emergence of Catholic Irish consciousness. In the history of schooling, it was a particularly significant period in which Catholic education emerged from the constraints of the Penal Laws and embraced the confident attributes associated with the Council of Trent (1545-1563) and subsequent reformers. Transported to Ireland, however, such uncompromising reforms assumed a political and sectarian character as an explicitly Catholic pedagogy emerged in the context of a nationalist advance and the bitter controversies of the ‘Bible Wars’ which established the tenor of the age.