Moyvore-based historian curating Maynooth exhibition
A Westmeath-based historian is co-curating an exhibition at Maynooth University which explores the significance and legacy of the Second Reformation in pre-Famine Ireland.
Dr Ciarán McCabe, who lives in Moyvore, is also participating in a symposium at Maynooth’s John Paul II Library this Monday (October 24).
The symposium and exhibition launch takes place 200 years to the day since the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, William Magee, gave an infamous sermon or ‘charge’ at St Patrick’s Cathedral on October 24, 1822. Archbishop Magee’s charge sparked religious controversy in Ireland, playing a significant role in driving the Second Reformation, including the ‘Bible War’, which is in turn countered by the emergence of an assertive Irish Catholicism.
The symposium begins at 9.30am, with a number of speakers lined up, including Dr McCabe who will speak on ‘Catholic-Protestant relations in pre-Famine Ireland: a case study of Dublin parish vestries’ in the afternoon session.
The exhibition, which is co-curated by Dr McCabe along with Alexandra Caccamo with the assistance of Maynooth University Special Collections and Archives staff, will run from October 24 to January 27, 2023. Monday’s symposium and launch is a free, in-person event, with registration at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/the-second-reformation-in-pre-famine-ireland-bicentennial-perspectives-tickets-427190577517.
Dr McCabe is a social historian of poverty and welfare in Ireland and Britain, contextualised in the transatlantic world. He was recently appointed a lecturer at the School of History, Archaeology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast.
His publications to date have examined begging and alms-giving in pre-Famine Ireland, charitable societies in 19th-century Dublin and Belfast, women and paid work in 19th and 20th-century Dublin (with particular regard to charwomen), murder in 19th-century Ireland, and humane societies in Ireland and Britain. He has also published editions of documents relating to the history of Catholic female religious and a Methodist charity in late-18th-century Dublin.
More recently, Dr McCabe, along with Dr Emily Mark-Fitzgerald (UCD) and Edenderry native Dr Ciarán Reilly (Maynooth University) co-edited a collection of essays entitled Dublin and the Great Irish Famine, which has been published by UCD Press and was launched at Kilmainham Gaol on Monday night last.