When is an outbreak of the plague a good thing? When it disrupts the government's persecution efforts (i, 36–7). This insight, from 1604, is just one of a great many to be found in the Irish Jesuit annual letters. The two volumes in question have been produced to the customary high standards of the Irish Manuscripts Commission. They comprise the Latin texts (and in one case, Portuguese) with English translations of twenty-five substantial letters from the period 1604 to 1674. The majority of the letters are indeed annual, dealing with an individual year, although some cover longer spans of time. As is often the case with sources for early modern Ireland, there are some notable gaps too in the surviving archive, for example from 1623 to 1640.
Vera Moynes in her ‘Introduction’ does an excellent job of contextualising the documents. She provides a brief history of the Jesuit mission in Ireland and explains the purpose, provenance and form of the letters. Her extensive knowledge of complementary sources, some of which she has previously calendared elsewhere, is also put to very good use here. Further editorial matter, including three appendices, serves to enhance the overall usability of these volumes.
It is no secret that the translation and publication of texts in Latin has enormous potential to enrich the source base available to scholars of early modern Ireland; thankfully, a number of such projects are ongoing. The appearance of these two volumes is testament to the benefits of collective effort in such enterprises, as the names of sixteen translators are listed. Some readers may draw solace from the timeframe involved here, which falls somewhat outside that acceptable to contemporary research funding bodies: Edmund Hogan S.J., the translator of three of the letters, died in 1917. Moynes also acknowledges the project's debt to John MacErlean S.J., who made transcripts of many of the annual letters in the early twentieth century. Earlier again, in 1874, Patrick Francis Moran published an excerpt from the letter for 1652–3, the text of which is now otherwise lost.
Annual letters were a notable product of the remarkable communication network established by the Jesuit order. In Ireland, the superior of the mission was expected to gather reports from other Jesuits on the island and then forward a consolidated report to the superior general in Rome. The Irish letters usually began with a general introduction before dealing in turn with affairs in various locations, beginning in Dublin and concluding with the Connacht residence. The letters also included descriptions of missions, including those to the Aran Islands and to Scotland.
The wealth of information contained in the letters can be only properly appreciated through first-hand engagement with the texts. Here are Jesuits performing the sacraments, preaching, travelling, resolving disputes, fleeing persecutors, suffering martyrdom, converting heretics, reforming gamblers, thieves, drunkards and adulterers, cursing and blessing, inveighing against ritual animal sacrifice in Mayo (i, 169), and much more. Landmark episodes, such as the Battle of Kinsale and Cromwell's sack of Drogheda, are also touched upon (i, 23–6; ii, 842).
At the same time, some readers may find frustrating the frequent absence of certain specific details. The vast majority of the persons with whom the Jesuits engaged are not actually named and references made to geographic locations are often rather vague. This partly reflected a strong desire for secrecy, arising from fear of persecution. Indeed, individual Jesuits were themselves only fully identified in the letters once they had died.
These characteristics also reflect the main purpose of the letters. They were not designed for communicating to Rome the minutiae of life on mission in Ireland but rather for edification. The letters were intended to be published and circulated, to encourage benefactors and to attract new recruits to the order. What we are shown, therefore, is a small body of heroic Jesuits consistently achieving remarkable results despite the odds, striving amongst uncultured natives and against persecuting enemies. The letters are, in other words, heavily biased and in some respects unreliable. They are a rich and very welcome addition to the range of sources accessible to scholars of religion and society in seventeenth-century Ireland.
