School of History, UCC

Dr Bronagh Ann McShane, Department of History, University of Limerick

Thursday 23 March 2023, 16:00 (4 PM)

The paper will be delivered through MS Teams. Please, contact Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel, School of History, UCC, for a Teams link: j.aandewiel@ucc.ie Or see Teams link below.
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3a8414a845c3514c128a485f997599667c%40thread.tacv2/1679219496857?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2246fe5ca5-866f-4e42-92e9-ed8786245545%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22aadc93b1-d834-47e2-966c-f54e1402076b%22%7d

Paper Founded by St Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) in the thirteenth century, the Poor Clares are an enclosed, contemplative order that retain a global presence today. Observing vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, they are one of the most austere orders in the Roman Catholic Church. This presentation examines the history of the Poor Clare Order in Ireland, from their foundation in Dublin in 1629, down to the present day. During the seventeenth century, the order played a leading role in the provision of vocational options for women in Ireland. This was a time of unprecedented unrest and upheaval across the island of Ireland and Poor Clare sisters confronted numerous challenges to the observation of their religious way of life, including suppression, warfare and exile. Despite this, the order sustained and from the eighteenth century onwards experienced significant growth and development, with new branches of the order flourishing. This paper charts this development and concludes with an assessment of the status of the order in modern day Ireland.

Dr Bronagh Ann McShane, FRHistS, is a historian specialising in the history of women, religion and gender. She completed her PhD (Irish Research Council-funded) at Maynooth University and previously held a National University of Ireland Research Fellow at the University of Galway. She is the author of Irish Women in Religious Orders, 1530-1700: Suppression, Migration and Reintegration (Woodbridge, 2022) and has published articles in journals including British Catholic History, Archivium Hibernicum and the Journal of Historical Network Research. She is joint guest editor of the recently published special issue of Irish Historical Studies, ‘A New Agenda for Women's and Gender History in Ireland’ (Nov. 2022); co-editor of Brides of Christ: Women and Monasticism in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland (forthcoming 2023) and contributor to the Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism (expected 2024).