Letters to Italy: Translation and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

The analysis of translation activity in particular societies and contexts can often focus on published texts and literary works. In nineteenth-century Ireland, such an approach would only capture a proportion of translation activity since, in this period, religious translations greatly outnumbered literary works and influential elements of translation were contained not just in publications but also in private correspondence. Indeed, religion was a forceful propeller behind translation activity in Ireland in the nineteenth century and constituted a major translation output for the country. Recent research has shown the dominance of religious translation in Ireland in the French context (Milan 2013), and it is thus important to study the function of translation and its effect on religious and societal developments in Ireland. Nineteenth-century Ireland experienced huge religious upheavals including increasingly bitter divisions between Protestants and Catholics and the ‘Romanisation’ of the Irish Catholic Church. It was a period of religious fervour which has been dubbed the ‘devotional revolution’ and the seeds were sown at this time for many subsequent years of sectarian tensions (Larkin 1972; Larkin 1980, 1987). This paper examines how translation was used to promote certain religious worldviews in Ireland in the nineteenth century and in particular, it will look at how an ultramontane form of Catholicism was progressed by means of translation.