Apocalyptic Ireland: 1580–1641

Abstract

Historians of early-modern Ireland have studied in some detail the association between religion and violence, but have failed to appreciate one important theological force—the application of apocalyptic passages of the bible to contemporary events. This ‘presentist’ interpretation of prophecy, common throughout Reformation Europe, began to be used in Ireland by Protestant soldiers, officials, and writers from the time of the Desmond Rising in 1579 onwards. By identifying the Pope as Antichrist, and Catholics as his followers, it served to sharpen the antipathy between Protestants and Catholics, and justify violent actions such as the massacre of the Spanish troops at Smerwick in 1580. The advent of peace in 1603 and the rise of Arminianism in England limited official enthusiasm for apocalyptic, but its central position in the Irish Protestant imagination was reinforced by the 1641 rising, which seemed to confirm biblical prophecies about the severity of the Antichristian Catholic threat.