Type: Article
Harvey, Karen J. ‘Religion and Money: Irish Regular Colleges in the Roman Republic of 1798-99’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 8 (1993), Pp 73-82..
This article concerns the fortunes of the Franciscan College of San Isidoro and the Dominican College of San Clemente in Rome both of which provided priests for the Irish mission throughout the penal period during the Roman Republic at the end of the eighteenth century. The Republic, backed by French forces, seized ecclesiastical property, demolished churches and convents and stripped them of all moveable goods. Harvey discusses the ideological and financial motives of the French and the Republican government and the conflict between the Irish colleges and the Republic. The attempts of the priors and guardians of the Irish colleges, James MacCormick, John Connolly, and Clement Dunne to preserve their colleges and communities were heroic but unsuccessful, and terrible losses were suffered. Although these Irish colleges in Rome were revived after the Roman Republic, the continent would never again resume its former importance in Irish religious history; the Roman Republic marked the end of a chapter in the relations between Ireland and Europe.