Protestants, Catholics, and University Education: Trinity College Dublin in the Age of Revolution

By Thomas P. Power

Higher education was one of the more vital battlegrounds that emerged from the religious conflict of the sixteenth century. On the one hand, education was seen as central in spreading the ideas of the Reformers. On the other hand, the success of the Catholic Reformation emanated from the foundation of seminaries on the Continent. This work explores the denominational division in education with Trinity College Dublin as a case study and with the French Revolution as a backdrop. Because the French Revolution inhibited Catholic educational facilities in Europe, the book explores the extent to which a Protestant institution accommodated Catholic needs domestically. The pattern that emerged in a revolutionary context was to have long-term consequences for higher education in Ireland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666758931

Thomas P. Power

Thomas P. Power is sessional lecturer in the history of Christianity, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto. He is the author of The Apocalypse in Ireland: Prophecy and Politics in the 1820s (2022). He is general editor of the series Wycliffe Studies in History, Church, and Society.

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Introduction

Higher education was one of the more bitterly contested battlegrounds that emerged from the religious conflict of the sixteenth century. On the one hand, education was seen as central in spreading the ideas of the Reformers. In Ireland the University of Dublin, with its single constituent college, Trinity College (founded 1591, chartered 1592), was viewed as a strategic institution for the advancement of the Protestant faith and as a means of curbing Irish attendance at foreign colleges. Yet despite later claims and perceptions, the founding charter of Elizabeth I, which was revised and extended by Charles I, did not establish or endow Trinity College specifically for the education of clergy. Rather, it was intended as an institution where the youth of Ireland would be given a liberal education in the arts, including theology, in an environment conducive to the cultivation of virtue and religion.¹ There was, in fact, no formal connection, so far as course of study was concerned, between the university and the Church of Ireland until 1790.² On the other hand, the success of the Catholic Reformation emanated from the foundation of colleges on the Continent. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, more than forty colleges were founded in France, Spain, Portugal, the Italian States, and the Austrian Empire to cater for the education of Irish students, lay and clerical.³ Prior to the French Revolution, France alone had seven colleges in six cities that were attended by the Irish: Paris (2), Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Douai, and Nantes.⁴

Given this denominational configuration of education, the fact that until the mid-nineteenth century Trinity College was Ireland’s only university, and the fact that not all Catholic families could afford a higher education in the continental colleges, did Trinity present an alternative that they availed of? Did such attendance involve religious compromise on the part of Catholics? Or did provisions in the penal laws of the eighteenth century, along with the various oaths devised to solicit Catholic obedience, prove to be prohibitive of Catholic attendance at Trinity? Did such prohibitive barriers figure in the catalogue of legitimate grievances from which Catholics sought relief in the late eighteenth century, or was such a demand merely derivative of the fact that a continental education was no longer an option after French revolutionary forces shuttered the Irish colleges? When relief came, as it did with the act of 1793, did this result in an upsurge in Catholic attendance consistent with relief from a real grievance? Clearly, answers to these questions incorporate considerations not only of education but of religion and politics as well. Indeed, treatment of the issue is a composite of the development of denominational relations in Ireland during the period.

Scholarly work in this area has focused on a later period, with much attention being given to the episcopal ban on Catholic attendance at Trinity.⁵ More specifically, those older works addressing the relationship between Trinity College and Catholics make no mention of the 1793 act.⁶ Even recent treatments of the 1793 act gloss over the importance of its educational provisions.⁷ All too readily the bland statement that by the act of 1793 Catholics could take degrees at Trinity is repeated without consideration of the specifics or background of its attainment. It is apparent that the achievement of that result had a long evolution internal to the college itself rather than being solely attributable to external pressure from the Catholic lobby.

This book explores the nature of Catholic attendance at Trinity prior to 1793, the provisions of the 1793 legislation with respect to education, and the subsequent experience. It is contended that developments in higher education during the pivotal decade of the 1790s were to prove formative in its future configuration in Irish society.

1

. Dublin University Commission,

63

.

2

. Dublin University Commission,

64

; Power, Of No Small Importance,

147–49

.

3

. O’Connor, Domestic and International Roles,

90–114

; Atkinson, Irish Education, 48–57

.

4

. Helga Hammerstein, Aspects of the Continental Education,

137–53

.

5

. Pašeta, Trinity College,

7–20

; A. Burke, Beginning.

6

. Hogan, Irish Catholics.

7

. Bartlett, So Many,

126–36

; B. Fleming, Irish Education,

17

,

25

.

1

Catholics: Barriers, Accommodations, Solutions

The experience of Catholics who attended Trinity College can be characterized as an encounter with various institutional barriers, the accommodations made in response, and, in the 1780s particularly, the advancement of different solutions that sought to regularize such attendance.

Barriers

For forty-five years after its charter of foundation in 1592, there was no limitation either by civil law or college regulation on any young person attending Trinity College. It was not until the charter and statutes of 1637, framed by Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, that Catholics and Protestant dissenters were effectively excluded by the stipulation of religious tests or oaths. The impediments were twofold. First, while no inquiry was made regarding religious affiliation upon entrance, subsequently there was, given the Anglican ethos of the college, an obligation to attend divine services and receive Communion according to the rite of the Church of Ireland, actions forbidden to Catholics by their Church. Therefore, Catholics could technically enter but were effectively excluded by the obligation to attend such religious services. Further, the declaration against transubstantiation was included in the penal legislation of 1704 (2 Anne c.6 s.15). By it the subscriber denied the change of the eucharistic elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, the invocation of the saints and the Virgin Mary, and especially the sacrificial element in the mass and also certified that such subscription was done freely and without the prospect of a dispensation from the pope.¹ In summary form the declaration was incorporated into the requirements for taking a degree (Appendix 1) and in consequence, because it was contrary to Catholic beliefs, effectively acted as a barrier to Catholics proceeding to degrees.²

Second, the 1637 charter and statutes made subscription to a series of oaths a requirement for graduation. The oath of supremacy (2 Eliz. 1 c.1) of 1560 required all subjects to recognize the sovereign as head of the church and of the realm, to defend the same, and to reject any foreign jurisdiction such as that of the pope. Those Catholics who refused to do so were seen as enemies of the state. Though Catholics denied this interpretation that anyone who refused the oath was an enemy of the state, their position was made more difficult by the pope’s excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570 and the church’s legitimation of the active removal of heretics. Though a revised oath of supremacy was devised under William and Mary (3 Will. & Mary c.2), requiring a denial of the spiritual authority of the pope and thus making it objectionable to Catholics, the essence of the older act remained intact.

The oath of abjuration (13 & 14 Will. III, c. 6; 1 Anne c.9) did not contravene any specific Catholic tenet of faith, though for Catholics to take it was deemed sinful.³ Rather, it required Catholics to swear that James III hath not any right or title whatsoever to the crown of this realm, which they could not in conscience do because, for many, the claim to the throne was based on the principle of the divine right of kings. Subscription to the oath was made even more difficult because the pope recognized James III (son of the deposed and replaced James II) as the legitimate king. Moreover, the oath also required subscribers to pledge loyalty to the Protestant line of succession. Conceivably, should a member of the Hanoverian dynasty become a Roman Catholic, then a subscriber to the oath would be obliged to withdraw his obedience. Catholic refusal to subscribe to the oath suggested that they were all the while plotting to restore the Stuarts to the throne. The final barrier arising from the oath was the requirement that a subscriber take it freely and willingly invited a compliance that was contrary to conscience and an implicit perjury. Because of their religious and political nature, Catholics could not in conscience subscribe to these oaths of abjuration and of supremacy. What made the oath taking prohibitive and objectionable to Catholic students was the stipulation that it was done in the plain and ordinary sense of the words now read to me, as they are commonly understood by Protestants, without any evasion, equivocation or mental reservation or that the oaths explicitly prohibited one from subscribing and then receiving a dispensation from the pope or another authority that would absolve one of one’s responsibility to make good on their oaths.⁴ As with the declaration, subscription to the oaths in summary form (see Appendix 1) was a requirement for graduation at Trinity, thereby effectively excluding Catholics from obtaining degrees.

In the wider context, Catholic refusal to subscribe to the oaths was construed as an indication of disloyalty, and this in turn was used as a justification for the continuance of the penal laws. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that if the pope continued to recognize James III as king, no progress could be made on dispensing with the oath of abjuration. The requirements appeared increasingly anomalous with the death of James III in 1766 and the refusal of the pope to recognize the claim of his successor as the claimant to the throne in the Stuart line. In particular, the oath requiring subscribers to deny any foreign entity’s claim to jurisdiction in the country was a throwback to older Jacobite claims and no longer had any relevance after 1766.⁵ The oath requiring takers to disavow the doctrine that rulers excommunicated by the pope could be deposed or murdered by their subjects—one that arose in the context of the religious conflict of the sixteenth century—no longer pertained either.⁶

However, until an oath that was compatible with Catholic religious beliefs could be devised, no relaxation in the penal laws could be entertained. This materialized in 1774 with the passage of An Act to Enable His Majesty’s Subjects of Whatever Persuasion to Testify Their Allegiance to Him (13 & 14 Geo. III, c.35). Although the final version of the oath associated with the act differed somewhat from that originally proposed by the Catholic Committee, and although there were divisions about its acceptance among Catholics, the lead given by the Munster bishops, gentry, and merchants generated, in time, broader acceptance. The oath included a declaration of allegiance to King George III and his successors; disavowed obedience to the claims of Charles III, who was the Jacobite claimant, or any other claimants; rejected as unchristian and impious the notion that it was lawful to murder persons on the basis that they were hereticks; rejected the belief that persons excommunicated by the pope could be deposed or murdered; rejected the belief that the pope could have temporal or civil power within Ireland; and stated that the oath was subscribed to without equivocation or mental reservation.⁷ The extensive taking of the new oath of allegiance in 1774 and thereafter made the older oaths seem increasingly redundant for degree requirements.

Such