Book review: The Brigidine Sisters in Ireland, America, Australia and New Zealand, 1807–1922

Abstract

seen as something of a missed opportunity. It does contain an entry on the presence of plague in 1603 and 1650, for example, and on the Irish language but it omits print and other issues and themes as a consequence of its prioritisation of people and places. This is a pity. But it is not a significant criticism of the edition or the editor, and still less of Brian Mac Cuarta, the director of ARSI, with whom 'the idea of this calendar originated' (p. x). With its publication, and the publication by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 2019 of the full text of the surviving Annual Letters sent by the Irish Jesuit province to Rome between 1604 and 1674, which are listed in the current publication, it will be possible not only to arrive at a properly documented appreciation of the significance of the Jesuit mission to Ireland but also of an enhanced understanding of the fast changing environment in which it functioned. That this is so is testimony to the value of this calendar and to the potential of the archive to which it provides a welcome and reliable guide.