Specifically, a sequence of seminal, and celebrated, public clashes in print across Europe and subsequently the Three Kingdoms has left a rich corpus of material in the Irish College Collection. The legacy of this discourse of divine disputation remains in the Old Library. Stout resistance would be expected to be manifested by Anglican and Presbyterian divines and lay writers who as fervently believed in their position in matters of faith as did their Catholic contemporaries. The process was envisaged as being lengthy and far from unopposed. As the Catholic Church itself debated and eventually reacted to the criticisms of Martin Luther, John Calvin and many other ‘Protestant’ critics with reforms drawn up by the Council of Trent, colleges such those in Paris, whether Irish, Scots or English, recognising that the fractured parts of Christendom could not and would not be reconciled, began preparing for an ongoing effort to re-evangelise and re-establish the Catholic Church in all three countries according to Tridentine principles. As Roman Catholicism slowly retreated from much of the Three Kingdoms in the face of the success and expansion of the Protestant Reformation, exile colleges established abroad (with Paris playing a central role) assumed the mantle for believers of preventing complete extinction of their faith within the islands – but also for disseminating the perspectives emanating from a process of internal change, the Counter Reformation or Catholic Reformation. ![]() Located within the books and manuscripts of the Old Library of the Irish College in the Centre Culturel Irlandais are significant numbers of important works, that featured in the intense intellectual battle, an argument in the archives, for hearts, minds and, above all, souls in the Three Kingdoms of Ireland, England and Scotland during the confessional conflict of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, c.1530-1700.
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