Religion and urban society: the case of early modern Dublin.

IN 1698 THE ENGLISH ANTIQUARIAN AND TOPOGRAPHICAL ARTIST Francis Place visited Ireland. Travelling along the east coast, sketching as he went, he arrived at Dublin in early 1699. From a hill to the south-west of the city, he drew a prospect of the cityscape using a camera obscura. In some ways the result was not unlike contemporary prospects of large English cities such as London, York or Norwich. The skyline was dominated by church towers, or in some cases towers surmounted by spires, the erection of which was made necessary by the rising height of the surrounding buildings.1 This skyline is a reminder not only of the importance of religion in the early modern city but also of its daily visibility to urban dwellers. While Place’s image of Dublin depicts a rather thinner forest of spires and towers than contemporaries could see in early modern London, it was certainly the greatest concentration of churches in any of Place’s Irish topographical drawings. Moreover, the presence of two cathedrals in the city, the diocesan cathedral of Christ Church and the supernumerary one of St Patrick’s, raised from collegiate status in the thirteenth century, marked Dublin out as an urban centre unlike anything else in early modern Ireland. In fact the presence of religious structures in the city was even greater than Place’s drawings suggest. Dublin on the eve of the religious changes begun in the 1530s could boast eight churches or chapels within the walls and nine outside, in addition to the two cathedrals. As the late seventeenth-century city expanded northwards across the River Liffey—and also south and west—new parishes, complete with churches, were created. To the north of the river, St Mary’s and St Paul’s were erected out of the older parish of St Michan’s in 1697; and by 1749 St Thomas’s was carved out of St Mary’s. South of the river the fashionable parish of St Ann’s was erected in 1707, and St Mark’s and St Luke’s were established in 1708. Apart from these new creations, other religious groupings in the city were not represented on Place’s drawings for other reasons. The