Sermons
and the performance of historiographical authority during the construction of
the Roman Catholic built landscape, 1850 -1900.
This paper explores the performance of
historiographical authority as manifested during the foundation stone sermons
for Roman Catholic building projects in the second half of the nineteenth
century. Jeanne Sheehy has estimated that 1,805 Roman Catholic churches were
built between 1800 and 1863 alone. This paper focuses on the performative facet
of the development of the Roman Catholic urban landscape, with an emphasis on
the historical narratives that were central to the foundation stone ceremonies.
In particular, this paper explores the
extent to which specific historical events were commemorated during the sermons
and speeches that formed a central part of the foundation stone ceremonies.
Throughout these highly ritualized events, the sixteenth-century Reformation
and the Cromwellian wars featured as key historical moments, emphasized and
narrated in often highly dramatic form by the speakers. This paper will
consider the function of these sermons as explicitly building and forging a
sense of communal memory around these events for the post-Famine Irish Roman
Catholic community. It will examine the broader history and memory culture
around the Reformation and the Cromwellian Wars in the 1860-1900 period, in
order to contextualize and explore the specific meanings created through the
foundation stone sermons, and will consider the extent to which the orators
positioned themselves as figures of historiographical authority during this
period.