Christianities in the Early Modern Celtic World

the long version

The Celtic West has long been a source of wonder and desire for generations of Christian believers. This book provides a wide-ranging series of essays examining religion as practised during the early modern period among the main Celtic-language communities of Britain and Ireland. Ranging from devotional poetry to confessional history, across the span of competing religious traditions, the volume addresses the lived faith of diverse communities during the turmoil of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Taken together, the contributions provide a textured understanding of the complexities in religious belief, practice and organization of a series of 'micro-Christianites' which, although sharing a number of common traits and experiences, particularly in the common encounter with the English language and with the British state and its precursors, each evolved in its own individual fashion. The authors seek to place the Celtic societies of the West where they belong, not only in their own millennia-long history of faith but also in the wider history of religious change in the age of Reformations.