The Clergy and the Military in Early Modern Ireland

This chapter will explore the relationship between the clergy and the military in late sixteenth-century Ireland. Connections to religious teaching and ritual were vital for early modern armies, yet these links remain underexplored in works on military culture of the period. The Erasmian Militis Christianitradition has often been invoked to explain Christian attitudes, particularly in studies of an assertive proselytising culture prevalent from the late Middle Ages onwards, but it is relatively infrequently applied in terms of actual mili-tary service and identity. As this chapter demonstrates, the clergy played two principal roles in martial culture: justifying military action in sermons; and accompanying armies in order to carry out the normal duties of clergymen, which included preaching to the officers and men. In return, the army pro-vided those clergy who were prepared to serve it with ample reward.