The Eucharistic Congress was described as ‘a flashpoint in the formation of a specific Irish Catholic identity’.132 More than a million people attended masses in the Phoenix Park over five days. Adolf Mahr was commissioned to write a book, Christian Art in Ancient Ireland: Selected Objects Illustrated and Described, for the event. It was presented by de Valera to the Cardinal Legate at Government Buildings on 23 June 1932.133 Volume II of the book was completed by Mahr’s successor, the archaeologist Joseph Raftery, in 1941. In his review of Mahr’s book, Cyril Fox wrote in 1932, that ‘we warmly congratulate the Government of Saorstát Éireann on this new evidence of their appreciation of “the vital function which art has in the life of a nation.”’134 This viewpoint about art and the nation provides an interesting counterpoint to that espoused by Brian P. Kennedy on the importance of art in independent Ireland.135 The cultural revival, prior to 1922, was infused with the Protestant ethos of W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and others but was supplanted by a catholicisation of culture in the newly independent state where ‘Celtic’ was assumed to be synonymous with Catholic. Indeed, Celtic Art was a politically hot topic as it was considered essential to the identity of the state and the prospect of discovering valuable Celtic objects was a core ambition of the Harvard archaeologists. While Hyde advocated an inclusive religious ethos, the cultural vision of the first two nationalist governments under Cosgrave and de Valera was a Catholic one. As modernist thinking did not necessarily take the form of secularism in the interwar period, expressions of Catholicism fitted the broader cultural regenerative model, driven by nationalist ideology.
This cultural blossoming became imbued with the catholicity of the newly independent State. The ‘Early Christian Period’, in archaeology, for example, came to be seen as exclusively Catholic. This is also reflected in the setting up of the Academy of Christian Art in 1929 which was under the patronage of Saints Patrick, Brigid and Columcille. Article iv of its constitution stated that ‘For reasons of doctrine and ritual the academy shall include none but Catholics’.136 In 1922, the Central Catholic Library in Dublin was established.137 It was de Valera’s view that ‘the Irish genius has always stressed spiritual and intellectual values rather than material ones’.138 This emphasis on the spiritual was also expressed in the foreword to the catalogue, The Pageant of the Celt, performed at the Chicago World Fair in 1934. One example of this type of sentiment included the statement: ‘We who have seen our world wrecked on the reefs of material philosophy must seek our own rebirth and the salvation of our heirs in the beacon light of that Celtic philosophy which in other days saved the world for Christian ideals’.139 The Pageant of the Celt, narrated by Micheál MacLiammóir, covered a 3,500-year period of Irish history in nine scenes, from the arrival of the ‘Milesians’ in prehistory to the 1916 Rising.140 It was reported in the Chicago Herald that John V. Ryan, President of Irish Historical Productions, Inc., and a Chicago attorney, composed the ‘richly poetic version of Ireland’s history’.141 The objective of the pageant was ‘to present a spectacle worthy of their Celtic past, and reveal to Americans of Celtic tradition a glimpse of their rich racial heritage’.142
A Century of Progress in Irish Archaeology
An official Irish Free State exhibition was displayed in the modernist Travel and Transport building at the Chicago World Fair in 1934, the theme of which was ‘A Century of Progress’.143 This was organised by Daniel J. McGrath, the Irish Consul-General in Chicago and centred around antiquities in the National Museum. An ‘impressive effort’ involved the collaboration of the National Museum of Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy and the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland to present ‘A Century of Progress in Irish Archaeology’.144 Artefacts and copies of them included ‘Celtic’ cultural items from the Early Christian Period and ‘Celtic’ cultural items from the Early Bronze Age. Artefacts discovered by the Harvard Mission archaeologists included a cast of the Viking gaming board and an electrotype of a bronze hanging bowl from Ballinderry 1 Crannóg, Co. Westmeath. The antiquities were considered at the time to be very important because of ‘the all-European and indeed, universal importance of Irish archaeology’.145 Editions of the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and the Journal of the Co. Louth Archaeological Journal were displayed. Also exhibited were popular guides on archaeological sites; a copy of the National Monuments Act, 1930; the ‘List of scheduled monuments in the care of the Commissioners of Public Works’; and some Office of Public Works (OPW) Annual Reports with descriptions of famous sites such as Glendalough, Clonmacnoise and the Rock of Cashel. A photographic album compiled by the Dublin optician and antiquarian Thomas Holmes Mason, MRIA, contained photographs of the well-known archaeological monuments in their natural settings including Newgrange, Dowth, Dun Aengus, the Skelligs, Glendalough, Monasterboice and Clonmacnoise. The archaeological exhibit was part of a wider cultural package which reflected the ideas and values and aspirations of the Irish Free State. Included were facsimiles of the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow; stills from the film Man of Aran, paintings by Jack B. Yeats, Paul Henry and George Russell (AE), books and cards from the Cuala Press, tapestries from the Dún Emer Guild and books in the Irish language.146
The correlation of race, religion and cultural expression was typical of the period. The idea that a pure race would produce a pure cultural product was an idea common in archaeological discourse. MacNeill’s academic tour of universities in the United States in 1930 not only attracted the Harvard Mission to Ireland, but the Mission’s work in turn gave scientific credence to Irish archaeological and medieval historical scholarship. MacNeill, who can be seen as a cultural ambassador for Ireland, was working hard to encourage the development of Celtic Studies in the United States.147 Celtic Studies became an important conduit for the post-colonial desire to re-establish cultural connections within the diaspora as a way of gaining a cultural and, therefore, economic, foothold on the world stage.
A World Centre of Celtic Culture
Douglas Hyde had expressed his gratitude for the interest of American academics in ‘everything concerned with us – history, archaeology and language’.148 He corresponded regularly with the American Celticists including Fred Norris Robinson, Arthur L.C. Brown and Roger Sherman Loomis. He also kept an autographed photograph of Theodore Roosevelt, a Celtophile, on the wall in his study.149 In 1930, Eoin MacNeill was invited to tour some American universities by Professor Arthur L.C. Brown, of Northwestern University; Professor J. Peet Cross, of Chicago University and Professor Robert D. Scott, of the University of Nebraska.150 He described these scholars as ‘of the highest reputation on both sides of the Atlantic as authorities on the mediaeval literatures of Northern and Western Europe’.151 During his tour, he visited Harvard, Columbia, New York, Yale, Fordham, Notre Dame, and Northwestern University in Chicago. At that time Harvard and the Catholic University of America were the two institutions at the forefront of the development and promotion of Celtic Studies in the United States. Fred Robinson of Harvard was central to the development of Celtic Studies at Harvard and its increasing importance in the cultural life of North America.152 When he arrived in New York on 2 April 1930 MacNeill was met by detectives and the police as political threats had been made against him.153 His first lecture was on early Celtic institutions and law which was delivered at New York University (NYU) on 2 April 1930. A dinner was hosted in his honour by the American Irish Historical Society of New York and the Law School of New York University. The American Irish Historical Society (AIHS) was founded in 1897 for the purpose of correcting the perception of Ireland’s role in American history.154 By the 1930s this perception was beginning to change. Other speakers at the dinner included Daniel F. Cohalan, who took an active role in the AIHS. Cohalan was the son of an Irish immigrant who left Cork at the height of the Famine in 1847. He had a lot of political influence and was regarded as the ‘leader of the Irish race in America’.155 Prior to his meeting with Eoin MacNeill, Cohalan had met with important cultural and political figures including Douglas Hyde, Patrick Pearse and Roger Casement. He served as President of the Board of Directors of the influential Irish-American newspaper, the Gaelic American from 1903 and was co-founder of the Sinn