Ireland's National Marian Shrine at Knock receives one and a half million pilgrims each year. A new book on Knock argues that the vision embodied in microcosm many of the central conflicts and struggles within the Irish Catholic church and especially among its local members of the time.— Knock: The Virgin’s Apparition in Nineteenth- Century Ireland (ISBN 978 185918 440 0, Hbk, 400 pp, 234 x 156mm, €49/£39).
On August 21 1879 in a poor rural village in the western county of Mayo over a dozen people saw a bright silvery-white light outside the gable of the local Catholic church and within the light the Virgin Mary, St Joseph and St John the Evangelist. The apparition persisted for several hours but the life size figures did not speak or move. An investigation by a panel of priests concluded that the witnesses' testimony was satisfactory.
Knock: The Virgin's Apparition in Nineteenth- Century Ireland is available on www.corkuniversitypress.com
From a neglected memoir dating from 1880 Hynes steps inside the shoes of a local man who describes the scene in Knock for half a century before the apparition. The timing and location of the apparition is explained by the combination of several factors. First there was the imminently-expected famine, a prophecy of how Knock would be kept safe from famine, and the locally sacred timeframe where the days of devotion and penitence in late August brought thousands of pilgrims to nearby Ballyhaunis- all of these factors heightened hopes of divine involvement. In addition the events of the Land War provoked a clerical authority crisis in Knock because the clergy supported the local landowners over the tenants. Apparitions were part of people’s cultural toolkit at the time and were seen as a weapon of the weak against their oppressors.
Hynes shines an important new sociological light on nineteenth century Ireland. He provides a readable and scholarly account of rural Catholic life in the time leading up to the apparition at Knock. He weaves a rich description of the people and events into a comprehensive analysis of the social, political and economic context with which the apparition occurred.
Eugene Hynes is a native of east Galway and is Associate Professor of Sociology at Kettering University, Michigan
Advanced reviews...
It is extraordinary that this is the first scholarly book about the Knock apparitions and - in it - Hynes provides us not only with a brilliant account of the events of the evening of 21 August 1879 at Knock but also with an imaginative and thought provoking analysis of popular beliefs in late nineteenth century Ireland. This is a landmark book that makes a major contribution to the social history of modern Ireland - Dr Fergus Campbell, School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University, UK
There is every liklihood that this pioneering work, which skilfully combines insights from social theory with a deep knowledge of the historical context in which the Knock apparition of August 1879 came to public attention, will establish itself as a landmark study of late nineteenth century rural Ireland - Tony Varley, National University of Ireland, Galway
Eugene Hynes’s Knock examines the visions of 1879 with close attention to their cultural context and to specific persons and events. The result is at once a panorama of nineteenth-century rural Mayo and an engrossing detective story -William A. Christian Jr. author of Visionaries; The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ (University of California Press, 1996)
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