tet1837- 1870 he Presentation Sisters(') religious congregations comprised one of arrived in Limerick in 1837, the strongest religious movements in in response to a request for nineteenth century Catholic Eur0pe.o The their educational services. pioneer of this movement in Ireland was In so doing they were not concerns of Victorians elsewhere. Honora (Nano) Nagle, who founded the only responding to an immediate need for Propriety, gentility, conformity with Presentation order in the 1770s, which schools in the city but also partaking of appropriate social mores - these were the had education as its major area of work. wider social trends and currents. The kind of social and cultural values which Nagle was a Cork woman who had spent a coming of the sisters to Limerick was part became increasingly important and the brief time in a convent in France before of the spread of Catholic institutions in educational system proved a perfect returning to Ireland at the end of the Ireland in the early nineteenth century. means of inculcating these. 1740s. She came back because she felt They also participated in the creation of a The state was not the only agency that life in an enclosed order was not widespread system of elementary educ- interested in the education of the Irish compatible with her sense of vocation and ation that had social as well as intellectual masses, of course: the Catholic church that she "should run a great risk of implications. They contributed to the had a great involvement in this area. From salvation if [she] did not follow the elaboration of appropriate roles for women 1780 to 1845 it moved from being a inspiration [to return]".(*) For the next in nineteenth century Ireland, chiefly by technically illegal organisation to being an twenty years or so she engaged in means of the intellectual and vocational accepted part of the structures of power philanthropic work among the poor of training provided in their schools for and influence within Irish society.c5)The Cork city, concentrating especially on young female children. This article will churches, convents and schools appearing educating poorer Catholic children in explore how both the Presentation nuns on the Irish landscape were adequate defiance of the Penal Laws. Wishing to and the myriad of young girls they taught testimony to this. As one of its priorities, give some continuity to her work, in Limerick participated in, and benefited the church set about providing a Catholic particularly after her death, Nagle from, these developments. education for its members and schools financed the move to Ireland of a group of It was a widely held belief in the early were vital to this effort, in particular the Ursuline nuns - the first female order nineteenth century that one of the main convent and monastery schools of the to come to the country since the factors that caused the social distress so socially active nuns and brothers who now Reformation. However, the Ursulines were evident in the country was the lack of became so important in the life of the a traditional cloistered order, so their educational provision for the Irish masses: Catholic church. Previously, education work among the poor proved to be it was felt that their ignorance not only for poorer Catholics had been very disappointingly limited. She therefore hindered practical schemes for the problematic. It was available in the popular resolved to found a new style organisation improvement of their material conditions Catholic pay schools but only for those that would be purposely built for the type but also prevented them from developing children whose parents could afford the of work she felt most important. Thus habits of industry and systematic thinking. minimal fee involved. The Protestant Nagle and three other women formed the It was also assumed that a properly educational institutions, sponsored "Society of the Charitable Instruction of conducted system of elementary educa- directly or indirectly by the State, did offer the Sacred Heart" whose aim was tion would lead to an increased awareness educational facilities to the very poor, but charitable work among the poor. By the of the benefits of 'The Constitution' and the majority of Catholic parents were time of Nagle's death in 1784, this new thus aid the effort at 'civilising' the Irish.(2) unwilling to send their children to these congregation had still not received final Thus an elementary school system in schools because of their proselytising papal approval, and in order to do so had Ireland was seen as a means of cultivating reputation. Thus the Catholic church itself to adopt perpetual solemn vows and full attitudes of political loyalty as well as had to provide educational facilities for enclosure in 1805. Henceforth the goal of promoting cultural assimilation.@)As the its poorer members. Individuals (both the congregation was restricted to century progressed an additional social clerical and lay) established and ran education alone, and that within the aim was given even greater prominence, schools for the poor but, as mentioned convent walls. By this stage, the namely the encouragement of respect- above, by far the most numerous and organisation had also changed its name at ability and decorum in the general effective of the church-sponsored schools the request of the remaining sisters, and population. This was particularly impor- were those run by the new Irish orders of was now known as the 'Institute of the tant after the famine because as well as nuns and brothers from the end of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary'. undergoing great changes in the eighteenth century onwards. These orders By the time the Presentation Sisters came aftermath of that catastrophe, Irish society became a major means of dissemination of to Limerick they were the most also developed many of the traits of the church influence, first among the urban widespread of all the female religious, 'mid-Victorian'c4) period. From the 1850s poor (in particular in areas like Limerick) their convents comprising 55 per cent of onwards much of the Irish population and later all over the country.(6) the entire number of religious houses in shared many of the preoccupations and The emergence and growth of female Ireland." and monasteries whose members were socially active. In Limerick, although the Christian Brothers had been here since 1816, the first socially active female order to arrive and to stay was the Presentation order in 1837. In terms of convent foundation, this was rather late in the century for the first permanent foundation in one of the major urban areas in Ireland. By that year there were thirty-thyee Presentation convents in all - most of therp in towns considerably smaller th% Limerick. It was not the first attempt at a foundation however. As early as 1810, the Presentation community in Kilkenny sent an unspecified number of sisters to Limerick but they only stayed two months in the city, as they encountered too many difficulties. Unfortunately, the records available do not tell us the nature of these difficulties. Bishop Young of Limerick was very frustrated by this failure: in a letter to his fellow bishop of Cork he hoped that the disappointment would only be temporary.(13)He did not allow his desire for education for the Catholic poor of the city to be long denied however, for in 1812 he managed to persuade three Poor Clares to come to Limerick and open a school. This foundation struggled along until 1831, at which point financial difficulties became insurmountable.(14)In May, 1833, four nuns from the Present- ation community in Galway took over the running of the school for poor female children that had been established by the Poor Clare nuns in St Mary's Parish. These nuns were recalled in April, 1836, as they had not attracted any recruits and the location of the convent had proved unhealthy. Interestingly enough, Samuel Lewis wrote that the school they subsequently abandoned was put into the national school system and run by two of the sisters of St Clare, who had obviously remained behind after the withdrawal of Nano Nagle, founder of the Presentation Sisters. their community.(15) This whole series of events tells us Although their motivation was purely those who married and remained faithful much about the vagaries of convent religious, by their involvement in the and subordinate within the marriage foundation at that time but also gives us an educational system, sisters such as the relationship, who accepted that their insight into the haphazard but nonetheless Presentations also contributed to the natural sphere was the domestic one and successful attempt at providing education socialisation of their charges into the who remained sexually continent until for the poor female children of Limerick. dominant social and cultural values of the marriage.(ll) By transmitting these values From what evidence is available, it appears time. As they were especially committed the educational project of the Presentation that the lack of financial support from the to the education of young female children, nuns in Limerick had effects that went far citizens of Limerick coupled with the the Presentation nuns participated in the beyond the alleviation of educational need. orders' inability to support the various transmission of the type of intellectual and attempts were the crucial factors in the vocational training considered appropriate failure of these foundations. This financial for girls and young women at that time. insecurity would have had a knock-on Therefore they were involved in the trans- The new Catholic institutions such as the effect, for a house in a financially mission of gendered social roles. In this Presentation convents were situated, on precarious position would not attract local they represented something of a paradox, the whole, in the cities and provincial recruits which in turn would further for here were all-female institutions, towns.