HISTORY:Edmund Rice emerges as a divisive visonary in an account of the early years of Christian Brothers schools
IN JUNE 2008, the Irish Christian Brothers transferred control of 96 schools to the Edmund Rice Trust, formally ending more than 200 years of Christian Brothers' education in Ireland. Daire Keogh's book is a timely reminder of the origins and early years. This volume was commissioned by the order. It takes the story up to the death of the founder, Edmund Rice, in 1844, a second volume is in preparation.
Edmund Rice was born in Callan, Co Kilkenny in 1762, son of a prosperous tenant farmer. The family home, now a heritage centre, had four bedrooms, a parlour and kitchen - indicating a standard of living much superior to the typical peasant of pre-famine Ireland. Keogh is correct in placing Edmund Rice among the ambitious, middling-rank Catholics, who "jostled for position in a rapidly, evolving society". He attended the local hedge school, and then boarded at a small school in Kilkenny, where in addition to the classics, he probably studied commercial subjects. When Rice left school, he was apprenticed to his uncle, a Waterford provision merchant, and eventually took over this business - exporting meat to England and farther afield. Keogh suggests he might also have been involved in money-lending. Rice was a very successful businessman. By 1815 he held 1,500 acres in counties Kilkenny, Tipperary and Laois, together with an inn in Callan, 10 houses in Waterford, and three houses on St Stephen's Green in Dublin - his rental income amounted to approximately £5,000 - a very substantial sum at this time. Rice married at some point in the 1780s, but his wife died in January 1789, leaving a young daughter.
During the 1790s, Rice continued with his business, but he also engaged in a range of religious and philanthropic activities, helping to found a Catholic orphanage, and a charitable organisation in Waterford to provide for the poor, and becoming an active member of a lay prayer association. In 1803, he opened his first school in Waterford - Mount Sion - where he was joined by two men, also natives of Callan - in founding the Society of the Presentation. This school for poor boys was modelled on the schools established by Nano Nagle, founder of the Presentation sisters. The purpose was to provide a Catholic education for poor boys. By 1844, the year of Rice's death, this venture had expanded to include 11 communities in Ireland, 12 in England and one in Sydney, educating 8,000 boys, with approximately 100 brothers.
Rice financed the early schools from his personal finances. This was both a pragmatic decision and a reflection of his temperament. Although he had enjoyed a close relationship with Dr Hussey, bishop of Waterford, and with Dr Troy, bishop of Ossory and later archbishop of Dublin, Rice was determined to remain independent of diocesan control. In 1820, he secured papal approval for a new constitution, which placed the order under the direct control of Rome. The Vatican appears to have agreed to this because of a growing concern that Protestant societies were targeting poor Catholic children by providing them with free schooling. Rice's community was seen as playing a key role in the battle for the souls and the minds of poor Irish boys. Although the new constitution was approved by the majority of the brothers, the Cork community did not join the new congregation, and several of Rice's earliest companions also left. The Cork brothers retained the original name of Presentation Brothers; in 1822 the remainder made their vows as Christian Brothers.
The next 20 years saw the emergence of many of the characteristics that we now associate with Christian Brothers' schools. A number of schools were affiliated with the new national school system in its early years, but Rice's determination to have exclusive control, and his belief that secular and religious classes could not be separated, led to their withdrawal. This action further isolated the Brothers from the Catholic hierarchy, who saw the national schools as offering a workable solution to the appalling cost of educating the Catholic poor. Going solo put enormous financial pressures on the Brothers. The O'Connell Schools in Dublin was forced to close two schoolrooms, redeploy two Brothers and reduce student numbers by 200. Running an independent school system prompted the brothers to produce their own textbooks - the textbooks produced by the Commissioners of National Education had set a new standard for school texts. Gerald Griffin, the well-known playwright, who entered the novitiate in 1838, helped to write and compile several school readers.
The Christian Brothers' textbooks expounded the philosophy of Faith and Fatherland. They were used in all schools, which made it easier to move Brothers between communities. Unfortunately, Keogh says nothing about the use of the Irish language. Irish was still spoken in Waterford/south Kilkenny, the area which nurtured the early Christian Brothers. Did they speak Irish, or use it in their schools?
This is not a biography of Edmund Rice; there are too many gaps in his personal history to provide a rounded personal account; Rice emerges as a determined, perhaps dogmatic man, a visionary, but someone who divided people. Keogh describes a number between Rice and the hierarchy, and internal disputes within the Order with a level of detail that readers might find excessive. This is more than compensated for by the insights he provides into the Catholic culture of Munster towns in the closing years of the penal laws, and the competition between religions to educate the poor and capture their souls.
• Mary E Daly is principal of the college of arts and Celtic studies at University College Dublin. 1916 in 1966: Commemorating the Easter Rising, co-edited with Margaret O'Callaghan, was published in December 2007
Edmund Rice and the first Christian Brothers. By Deirdre Keogh Four Courts Press, 316pp €45