Father Thomas N. Burke, O.P.: The sacredness and eloquence of the Word

This dissertation examines the life and work of the great Irish preacher Thomas Nicholas Burke, O.P. (1830--1883). At the height of his fame, Burke was a key figure in a period of great religious change in Ireland. During a public career that spanned nearly a quarter of a century, Burke reaffirmed and consolidated, in countless sermons and other public orations, a definition of Irishness that gave pride of place to Catholicism. The men and women who flocked to hear Burke were responding not only to his very charismatic presence in the pulpit, but also to their shared sense that what made them distinctive as a people was their adherence to the faith of their ancestors. This strong connection to Catholicism was certainly not new in the 19th century, but, as historian Emmet Larkin pointed out in the 1970s in a thesis that has been widely accepted, if at times modified, by scholars who study modern Ireland, it was in the period 1850--1880 that this connection took on a new, ultramontanist tone and made the Irish people, as a people, the devout and practicing Roman Catholics they remained for at least a century afterward. Indeed, it was Burke who, in an oration memorializing the most important man in the Church of his day, Paul Cardinal Cullen, put forth a catalog of Cullen's accomplishments that paralleled very closely those items of improvement and reform that Larkin would later identify as the constituent elements of the Devotional Revolution in Ireland.;Though a full-length biography of Burke, by the historian William J. Fitzpatrick, was published in 1885, Fitzpatrick's choices in terms of both content and style led to a work that was more hagiographic and personal than scholarly. What is more, neither Fitzpatrick nor the small number of other writers who later published works on Burke made full use of the evidence that is available, either because they did not have access to it or chose not to use it. This dissertation employs sources that have not been used in great depth by other scholars. The most important example of this category of evidence is the body of correspondence between Burke and other English and Irish Dominicans and the master-general of the Dominican Order for most of Burke's adult life, Alexandre-Vincent Jandel. The letters are in Italian, French, and, rarely, Latin. Jandel was a reformer, appointed in 1850 by the Pope to head the order and lead its members back to a closer adherence to their rule. Burke, who was only 20 when he met Jandel, quickly became an important disciple of the Frenchman's program, enthusiastically accepting the need for reintroducing more austere practices to Dominicans' lives in terms, for example, of diet and prayer schedules. His acceptance of the need for reform and his obvious potential in terms of preaching meant that Jandel came to rely on Burke, from the 1850s onward, as an important agent to English-speaking Dominicans of his reformist program.;Another important source for this study comes from the many accounts in contemporary newspapers of Burke's appearances. Some newspapers would employ reporters to capture Burke's full sermons in shorthand, and reprint them, either in full or in abridged versions of varying lengths, shortly after they were delivered. Well over 100 full-length newspaper accounts have been gathered and analyzed, not only from Burke's engagements in Ireland but also from those in the United States. This collection of newspaper reports has made possible an analysis of the ways Burke approached his engagements. Two of this dissertation's eight chapters focus on analyzing Burke's sermons and lectures. The first examines Burke's contribution to the genre of charity sermon, and the second looks at several sermons and lectures as political interventions. Burke rose quickly to the upper tier of Irish Catholic preachers, and his reputation meant that his was an important voice, sought to elaborate the Catholic position on the key political questions in 19th-century Ireland.;The other six chapters of this work present Burke's biography. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...