Shaping history: James Ussher and the Church of Ireland ALAN FORD Throughout early modern Europe, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation gave rise to two hostile intellectual traditions, Protestant and Catholic, as each side marshalled all available scholarly resources to defend their own and demolish their opponents’ claims. Universities across the Continent devoted their energies to the new discipline of controversial theology. Protestants laid down the theological gauntlet with ever-longer statements for their beliefs, from the Augsburg () to the Belgic () to the Westminster () confessions, Catholics responded by restating Catholic orthodoxy and anathematizing Protestant heresies in the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent (). Calvin’s Institutes (), that compendium of reformed theology, was in turn rebutted by Cardinal Bellarmine’s Controversies (–). In Magdeburg, the collection of historians known as the Centuriators, led by Matthias Flacius Illyricus, laboured at one and the same time to trace the passage of pure biblical doctrine down to the reformers and record the ever-increasing corruption of the papal church. In Rome, Cardinal Baronius responded by ridiculing Protestant claims while demonstrating the lengthy historical pedigree of the Roman Catholic church in his Ecclesiastical annals. This intellectual warfare, which began in mainland Europe almost as soon as Luther posted his theses, arrived in Ireland somewhat later. In , Luther met his Catholic opponent, Johannes Eck, in a lengthy confrontation at Leipzig. The first formal theological disputation in Ireland did not take place till . The development of polemical theology and history was delayed in Ireland partly because the political and intellectual climate there was for much of the sixteenth century still inchoate, lacking a unitary civil authority, a university, a printing press, or suitable public fora for debate and discussion. It was also a product of the slow pace of religious change: the Irish Reformation from its beginnings in was more about statutory enactment than Protestant commitment, and you See above, pp xx. Alan Ford, ‘Goliath and the boy David: Henry Fitzsimon, James Ussher and the birth of Irish religious debate’ in Salvador Ryan and Clodagh Tait (eds), Religion and politics in urban Ireland, c.–c. (Dublin, ), pp –. The Church of Ireland and Its Past.qxp 19/03/2017 21:40 Page 19