Books and Religious Devotion - Allan F. Westphall Penn State Series in the History of the Book

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Four books in Connary’s possession were especially representative of the owner’s interests as a book collector and reader, and characteristic, too, of the wave of Irish American publishing that sought to make suitable Irish Catholic literature obtainable in affordable editions. Published by some of the key houses catering to Irish readers in America, these titles give a sense of what was most often the strongly pious nature of these publication initiatives—as well as of the rather tense sectarian context, in which a diasporic print culture existed to offset predominant Protestant literature, often perceived to be anti-Catholic.

      Thomas Connary’s copy of The Sinner’s Guide, by the famed Dominican theologian and preacher Louis of Granada (1505–1588), is a cloth-bound, dark brown octavo volume with debossed ornament on the front and back boards and a gilded spine depicting a cross surrounded by elaborate floral ornament. The binding shows signs of heavy and frequent use. As the book was regularly pulled from the shelf, its binding shows considerable shelf wear and the head of the spine is missing.

      Originally entitled Guía de Pecadores, Louis’s voluminous exhortation to virtue and obedience was published in Badajoz, Spain, in 1555. In his admiring 1913 entry on Louis of Granada in the Catholic Encyclopedia, J. B. O’Connor finds in the Guía “a smooth, harmonious style of purest Spanish idiom which has merited for it the reputation of a classic, and an unctuous eloquence that has made it a perennial source of religious inspiration.”4 Indeed, being marked in its English translation by a particularly intimate style of repeated appeals to the reader, homely analogies, and frequent invocation, the work stands out among a flood of early Spanish ascetic and penitential works, and it achieved considerable popularity throughout Europe. Its significant influence on the practical morality and prudent regulation of St. Francis of Sales (1567–1622) is discernable in several works in Connary’s library, including St. Francis’s Spiritual Conferences and Introduction to the Devout Life.

      The Sinner’s Guide is one of many titles in Connary’s library that are translated works, often of much older Continental European religious texts. Other translations in Connary’s collection include The Practice of Christian and Religious Perfection by St. Alphonsus Rodriguez (1532–1617) and James Balmes’s (1810–1848) Fundamental Philosophy, along with four titles by St. Francis of Sales that were often reprinted by American Catholic presses. Together with a wealth of translations of contemporary Catholic works, mostly German and French, these writings were esteemed on account of their unambiguous didacticism and/or devotional spirituality. They bear witness to what was a publication and translation initiative targeted at Irish Catholic expatriates perceived to be urgently in need of spiritual and moral edification.

      Published in Philadelphia in 1845 by Henry M’Grath, who brought out numerous Catholic devotional and apologetic works, The Sinner’s Guide is referred to by Connary as “an old Book,” and he notes that “I had the same work in my native home, Old Ireland.” This title is thus one of the many that Connary was familiar with from his early years in Ireland and which he (re-)acquired when he settled in the United States.5 The earliest annotation by Connary in the volume is a decoratively swung ownership inscription on the first page of the preface: “Thomas Connary’s Book, Stratford Town, Coös County, New Hampshire June 27 anno 1876.” It is possible that the book was purchased a long time before such inscription, as is often the case.

      That Connary’s copy of The Sinner’s Guide was particularly precious to him is evident from a brief handwritten note dated January 12, 1881, and inserted into the book before the title page: “I will continue to love this Book as a good Book, as long as God will be good in every respect—it plainly represents divine Truth in every respect.” Connary spent considerable time and effort on decorating this volume, which contains more than fifteen inserted pages, double-sided and densely written, of prayers, religious reflections, and miscellaneous recordings, many of which will be discussed in the following chapters. The flyleaves and endpapers accommodate a particularly rich selection of Bible quotations, prayers, poetry, newspaper fragments, and printed illustrations of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, all written or pasted in by Connary.

      Thomas H. Kinane (1835–1913), parochial vicar of Templemore, North Tipperary, and dean of Cashel from 1888 to 1913, published his most famous devotional work under the somewhat fanciful but memorable title The Dove of the Tabernacle; or The Love of Jesus in the Most Holy Eucharist with J. F. Fowler in Dublin in 1873. The text appeared the same year from P. M. Haverty in New York, a bookseller, importer, and publisher of Irish-related material (including the popular Haverty’s Irish-American Illustrated Almanac), and it quickly went through several editions in Europe and America. (The twenty-eighth edition was published with M. H. Gill in Dublin in 1884.) Kinane’s work was an immediate best seller, undoubtedly due in no small measure to its strong promotion by the Irish Catholic Magazine—and the fact that it appeared with the authoritative testimony of no fewer than fourteen members of the Irish episcopate, as well as a glowing preface by Patrick Leahey, archbishop of Cashel.

      A contemporary review in the Irish Monthly characterized The Dove of the Tabernacle as “the work of zeal achieved amidst the labours of a rural parish” and commended it for the “fullness and accuracy with which the Scripture arguments for the Real Presence are expounded in what is meant to be merely a simple popular treatise of devotion.”6 Being first and foremost intended to inflame pious sensitivity and fervent devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Kinane’s work presents, in a detailed yet accessible manner, scriptural arguments for the Real Presence, wrapping these in ardent prayers and exclamations. Didactic and catechetic expositions are followed by pious resolutions and admonitions to self-scrutiny, such as the following:

      Resolution.

      MY dearest Jesus! Thy church, where Thou dost ever dwell, is as holy as the Sanctuary at Loretto. Year after year, O Lord, we read, with sighs and tears, of some sanctuary profaned, some altar or tabernacle containing the “Holy of Holies” desecrated. I adore Thy patience. To try to make reparation for all, and for my own irreverences, I resolve never to be guilty, either in word, or look, or dress, or gesture, of anything unworthy of the sanctity of Thy house, and always “to reverence Thy sanctuary.” “Thy church, O Lord, is the house of God and gate of heaven” (Gen., xxviii. 17).

      Divine Host! Make me faithful to this resolution.7

      Not only does Connary provide affirmation by signing his name below this declaration in Kinane’s text (as he does to declarations throughout the volume), but he also repeats in the margin in his own hand the sentence which must have intrigued him: “My dearest Jesus! Thy church where Thou dost ever dwell, is as holy as the Sanctuary at Lorette. Thomas Connary.”

      Connary’s copy of The Dove of the Tabernacle, printed by P. M. Haverty in 1876, is a dainty and compact sixteenmo size (17 × 10 cm) of 323 pages, bound in red cloth with decorated black borders to the boards. At the center of the front and back covers is the central insignia of the Sacred Heart wrapped in the Crown of Thorns, from the top of which appears the Cross amid flames. On the front pastedown is evidence of how Connary obtained this volume: the original price sticker reads, “Nicholas Williams, Catholic Bookseller, Boston, 75c.” The covers of the volume are rubbed and show severe wear to edges and spine; the hinges have cracked and several single pages have separated. One of Connary’s many penned notes in this volume is written on the final endpaper and dated “3 O’clock in the afternoon, June 30th 1896,” stating that “children destroyed a portion of this Book. Now I mark it again as my own beautiful Book.” Judging from the amount of wear and damage, this was one of the books in most frequent use by Connary. Its status as a devotional best seller commended by Catholic Ireland must have been of particular significance to him. Over twenty years, from 1878 to 1898, he inserted into the volume more than thirty handwritten pages of prayers

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