A history of the Church of Ireland Diocese of Meath.

Independent scholar Fagan presents a history of the Irish Catholic diocese of Meath in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The focus is on the lives of four bishops: Luke Fagan, Stephen MacEgan, Augustine Cheevers, and Patrick Plunket. Coverage extends to the contributions of the regular clergy

'Religion and Reform in the Diocese of Meath, 1536-1622' charts the attempts made to introduce religious reforms into the diocese of Meath during the 16th century. The study opens with an investigation of the towns of Meath and a discussion of religion in the pre-reformation period.

When John Cantwell assumed the bishopric of Meath in 1830, he inherited grave political, social, theological, and ecclesiastical problems caused by an English State and an Irish Church. In the 1840s he also had to endure the loss of 114,000 of the faithful in the Irish Famine and the resulting chaos. How Cantwell, a pragmatist but also a skilled tactician, managed to lead his flock for those thirty- six years shows that the Church and State in Ireland were anything but temperate, cooperative or monolithic. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).