ABSTRACT
In a travel book published in 1844 the German Protestant historian and geographer Johannes Kohl made the following revealing observation:
Knowing with what zeal and constancy the Irish have clung to their Catholicism through all persecution and contumely, we generally think of the country as full of churches, abbeys, and convents … and expect to see crosses, images, and effigies of saints at every turn; in a word, we expect Ireland to look like Bohemia. Very different is the reality … None of the Irish cities contain handsome Catholic churches, like those of Germany, France and Belgium, and no venerable and picturesque old edifices, like those so abundant in all the Catholic countries of the continent, occur to remind the traveller of the national religion of Ireland.
