Margaret Aylward 1810-1889: Lady of Char- ity, Sister of Faith. By Jacinta Prunty. Four Courts Press, 192pp. £14.95
The Jesuits in Dublin 1598-1998. By E.E.O'Donnell, SJ. Illustrations from the Fr.Browne, SJ, Collection. Wolfhound Press, 63pp
Penury and plague were endemic among the thousands of rural refugees who settled in the slums of Dublin at the time of the Great Famine, and in the absence of any adequate system of social services, most of the near-impossible burden of relief fell on religious charities. It was in one of these, the "Ladies Association of Charity of St Vincent de Paul", that Margaret Aylward, daughter of a prosperous Waterford merchant family, began her long and energetic commitment to the poor in the late 1840s. For some years she worked as a lay woman, until she later established the Sisters of the Holy Faith, of which Jacinta Prunty, who teaches history in NUI, Maynooth, is a member.
Margaret Aylward firmly believed that "outside the church there was no salvation", and this belief fuelled her crusade against what she saw as the evil proselytism of Protestant missionary organisations like the Irish Church Missions - though they, too, saw their work as snatching innocent lambs from the burning. In this they were all men and women of their time. But Margaret Aylward - who suffered six months' imprisonment for her beliefs - was also very much ahead of her time: in her radical approach to social problems, in her detestation of institutional care of orphans except as a last resort, and in her advocacy of financially supported family care. She was also well able for jacks-in-office, be they lay or clerical.
The work of education links Margaret Aylward and her community with the subject of Dr O'Donnell's volume. Originally, the Holy Faith Sisters confined their teaching to the children of the poor; the Society of Jesus, on the other hand, have been seen here, as elsewhere, as catering for the "better sort" - their first college in Dublin was set up in 1623. The Society had, in fact, been here since May, 1598, and 54 houses are listed in "the city and suburbs" since that date. The best-known of these have been schools and places of higher study - as well, of course, as Gardiner Street "chapel"; others have served as community residences. Some have fallen prey to demolition or re-development. Some others still in existence are no longer Jesuit property.
But it would be quite wrong to suggest that the Society's members have been strictly "apostles to the genteel", as someone unkindly put it. Since 1975, Jesuits have been actively engaged in what Dr O'Donnell describes as work "at the coal-face" in some of Dublin's less favoured areas, and much earlier they were giving radical social witness, long before the phrase "option for the poor" was coined: just as the first generation worked among Dublin's "Gaelic-speaking poor" - in the city, in Baldoyle and elsewhere - at the very beginning of the 17th century. Dr O'Donnell's story is put in context by extracts from his own Annals of Dublin and illustrated with photographs by the indispensable Fr Frank Browne.
Sean Mac Reamoinn is a writer and broad- caster on cultural and religious affairs