Chapter 6 explores how those who do not live according to the way of faith take on the devil’s characteristics to the extent that they are known by him and claimed as his own. As scholarly work on Gregory of Nyssa’s vision of the spiritual life has proliferated, commentators have focused on virtue, participation, and how human beings become like God. In contrast, Chapter Six argues that Gregory’s vision of the spiritual life is concerned not only with how human beings can become divine, but also with how they can become diabolic. Here we come to a central problem with the devil. According to Gregory of Nyssa’s teaching in On the Beatitudes and On the Lord’s Prayer, just as children of the ‘Heavenly Father’ become like God, children of the ‘Subterranean Father’ become like the devil.

This chapter examines Paul Cullen’s interest in history, moral theology, and the politcal, theological, and social climate of Papal Rome under Gregory XVI.

This chapter traces the collapse of the alliance between Irish Catholicism and the British Liberal party due to William Gladstone’s attempt to reform Irish higher education against the wishes of much of his own party and Paul Cullen. The result wa a parliamentary defeat, Gladstone’s (temporary) resignation, and the end of a previously fruitful political relationship.

Chapter 7 closes the study by focusing on a single source: Gregory of Nyssa’s homilies On the Song of Songs. Through them, he weaves his most comprehensive and sustained account of the history, ontology, and activity of the devil and his army of demons. Only Christ is victorious over this army of hostile powers in the proper sense. Christians participate in Christ’s victory by journeying with Gregory through On the Song of Songs. The way of victory begins with baptism and continues with prayer, pure thoughts, and self-knowing. Like those sources examined in the previous chapters, the homilies undertake a journey toward victory, bringing to the fore the eschatological nature of spiritual warfare. This chapter, along with the previous ones, demonstrates that in addition to his other accolades, Gregory of Nyssa was an erudite homilist and skilled teacher on spiritual warfare.

Paul Cullen has long been considered to be the deadly enemy of Fenianism, not least by the Fenians themselves. This chapter seeks to consider in detail Cullen’s attitudes towards violent nationalism, his attempts to suppress it, the success of those attempts, and the ultimate implications for the development of nationalism in Ireland.

Chapter 1 challenges the scholarly assumption that the devil, as he appears in early Christian writings, is little more than a useful way of covering a gap in theological reasoning. This widespread misconception undercuts the breadth and complexity of early Christian thought and adopts anachronistically the concerns of eighteenth-century philosophers, gathered up into what is known as the classic ‘problem of evil’. By disentangling the devil from the conceptual webs that surround evil and suffering, this chapter argues that for the Cappadocians, the devil does not resolve the question of why humans experience evil. Chapter One closes by establishing a more suitable theological context in which to study the devil.

Daniel O’Connell was and remained Paul Cullen’s political hero. This chapter traces Cullen’s involvement with O’Connell and his campaign for the Repeal of the Union.

Paul Cullen’s final years saw the apparently inexorable rise of the Home Rule movement, his own reluctant accomodation to that movement, as well as his attempts to co-opt it, not least through high profile and contested events such as the 1875 centenary of the birth of Daniel O’Connell. These years also saw the final resolution of the Callan Schools Affair, which had plagued Cullen for a number of years, including through a high profile trial, as well as one final political victory at the unlikely hands of a Conservative government that proved willing to make significant education concessions not long before Cullen’s own death in late 1878.

Christ’s defeat of the devil poses theological difficulties for the Cappadocians, which they navigate in different but equally creative ways. Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa preach that God is truth, and yet their use of the Christ-as-fishhook motif suggests that the devil is deceived by God, for Christ uses his mortal flesh as bait to lure and catch the devil. Gregory of Nazianzus sees no need to justify his use of the fishhook motif, but Gregory of Nyssa provides a comprehensive defence, going so far as to describe the crucifixion as ‘a kind of deceit’. This chapter, then, draws on Greek philosophical, cultural, and biblical thought to investigate how the Gregories tackle complications arising from Christ’s defeat of the devil.

This chapter examines Paul Cullen’s growing mastery of the Roman curia, first through his navigation of the attempt by Archbishop John MacHale to secure papal condemnation of the Irish system of national education, and then through his role as a consultor at the Congregation of the Index.

This chapter examines Paul Cullen’s tentative support for, and ultimate estrangment from, the Independent Irish Party. Cullen detected in the party’s leadership, and in particular Charles Gavan Duffy, echoes of the Young Ireland movement and, behind that, a similarity with the ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini. This identification of independent opposition with Young Ireland, and Gavan Duffy with Mazzini, led Cullen to successfully destroy the Independent Irish Party, a result that he had successfully achived by the mid-1850s.

The Introduction traces the origins of the present book, the absence of a full biography of Paul Cullen, the challenges faced by any biographer, and the reasons why such a study is necessary.