This volume, in honour of the great historian Emmet Larkin, is organized around the two themes that have shaped his work on the Catholic Church in modern Ireland—the role of the church in the creation of the modern Irish state, and the role of the church in defining a distinctive Irish national identity through the "devotional revolution". The various chapters explore different themes—political, social, ecclesiastical, and literary—but are united by their common engagement with aspects of Larkin's work on Irish culture and consciousness between the late eighteenth century and the present.