The essays in this volume offer a variety of perspectives on the rich and colorful history of Irish confraternities and sodalities. Framed by surveys of Irish confraternalism and the international context, the individual contributions explore the role of the religious associations in the revival of the Catholic Church in the penal era, and in the pedagogy of the religious orders; their place in the Catholic devotional upsurge in the nineteenth century; and their reflection of Protestants' reaction to church disestablishment.