The Irish Mission
He was sent to Ireland in 1645 by Pope Innocent X to help the Irish Confederate Catholics in their war against English Protestant rule, succeeding the papal envoy there, Pierfrancesco Scarampi. Rinuccini embarked from La Rochelle and arrived in County Kerry with a retinue of twenty-six Italians, several Irish officers, and the Confederacy's secretary, Richard Bellings. At Kilkenny, the confederate capital, Rinuccini was received with great honours, asserting in his Latin declaration that the object of his mission was to sustain the King, but above all to help the Catholic people of Ireland in securing the free and public exercise of the Catholic religion, and the restoration of the churches and church property.
Rinuccini sent ahead arms and ammunition He arrived twelve days later with a further two thousand muskets and cartridge-belts, four thousand swords, four hundred brace of pistols, two thousand pike-heads, and twenty thousand pounds of gunpowder, fully equipped soldiers and sailors and 150,658 livres tournois to finance the Irish Catholic war effort. These supplies gave him a huge input into the Confederate's internal politics, because the Nuncio doled out the money and arms for specific military projects, rather than handing it over to the Confederate government, or Supreme Council.
Rinuccini hoped that by doing this he could influence the Confederate's strategic policy away from doing a deal with Charles I and the Royalists in the English Civil War and towards the foundation of an independent Catholic-ruled Ireland. In particular, Rinuccini wanted to ensure that Protestant churches and lands taken in the rebellion would remain in Catholic hands. This was consistent with what happened in Catholic-controlled areas during the Thirty Years' War and can be seen as part of the wider counter-reformation in Europe. The Nuncio also had unrealistic hopes of using Ireland as a base to re-establish Catholicism in England. However, apart from some military successes such as the battle of Benburb, the main result of Rinuccini's efforts was to aggravate the infighting between different factions within the Irish Confederates.
Read more about this topic: Giovanni Battista Rinuccini
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