Proclamation of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic

About the Author

The acknowledged author of the Proclamation of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic was Patrick Pearse, whose name appears as “P. H. Pearse” among the document's signatories. Pearse was perhaps the most romantic of the rebels. Born in Dublin in 1879, he was an early exponent of Irish cultural nationalism; when he was only nineteen, he became a member of the executive committee of the Gaelic League because of his fascination with the Gaelic language. He had been university educated and was regularly published as a nationalist poet in both English and Gaelic. He later served as the editor of the Gaelic League's newspaper before founding Saint Enda's School in 1908 specifically to promote the cultural values he espoused. Many of his colleagues considered him an extremist. Eoin MacNeill, the nominal leader of the Gaelic League and the Irish Volunteers, even pulled his children out of Saint Enda's because he feared their exposure to the violent rhetoric of revolt. Fifteen of Pearse's teenage pupils, inspired by their teacher, joined the Easter Rising.

Pearse had few illusions about the potential success of the Easter Rising, yet he and his colleagues, thanks to their poetic mind-set, believed that their revolt would have an almost mystical effect on the Irish people. “Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation which regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood,” wrote Pearse (qtd. in Fry and Fry, p. 279). With this statement, he echoed the feelings of thousands of modernist artists and intellectuals across Europe, nearly all of whom had greeted the Great War as a quasi-sacred bloodletting. But Pearse had a somewhat different vision; his death and that of other rebels would constitute a victory that would galvanize the Irish people into fighting for their freedom. It was certainly no mistake, then, that the rebellion and proclamation of a new Irish Republic was to take place over the Easter week. Pearse and the other rebels thought of themselves as almost Christ-like in their willingness to be sacrificed for the greater good of the Irish people.