The Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church of Ireland in 1695 and appointed that year to the prebend of Kilroot, near Belfast. He rose to become, in 1713, Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. In his fifty-year clerical career Swift preached many sermons, only a dozen of which have survived because they were published in eighteenth-century editions that Swift did not oversee (one is not certainly by Swift—see below). Swift inhabited a culture steeped in religion and mired in denominational conflicts. Religion and politics were inseparable in the wake of the constitutional upheavals of the seventeenth century. In this context, Swift self-identified as a “High Churchman” and placed himself among “the rank

9503 words

Citation: Seager, Nicholas. "Sermons". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 May 2025 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41986, accessed 20 June 2025.]