Faubourg Saint Patrice - ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

anti-clericalism of his father undoubtedly helped form the heterodoxical views which
would eventually dominate his life -he would later exploit this maternal-paternal
dichotomy in Ulysses. Later on in life, in a Jesuit review, Joyce was described as "a
great Jesuit-trained intellect that had gone over to the powers of Satan" (Joyce My
Brother's 130). Similarly, Stanislaus relates: "...his attitude towards Catholicism was
more like that of the gargoyles outside the Church than of the saints within it" (Joyce,
My Brother's 130).
Accounts of Joyce's early life reveal a deep religious devotion buttressed by his
Jesuit education at both Clongowes Wood and Belvedere College, as well as the ever-
present Catholic influence in Dublin culture. From the age of six to twenty- -the age of
his expatriation--Joyce was educated by the Jesuits. Indeed, their influence on his artistic
works is readily apparent through Joyce's self-described "grocery clerk mind," his
obsession with ritual and symbolism, and his thorough knowledge of esoteric Catholic
dogma. Recognizing Joyce's keen intellect and spiritual sensitivity, his Jesuit teachers
identified him as a potential candidate for the clergy (El imam, James 55; Sullivan 105).
While Joyce rejected both this calling and the religion of his youth (a process he would
later embellish and fictionalize in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), he
maintained a deep philosophical, and perhaps nostalgic, interest in Catholicism. Long
after his self-excommunication, Joyce would still periodically attend mass, ostensibly in
appreciation of the beauty of the ritual. Kevin Sullivan describes Joyce visiting a church
in Paris when his wife Nora was ill and lighting holy candles on the feast of his daughter's
patron saint, Lucia (Sullivan 58). Nevertheless, Joyce refused to allow a priest to attend
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