An exemplary nationalist

Remembering Thomas Davis

President Michael D Higgins visits Cork today to honour the life and work of Thomas Davis, one of the very inspiring, if little remembered, leaders of Irish nationalism, who was born in Mallow just over 200 years ago.

Davis died of scarlet fever at 31, but in his short public life he created a legacy that, from this vantage point, seems very far ahead of its time. He advocated brotherhood of Irishmen, irrespective of their religion, and in doing so expressed the noblest ideals of the nationalist movement. He was religiously ambivalent and this unfortunately meant he underestimated the malevolent forces of sectarianism.