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Collectively the Irish annals represent a substantial and important source for the history and culture of Ireland. These texts provide the primary witness for much of early medieval Irish history, and for many key events and persons up until c.1600. Many of the most important of these texts passed into the possession of 17th-century Anglo-Irish scholars, and it was principally their work which formed the basis for all modern scholarship on them. However, examination of their work shows that a number of the accepted hypotheses rest upon assertions of opinion, and are unsupported by any textual evidence. This book first re-examines the manuscript evidence, commencing with an account of the primary manuscript witnesses for the ten most characteristic annalistic texts. It then reviews the scholarly literature relating to the annalistic corpus and identifies those hypotheses that are not supported by the available evidence. Next, based upon a critical evaluation of both the textual and chronological characteristics of the texts, the book establishes, where possible, the place, author(s), time and salient characteristics of the compilations that have contributed to the development of these ten texts. The penultimate chapter reviews the chronology of these texts and identifies the basis for a synchronised chronology for them all.
When Henry II accepted the Leinster king Diarmait Mac Murchada as his liegeman in 1166, he forged a bond between the English crown and Ireland that has never been undone. Ireland was to be changed forever as a result of the momentous events that followed – so much so that it is normal for professional historians to specialise in either the pre- or post-invasion period. Here, for the first time, is an account of the impact of the English invasion on the Irish kingdoms in the context of their strategies across the whole twelfth century. Ireland’s leading men battled for spheres of influence, for recognition of their hegemonies and, ultimately, for the coveted title of ‘king of Ireland’. But what did it mean to be the king of Ireland when no one dynasty had secured their hold on it? This book takes a close look at each pretender, asking what it meant to them – and whether the political dynamics surrounding the role had an impact on the course of the invasion itself.
Gaelic literati were an elite and influential group in the social hierarchy of Irish lordships between c. 1300 and 1600. From their estates, they served Gaelic and Old English ruling families in the arts of history, law, medicine, and poetry. They farmed, kept guest-houses, conducted schools, and maintained networks of learning. In other capacities, they were involved in political assemblies and memorializing dynastic histories in landscape. This book presents a framework for identifying and interpreting the settings and built heritages of their estates in lordship borderscapes. It shows that a more textured definition of what this learned class represented can be achieved through the material record of the buildings and monuments they used, and where their lands were positioned in the political map. Where literati lived and worked are conceived as expressions of their intellectual and political cultures. Mediated by case studies of the landscapes of their estates, dwellings, and schools, the methodology is predominantly field based, using archaeological investigation and topographic and spatial analyses, and drawing on historical and literary texts, place-names and lore in referencing named people to places. More widely, the study contributes a landscape perspective to the growing body of work on autochthonous intellectual culture and the exercise of power by ruling families in late medieval and early modern northern European societies.
Down Cathedral is one of the two oldest ecclesiastical foundations in Ulster still in use. Although the present structure dates from the early 13th century it is known that there had been a monastery and place of workship on the Hill of Down for many centuries before then. This book describes and illustrates the history of the Hill of Down from those earliest times to the present day. The relationship of St Patrick with the Hill is narrated and takes careful account of the latest research, some of it controversial, on the association of the island's patron saint with the Hill on which he is thought to be buried. The intriguing early and middle history of the Cathedral, including the building of the Benedictine monastery, the bishops and priors who ruled over it and its destruction at the dissolution of the monasteries in the middle of the 16th century, is told in clear and absorbing detail. Its subsequent restoration to full glory from the 1790s, largely due to the influence of the Downshire family, marks the beginning of the modern period for this much loved building. The story is brought right up to date with the recent appointment of a New Bishop and a new Dean. Important new sources in the State Papers and in archiepiscopal registers that have only recently become accessible have been used in the telling of this fascinating study. Many of the images in this work are published for the first time and include photographs of irreplaceable artifacts uncovered during the significant archaelogical excavations of the last few years. The outcome is a comprehensive, pioneering and beautifully illustrated account of one of Ireland's most treasured historical locations, written with authority and affection by one of the country's most accomplished and respected ecclesiastical historians.
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the Normans had a formative influence on the development of states and societies in the British Isles, southern Italy and the Levant. Their achievements still resonate powerfully today, and represent a vital field of historical study. But how far did colonial elites define themselves as Norman, and to what extent were they categorized as such by others? What were the defining attributes of the supremacies achieved by the Normans, and by other incomers associated with them, and how decisive and diverse was the impact of their influence on local power-structures and native societies? How readily did they reach accommodations with those societies, and how might their own identities be renegotiated within the context of cross-cultural encounters? And, in terms of the progress and practices of state-formation, what was the balance between ’old’ and ’new’? These are some of the key questions addressed in this collection of essays, which also treats the Normans as a genuinely European phenomenon. Norman activity in the British Isles and in the Mediterranean lands receives equal coverage; and the topics explored include identities and identification, marriage policies, acculturation, the pre-existing landscapes of power and how far they were transformed, castle-building strategies, the nature of frontiers, urban government, and law and legislation. This volume therefore serves both to illustrate and to open up for fresh debate many of the salient themes concerning the Norman experience of diaspora and settlement. At the same time, it seeks to underscore how the dynamics, character and consequences of Norman expansion - and the connections, continuities and contrasts - can better be appreciated by taking the wider Norman world, or worlds, as the focus for collective study.
Essays exploring medieval castration, as reflected in archaeology, law, historical record, and literary motifs. Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century castrati singers. Metaphoric castration pervadesa number of medieval literary genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its implications are often overlooked. This collection explores this often taboo subject and its implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe, seeking to demystify and demythologize castration. Its subjects includearchaeological studies of eunuchs; historical accounts of castration in trials of combat; the mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment; castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux; the prohibition against genital mutilation in hagiography; and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan stage. The introduction reflects on these topics in the context of arguably the most well-known victim of castration in the middle ages, Abelard. LARISSA TRACY is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at Longwood University. Contributors: Larissa Tracy, Kathryn Reusch, Shaun Tougher, Jack Collins, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Jay Paul Gates, Charlene M. Eska, Mary A. Valante, Anthony Adams, Mary E. Leech, Jed Chandler, Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Robert L.A. Clark, Karin Sellberg, LenaWånggren
These essays explore aspects of the English colony in medieval Ireland and its relations with the Gaelic host society. They deal both with the foundation and expansion of the English lordship in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and with the problems sand adjustments that accompaneid its contraction in the later middle ages. Attention is paid both to the government and society of the colony itself, and to the interactions between settler and native.
This book draws together a collection of essays looking at the ways in which charters and charter scholarship in different areas of Britain and Ireland, highlighting comparisons and contrasts in charter production and use. The book shows the crucial importance of charters as sources for understanding the history of royal administration and, more broadly, the perceptions and portrayals of kingly power, as well as developments in written culture.
The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland sparked off two linguistic events of enduring importance: it initiated the language shift from Irish to English, which constitutes the great drama of Irish cultural history, and it marked the beginnings of English linguistic expansion. The Elizabethan colonisers in Ireland included some of the leading poets and translators of the day. In Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland, Patricia Palmer uses their writings, as well as material from the State Papers, to explore the part that language played in shaping colonial ideology and English national identity. Palmer shows how manoeuvres of linguistic expansion rehearsed in Ireland shaped Englishmen's encounters with the languages of the New World, and frames that analysis within a comparison between English linguistic colonisation and Spanish practice in the New World. This is an ambitious, comparative study, which will interest literary and political historians.