Peritia

The first part is concerned with extant books produced in Ireland and surviving elsewhere, the second with texts composed there but transmitted through copies made elsewhere, which alone survive. I also investigate text-historical evidence that allows one to trace copies of Late Antique texts from Ireland into seventh-century Northumbria, further evidence of the export of books from Ireland. The external survival of books made in Ireland, of texts composed in Ireland but not preserved there, and of texts read in Ireland and exported provides a counterweight to any positivist argument from the paucity of early medieval books made and preserved in Ireland that Irish book-culture was not as advanced as Bede’s or Aldhelm’s references would suggest. A similar case may be derived from vernacular texts. The only early manuscripts containing substantial quantities of Old Irish have survived on the Continent, but a large body of Old Irish texts has survived in Ireland, though few extant copies are anywhere near as old as the texts. Early Irish book-culture is therefore attested both through early manuscripts not in Ireland and through early texts not surviving in early Irish copies. The early medieval manuscripts preserved in Ireland, such as the gospel books of Durrow and Kells, have survived because of their special status as relics. Comparison with the evidence of manuscripts and texts from Africa and Spain in the early middle ages puts the Irish material into perspective.

Though Adomnán refers to Columba as saint and holy man, he seeks most earnestly to portray him as a prophet who closely follows an Old Testament pattern of prophetic initiation and behaviour. In the light of scriptural characteristics of prophecy and of the ‘called’ and ‘sent’ prophets, Vita Columbae iii 1-5 is analysed to show how each chapter is crafted to correspond to the inheritance of prophetic power that culminates in a ‘call’ to the prophet. Eleven other chapters on battles, princes, and rulers are studied to show the consistent elaboration of the prophetic pattern as applied to the islands of the Insular world. All major kingship questions in the vita are illuminated: the presence of the battle-champion motif and other matters centring on the kings, Oswald, Diarmait mac Cerbaill, Áed Slaine, and Áedán mac Gabrain. A lucid picture of Adomnán’s mode of thinking about the reformation of kingship and the relationship of political authority to God’s plan emerges.

A consideration of phenomena infixed in the text of Versus cuiusdam Scotti de alphabeto that confirm composition of the poem in Ireland during the middle of the seventh century.

An edition, translation, and analysis of an arithmetic problem in ninth-century Hiberno-Latin elegiac couplets and two solutions to the problem, one in elegiac couplets and another in dactylic hexameters, the former attributed to Clemens Scottus and the latter to Thomas Scottus.

The note suggests that the seventh-century Hiberno-Latin poet Cellanus of Peronna Scottorum is the author of Iohannis celsi rimans misteria caeli.

Editions, translations, and analyses of two seventh-century Hiberno-Latin poems on the Eusebian canons, Ailerani sapientis Canon euangeliorum and In primo certe canone.

Love magic is defined as verbal and material instruments by which erotic and affectionate feelings are believed to be aroused or destroyed in a supernatural way. This is a discussion of love magic as it is presented in early medieval Hiberno-Latin penitentials and Irish legal texts.

This is an argument for reading the early Latin Lives of Brigit theologically as christian texts with spiritual and pedagogical aims. The portrayal of Brigit as a saint is based on the authors’ theological understanding of holiness. The sources must be understood in their own right as literary products of a learned christian culture and thus one can elucidate the hagiographers’ conception of Brigit as a holy person. These matters are important for the relationship between the saint and her pre-christian namesake, and it is argued here that the image of the saint should take precedence since the sources on Brigit portray her as such.

The battle of Cenn Fúait in 917, a decisive victory of the Vikings over Leinster, resulted in the re-establishment of Viking control of Dublin after a gap of fifteen years. This paper seeks to resolve the disputed question of the location of the battle. Attention is drawn to the remarkable contemporary account of the military manoeuvres preceding the battle, one that is uniquely informative about Irish and Viking military strategy and tactics.

The decretum prepared for bishops-elect in the metropolitan province of Canterbury in the late eleventh century derived from the mid tenth-century Romano-Germanic pontifical. However, changes were made. These are analysed to enable an assessment of the evidence for the source of the decreta used by late eleventh-century Irish bishops-elect who were consecrated by the archbishop of Canterbury. The conclusion is that the source is most likely to be the Romano-Germanic original rather than the Canterbury adaptation and that such a pontifical may well have come from Cologne to the Dublin church, along with some relics, at the time of its foundation.

A computistical manuscript from St Gall of c. ad 900, in the Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek, Bremen, is identified as one of a group (the Sirmond group) which contain material collected and studied in seventh- and early eighth-century Ireland. Intriguingly, this codex contains an unknown treatise of ad 699 which originally served as prologue to an altered version of the Easter table of Victorius of Aquitaine. This article presents arguments for an Irish provenance of this prologue, a critical edition, and a translation. It discusses its significance for the study of Irish intellectual culture at the turn from the seventh to the eighth century. Additionally, the Bremen codex transmits fragments of a prologue to the Supputatio Romana, the Easter reckoning followed in Rome between the third and the fifth centuries, some being identical with a passage in the fourth-century Cologne Prologue.

Archaeological and documentary evidence is used to argue that the superstructure of St Moling’s Well, Co Carlow, is a baptismal chapel of round 1100, probably built in the context of a heightened concern with the proper administration of the sacrament during the Gregorian reform. In earlier centuries, baptism in the open air, at holy wells and springs seems to have been common. Other water-based rituals carried out at St Mullin’s in medieval times are also considered.