Peritia

The Vatican MS, BAV, Reg. lat. 123 (saec. xi, Ripoll), a computistical anthology, contains numerous excerpta of ultimate Irish provenance. Some of these materials may have reached Ripoll through a route of transmission that brought them first to Brittany, and from there to the scriptoria of Fleury-sur-Loire and Ripoll itself.

The early medieval cults of the saints Patrick and Brigit are most often associated with their churches at Armagh and Kildare, and the rivalry for preeminence that existed between the two federations. This paper considers the depiction of the saints in the Vita Prima Sanctae Brigitae and explores how these portrayals represent the wider cults of both.

‘Anecdota’ poems of Suibhne Geilt (‘Mad Sweeney’) and St Mo Ling in Brussels MS 5100-04 focus upon sacred waters at the saint’s primary foundation, Tech Mo Ling (present-day St Mullins, Co. Carlow) in a manner that emphasizes pilgrimage, penance and monastic ‘rebaptism’ as the primary concerns of this twelfth-century cycle, which relates the death, burial and resurrection of the geilt in the company of his confessor.

Nau Kynywedi Teithiauc is a Middle Welsh legal tract that depicts the nine types of sexual union a couple may enter into in medieval Wales. Thomas Charles-Edwards has suggested that this tract has been arranged in ‘declining legal status’, a view supported by the fact that the last two unions depicted constitute rape. This paper will demonstrate that the Middle Welsh tale, Math uab Mathonwy, may be viewed as an exploration of some of these dishonourable unions.

The Vita Brigitae is examined for biblical allusions and chiastic structural patterning. Biblical references occur in clusters centred on geographical and spiritual locations: the Garden of Eden, Cities of Refuge, and the Peaceable Kingdom. Strong thematic and structural patterning indicates a correlation between Kildare and the New Jerusalem of Revelation.

Orosius, author of Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri vii, was a Briton, born at latest c. ad 375. Taken by Irish raiders, he spent years (c.ad 400) as a captive, held by traders, on the south shore of the Shannon estuary. He escaped and probably reached Galicia before ad 405. Ordained priest, he served at Bracara (now Braga in Portugal). He corresponded with St Augustine and moved to Hippo in ad 414. Sent to the East by Augustine, he played an undistinguished role at the councils of Jerusalem and Diospolis (ad 415). He settled at Carthage, where he wrote his main work, originally at the instigation of Augustine. He disappears after a voyage to the Balearic Islands. His is the first textual witness to Christianity in Ireland, observed c.ad 400, written up in ad 416-17.

This paper argues that the transition from the Merovingian to the Carolingian world involved important changes in the way that Frankish communities reckoned and coordinated calendars. It analyses evidence for the spread of Easter tables, treatises, annals and other sources to demonstrate that the paschal work of Dionysius Exiguus spread from Insular-influenced centres in the north of the Frankish kingdoms rather than from the south. It finds that the process was neither as chaotic nor as politically coordinated as recently argued by Borst. Instead, it highlights the organic spread of texts and tables in the context of the foundation of new monastic centres.

This article explores the construction of Irish identity in the pseudohistorical poems of two authors, Máel Muru Othna and Gilla Cóemáin. In their poems, the memory of the past - real or imagined - is used to establish a continuity for the Irish as a clearly delineated people from the dawn of time to the authors’ medieval present.

The Old English poem Andreas has traditionally been considered inferior to other texts such as Beowulf, owing to its apparent borrowing of phraseology. This paper argues that verbal parallels are part of the poet’s assimilative composition technique and re-evaluates the place of Andreas in the corpus of Old English poetry.

An ‘album of science’ is a manuscript containing materials on computus and at least one subject associated with computus, for example, astronomy or medicine. Its characteristic format is a mosaic of texts and tables. This article explains the logic behind the choice of materials and proposes a method for unlocking the compilers’ intentions.