Peritia

In his groundbreaking ‘Wendepunkte’ article of 1954, Bernhard Bischoff listed some manuscript fragments at the BSB Munich that contain parts of the Hiberno-Latin biblical commentary De enigmatibus. The shelfmarks he indicated (‘Clm 29051 + 29162 + 29167’) have long been obsolete and cannot readily be identified in the usual concordances. After investigation in Bischoff’s ‘Nachlass’ at the BSB, we can demonstrate that the fragments correspond to the current signatures Clm 29280/4 and 29410/5. Our paleographical analysis confirms that these pieces originally belonged to the same manuscript book, written around the middle of the ninth century, probably in the Regensburg area. Since the fragments (all from the commentary on Genesis) were not consulted by Gerard MacGinty for his edition of the Pentateuch section of De enigmatibus, we transcribe their texts and also clarify their stemmatic relationship to the main manuscripts of the commentary: they were copied from the same lost exemplar as was Clm 14276 (s. ix^1/4, Regensburg).

This article examines the evidence for a specific instance of fosterage in the eleventh century: an item in the Annals of the Four Masters which claims that Tairdelbach Ua Briain, king of Munster, was the foster-son of Diarmait mac Máel na mBó, king of Leinster. The timing and possible circumstances for this arrangement will be considered. It is argued that the later association between Tairdelbach and Diarmait has made scholars more accepting of a potential fosterage relationship. This discussion has wider implications for the study of fosterage in medieval Ireland, particularly in a political and dynastic context.

This paper analyses the inter-relationships between three martyrologies, the Martyrology of Tallaght, Félire Óengusso and the Martyrology of Gorman. The two latter use the former as their major primary source, shaping its contents for their own purposes. They constitute a coherent body of material that can be analysed as a corpus. Together these texts highlight the vibrant nature of Irish saints’ cults, how they were interpreted, re-interpreted and re-imagined over time.

Cummian’s Paschal letter of c. ad 632 provides a unique account of a Christian community changing their Paschal tradition. However, while scholars have disagreed upon the tradition adopted by Cummian’s community most have accepted that it related in some way to the 532-year Paschal table compiled by Victorius of Aquitaine in ad 457, but they have been unable to explain the relationship. This article identifies that all the published editions of Victorius’s table preserve substantial redactions transmitted by the manuscripts of the table. When these redactions are corrected Cummian’s account of the table that saint Patrick ‘brought and made’, always observing Paschal luna 14 after 21 March, corresponds to Victorius’s tabulated Paschal criteria when the saltus of each 19-year cycle is retarded by thirteen years. It thus emerges that in c. ad 458 Patrick brought to Ireland a 532-year table that he had adapted so that its Paschal dates and lunae were identical with those of the Alexandrian Paschal table compiled by Annianus in c. ad 412. This was the Alexandrian table endorsed by Cyril, bishop of Alexandria in ad 418, excerpts of which were transmitted subsequently by the Prologus S. Cyrilli of c. ad 456, Dionysius Exiguus in ad 525, Isidore in c. ad 636, and Bede in ad 725. Consequently, in Ireland the disciples of Patrick since c. ad 458, and the southern Irish churches that adopted the decision of Mag Léne in c. ad 632, were celebrating the Paschal criteria that would be declared as canonical for the Roman church by pope Honorius (ad 625–638). Subsequently, in ad 716, Iona and its familia adopted these same Paschal criteria as transmitted by the continuation of Dionysius’s Paschal table.

The primary purpose of this article is to publish new images of the somewhat neglected Turin Gospels (Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, MS O. IV. 20), and to discuss whether the scribe of the Gospels text is identical to that of the Book of Durrow (TCD, MS 57).

Historians have long seen the mid-ninth century as a turning-point in Irish history. However, to date no detailed analysis has been undertaken of the political interactions between Máel Sechnaill (king of Tara) and the Vikings between the coming of Amlaíb of Laithlind (fl. 853–871) in 853 and the death of Máel Sechnaill in 862, a crucial period that witnessed both the emergence of the Viking kingdom based at Dublin as a significant force in Irish politics and Máel Sechnaill’s attempts to assert himself as king of Ireland. The present article aims to fill this important gap in the historiography.

Described by C. W. Jones as ‘a work of magnificent conception’, the Liber de ordine creaturarum is one of the most admired texts in the entire canon of Hiberno-Latin literature. Publication of a revised edition and accompanying English translation provides an opportunity to reexamine its importance.

Illuminating the Word sets out to date and locate the starting-point of manuscript decoration (or illumination) in the Early Medieval West. In so doing it attempts to establish a linear and historical sequence for the history of the decorated book.