Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A note on pronunciation
- A note on the Chronicle of Ireland
- Introduction
- 1 Ireland in the seventh century: a tour
- 2 Irish society c. 700: I. Communities
- 3 Irish society c. 700: II Social distinctions and moral values
- 4 Ireland and Rome
- 5 Conversion to Christianity
- 6 The organisation of the early Irish Church
- 7 Columba, Iona and Lindisfarne
- 8 Columbanus and his disciples
- 9 The Paschal controversy
- 10 The primatial claims of Armagh, Kildare and Canterbury
- 11 The origins and rise of the Uí Néill
- 12 The kingship of Tara
- 13 The powers of kings
- 14 Conclusion
- Appendix: genealogies and king-lists
- Glossary: Irish and Latin
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- List of tables
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A note on pronunciation
- A note on the Chronicle of Ireland
- Introduction
- 1 Ireland in the seventh century: a tour
- 2 Irish society c. 700: I. Communities
- 3 Irish society c. 700: II Social distinctions and moral values
- 4 Ireland and Rome
- 5 Conversion to Christianity
- 6 The organisation of the early Irish Church
- 7 Columba, Iona and Lindisfarne
- 8 Columbanus and his disciples
- 9 The Paschal controversy
- 10 The primatial claims of Armagh, Kildare and Canterbury
- 11 The origins and rise of the Uí Néill
- 12 The kingship of Tara
- 13 The powers of kings
- 14 Conclusion
- Appendix: genealogies and king-lists
- Glossary: Irish and Latin
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Towards the end of his ‘Book on the Measurement of the World’, written in, the Irish scholar Dcuil has a passage on the northernisles,including the Hebrides (where he himself had lived in his youth),the Orkneys,the Faroes and Iceland. Dcuil was one of many Irish scholarswho emigrated from Ireland and Scotland to the Carolingian empireto nd work and patronage. He wrote his account of world geographywhen he had already been living in Francia for manyyears. Hiscareerillustrates two contrary forces operating almost simultaneously in the lastyears of the eighth century and for much of the ninth: on the one hand,the closing in of the northern worldwith the advance of the Viking eetsand,on the other,the opportunities opening up on the continent. Thecombination of the two weakened intellectual life within Ireland and itsScottish outposts,though it is impossible to give any exact estimates ofthe decline.
Dícuil quoted the ancient geographer Solinus on the island calledThule, and went on to add something from his own knowledge. Thirty years before, that is about 795, he had been told by some clerics about the sun as seen from Thule at the summer solstice:
It is now thirty years since clerics, who had lived on the island from the first of February to the first of August, told me that not only at the summer solstice, but also in the days round about it, the sun setting in the evening hides itself as though behind a small hill in such a way that there was no darkness in that very small space of time, and a man could do whatever he wished as though the sun were there, even remove lice from his shirt, and if they had been on a mountaintop perhaps the sun would never have been hidden from them.
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- Early Christian Ireland , pp. 586 - 599Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000