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Ireland and the continent in the eleventh century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Aubrey Gwynn
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Extract

It has become a commonplace of Irish history to assume that this country lay outside the full stream of European life until the twelfth century, and to preface an account of the Norman invasion with a brief survey of the very remarkable movement for the reform of the Irish church which we associate principally with the name of St Malachy. Dean Lawlor's short introductory essay to his translation of St Bernard's Life of St Malachy appeared in 1920, and is still the most readable version of this commonly accepted view. It is the purpose of this paper to criticise this view as a whole, and I shall have a good deal to say in criticism, not only of Lawlor's essay, but also of the last chapter of Kenney's otherwise admirable Sources for the early history of Ireland. All the more reason why I should begin by stating clearly my own personal debt to both these scholars. If I criticise their conclusions and their inadequate statement of the evidence, I do so in full consciousness of all that I have learned from their useful publications.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 31 , March 1953 , pp. 193 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1953

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References

1 St Bernard of Clairvaux’s life of St Malachy of Armagh, translated by Lawlor, H.J. (S.P.C.K., 1920).Google Scholar

2 Kenney also tells us in his preface that ‘ the plan of the book took definite shape … in 1909–10 ’.

3 Kenney’s papers were acquired by University College, Dublin, after his death ; but there were no more than a few scattered notes on materials for volume ii.

4 The text of Chronicon Scotorum was edited in the Rolls Series by W. M. Hennessy (1866); Mageoghegan’s English version of the ‘Annals of Clonmacnoise ’ was edited by Denis Murphy for the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (1896).

5 Lawlor makes some use of the so-called ‘ Dublin Annals of Inisfallen ’; but this is a compilation of the eighteenth century, and its entries are often misleading.

6 The text was edited for the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1951, with a series of admirable indexes.

7 This text was edited by Stokes, Whitley in Rev. Celt., xvi–18 (1895–7)Google Scholar; but there is still need of a good critical edition.

8 Annals of Clonmacnoise, p. 179.

9 Scotus, Marianus, Chronicon, ed. Waitz, (M.G.H., SS, v, and also P.L., cxlvii), a. 1065.Google Scholar

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11 Miscellaneous Irish Annals, ed. Óh-Innse, Séamus (1947), pp. 1–115.Google Scholar

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13 In 1932 (ibid, xliv- 359) Dom Wilmart published a further note in which he corrected his earlier reading of Funianus to Finianus; but he failed to notice that in his printed version of this second list he had omitted the last name: & Abial sacerdos, which I have added from a photostat copy of this folio.

14 Tommasini, A., Irish saints in Italy, Eng. tr by Scanlan, J.F. (1937), pp. 97–9.Google Scholar

15 This collection has been reprinted by EIrington, in The whole works of Most Rev. James Ussher, D.D., 4. 383–572.Google Scholar

16 Ussher, , Works, 4. 498.Google Scholar

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19 Robertson, J., History of the Christian church (ed. 1875), 5. 264.Google Scholar

20 Gwynn, A., ‘ Pope Gregory VII and the Irish church ’, in I.E.R., 58 (1941). 99–100.Google Scholar

21 Ussher has added a note to the text in his Sylloge, in which he states that he had found this letter, together with a letter from Lanfranc to an Irish bishop named Domnaldus, in two manuscripts, each of which also contained a text of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals : one of them in the library of his friend Sir Robert Cotton. These two MSS appear to be now Cambridge Univ. MS Dd. i. 10, 11; and B.M. Cotton MS Claud E.v. But neither of these manuscripts contains either Gregory’s letter or Lanfranc’s letter. The latter is found in two manuscripts, both now at Cambridge: CCC MS 130, and Peterhouse MS 74. The letter from Gregory VII was found by Holtzmann, W. in Cotton MS Claud A.i, f. 38 (Papsturkunden in England, 1 (1931). 77).Google Scholar

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25 Bischoff, B., Südostdeutsche Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken in der Karolingerzeit (Leipzig, 1940).Google Scholar There is no copy of this book in any Irish library, and the only copy known by me to be in England is in the library of London University.

26 Bischoff, B. and Hofmann, J., Libri sancii Kyliani: die Würzburger Schreibschule und die Dombibliothek im VIII and IX Jahrhundert (Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Bistums und Hochstifts Würzburg, 6, Würzburg, 1952).Google Scholar

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31 FatherHogan, printed his text of the Vita in Analecta Bollandiana, 1 (1884)Google Scholar; and the manuscript from which he printed it has also been described in the Bollandist Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum bibl. reg. Bruxell, i (1886). 4.

32 These Latin verses were printed in the Bollandist Catalogus, loc. cit. But Father Paul Grosjean, who examined this large manuscript at my request, reports that the leaf on which these verses (and a list of the Irish monks of Würzburg in the early fifteenth century) were to be found in 1886 has since disappeared. The manuscript was re-bound some ten years after this date, and this leaf seems to have been lost in the process : see also Van den Gheyn’s summary catalogue of the Latin manuscripts in the royal library at Brussels, ν (1905). 55, note 2.

33 Gwynn, A., ‘ The continuity of the Irish tradition at Würzburg ’ in Herbipolis jubilans (Würzburg, 1952), pp. 57–81.Google Scholar

34 In his thesis Professor Binchy cites the following passage from the Libellus, as now extant in three Munich MSS (CLM 903, 9711, 14873) : ’ … elegerunt abbatem nomine Christianum nobilem virum quo ad examen humanum Makikarthige ’ I have not been able to identify this abbot in any of the extant genealogies.

35 MacNeill, Charles, in R.S.A.I. in., 42 (1912). 140–7Google Scholar; Leask, H.G., in Christian art in ancient Ireland, 2 (1941). 81.Google Scholar

36 Dunning, PJ., ‘ The Arroasian order in medieval Ireland ’ in I.H.S., 4 (1946). 297–316.Google Scholar

37 These manuscripts are in the municipal library at Troyes ; there is a good catalogue of the manuscripts of this library in Catalogus général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des départements, ii (1855).

38 MacNeill, J.T. and Gamer, H.M., Medieval handbooks of penance (New York, 1936), p. 62.Google Scholar Fecamp also owned an eighth-century Gospels of Irish origin, now Paris BN 281, 298 : see Kenney, pp. 653–4.

39 Round, J.H., Feudal England, p. 467.Google Scholar

40 Green, J.R., The conquest of England, p. 440.Google Scholar

41 St Bernard’s life of St Malachy, p. 47, note 3.

42 Ussher, , Works, 4. 513.Google Scholar

43 Eadmer, , Historia novorum in Anglia, ed. Rule, p. 177.Google Scholar

44 Eadmer loc. cit.

45 Annals of Inisfallen, p. xxviii.

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52 de Santi, A., Les litanies de la sainte vierge (Paris, 1900).Google Scholar

53 A. de Santi, op. cit., p. 7. These pseudo-Ildephonsian sermons have been printed by Migne, P.L., 96, col. 258–60.Google Scholar

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