Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200

✍ Scribed by Daibhi O Croinin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 433
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This impressive survey covers the early history of Ireland from the coming of Christianity to the Norman settlement. Within a broad political framework it explores the nature of Irish society, the spiritual and secular roles of the Church and the extraordinary flowering of Irish culture in the period. Other major themes are Ireland's relations with Britain and continental Europe, the beginnings of Irish feudalism, and the impact of the Viking and Norman invaders.

The expanded second edition has been fully updated to take into account the most recent research in the history of Ireland in the early middle ages, including Ireland’s relations with the Later Roman Empire, advances and discoveries in archaeology, and Church Reform in the 11th and 12th centuries. A new opening chapter on early Irish primary sources introduces students to the key written sources that inform our picture of early medieval Ireland, including annals, genealogies and laws.

The social, political, religious, legal and institutional background provides the context against which Dáibhí Ó Cróinín describes Ireland’s transformation from a tribal society to a feudal state. It is essential reading for student and specialist alike.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Dedication
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of maps
List of abbreviations
Framework of events
Author’s preface to the second edition
Preface
Acknowledgements to Second Edition
Introduction to First Edition
1 Early medieval Ireland: sources
Annals
Genealogies
A note on DNA and genealogy
Early Irish law
2 The beginnings of Irish history
Christianity in Gaul
Christianity in Britain
Channels of conversion
Palladius and the Roman mission
Patrick
The first Christians
Techniques of conversion
Christianity and the ogam stones
Religion, words, and names
3 Kingdoms, peoples, and politics, 400–800
Older population groups
Saga and history
The kingdom of the Ulaid
The Battle of Móin Dairi Lothair
The kingdom of Leinster
Kings and saints
The kingdom of Munster
Early Munster population groups
The kingdom of Connacht
4 Kings and kingship
Regnal succession
Tánaise Ríg: ‘heir apparent’?
Procedures for selecting kings
The king’s house
Ordinary houses
Kings’ protection
Kings’ truth
Rechtge, Cáin, and royal law
5 Land, settlement, and economy
The medieval landscape
Land and the law
Agriculture
Mills and milling
Food and diet
Bees and bee-keeping
Population
6 Law, family, and community
‘National law’ or ‘territorial law’?
Laws and institutions
Early Irish law: its nature and its law texts
Evolution, ‘uniformity’, and ‘immutability’ of the law
The first law schools
Roman law and barbarian law
Clerical influence on Visigothic law
Clerical influence on brehon law
Women: marriage, law, and property
Marriage and divorce
The legal status of women
Women, children, and the family
Sureties
The law: its function and workings
Clientship and standards of living
Family, kindred, and land
Cooperative farming
7 The consolidation of the church
The Gallican church in the fourth and fifth centuries
Transformation? . . . organization
Cummian’s letter
Armagh and its claims to primacy
Armagh and Sletty
Opposition to Armagh
Authority in the early Irish church
Proprietary churches
8 The first Christian schools
Roman scripts and Irish books
Beginnings of Irish literacy
British influence
Learning Latin
Columbanus and his teachers
Monastic schools
Scribes and calligraphers
Grammars and grammarians
Reputation of Irish schools
Latin and the vernacular
Scholars’ books
9 The ‘Golden Age’
Monastic rules and penitentials
Columbanus, man of letters
Controversies
Bilingual texts and glosses
Biblical interpretation
Hagiography
Hiberno-Latin flowering
Spanish connections
Hiberno-Latin poetry
Discordant voices
Wandering scholars
Sedulius Scottus and Iohannes Eriugena
The waning star: the tenth century and after
10 The Viking age
The earliest Viking attacks: first and second phases
The first longphorts
Earlier raids?
Character of the Viking impact
Archaeological evidence: Dublin
Westward from the continent to Ireland
Irish recovery; captive Irish
Danes, Norse, Irish, Britons
The Vikings of Dublin, 873–902
Dublin abandoned and regained
The second Dublin settlement
The Viking achievement
The Battle of Clontarf
Viking influence after 1014
Cultural and economic influence
11 Ireland 1014–1200
Rule Britannia
After Clontarf: new kings?
Church reform
Further church reform
The Anglo-Normans and Henry II
Rory O’Connor deposed
The inevitable Anglo-Norman triumph?
Feudalization in Ireland, c. 1000
Glossary
Bibliography
Index