The Bible And The Apocrypha In The Early Irish Church A D 600 1200

The twenty-one essays in this volume, published from 1971 onwards, together with the introductions and conclusion, treat of the Bible and apocryphal works in Ireland during the pre-Norman period, from A.D. 600 to 1200. The essays cover developments during the period from Professor Bernhard Bischoff's seminal 1954 essay (Wendepunkte), on new evidence for Irish contributions in the field, down to the present day. After an initial survey of research during this period, attention is paid to the texts of the Latin Bible, in particular the Psalms and the Four Gospels, and to the Antiochene influence on Psalm interpretation, as well as to the rich corpus of Irish apocryphal writings, some of them very early (Transitus Mariae, so-called Infancy Narrative of Thomas, texts on the Magi and a related Infancy Narrative). Special attention is paid to the creative biblical interpretation of the Psalms in the early Irish Church A.D. 600-800, and also to what appears to be an early Irish (early eighth-century) commentary on the Apocalypse. It is hoped that these essays will contribute to a renewed examination of early Irish exegesis in this the sixtieth year of the publication of Dr. Bischoff's 1954 essay.

This book aims at bringing together and providing all the information which was available to early Irish writers from Columbanus (6th century) onwards as far as the greater commentators (Sedulius Scottus, Scottus Eriugena) about 850.

Irish scholars who arrived in Continental Europe in the early Middle Ages are often credited with making some of the most important contributions to European culture and learning of the time, from the introduction of a new calendar to monastic reform. Among them were celebrated personalities such as St Columbanus, John Scottus Eriugena, and Sedulius Scottus who were in the vanguard of a constant stream of arrivals from Ireland to continental Europe, collectively known as 'peregrini'. The continental response to this Irish 'diaspora' ranged from admiration to open hostility, especially when peregrini were deemed to challenge prevalent cultural or spiritual conventions. This volume brings together leading historians, archaeologists, and palaeographers who provide-for the first time-a comprehensive assessment of the phenomenon of Irish peregrini in their continental context and the manner in which it is framed by modern scholarship as well as the popular imagination.

"The Introduction provides an overview of the history of the Latin Bible, with a summary of the contents of each chapter in this Handbook and the rationale for their arrangement. It then discusses the terminology for referring to the Latin Bible, along with a mini-glossary of specialist terms in manuscript and textual studies which appear in the chapters. The principal editions of the Latin Bible are introduced, along with other resources for its study such as book series and databases. Finally, the conventions for the Handbook are explained, such as spelling practices for Latin and proper nouns"--

Ireland has long been regarded as a 'land of saints and scholars'. Yet the Irish experience of Christianity has never been simple or uncomplicated. The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland describes the emergence, long dominance, sudden division, and recent decline of Ireland's most important religion, as a way of telling the history of the island and its peoples. Throughout its long history, Christianity in Ireland has lurched from crisis to crisis. Surviving the hostility of earlier religious cultures and the depredations of Vikings, evolving in the face of Gregorian reformation in the 11th and 12th centuries and more radical protestant renewal from the 16th century, Christianity has shaped in foundational ways how the Irish have understood themselves and their place in the world. And the Irish have shaped Christianity, too. Their churches have staffed some of the religion's most important institutions and developed some of its most popular ideas. But the Irish church, like the island, is divided. After 1922, a border marked out two jurisdictions with competing religious politics. The southern state turned to the Catholic church to shape its social mores, until it emerged from an experience of sudden-onset secularization to become one of the most progressive nations in Europe. The northern state moved more slowly beyond the protestant culture of its principal institutions, but in a similar direction of travel. In 2021, fifteen hundred years on from the birth of Saint Columba, Christian Ireland appears to be vanishing. But its critics need not relax any more than believers ought to despair. After the failure of several varieties of religious nationalism, what looks like irredeemable failure might actually be a second chance. In the ruins of the church, new Columbas and Patricks shape the rise of another Christian Ireland.

The Anonymous Old English Homily: Sources, Composition, and Variation offers important essays on the origins, textual transmission, and (re)use of early English preaching texts between the ninth and the late twelfth centuries. Associated with the Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Homilies in Old English project, these studies provide fresh insights into one of the most complex textual genres of early medieval literature. Contributions deal with the definition of the anonymous homiletic corpus in Old English, the history of scholarship on its Latin sources, and the important unedited Pembroke and Angers Latin homiliaries. They also include new source and manuscript identifications, and in-depth studies of a number of popular Old English homilies, their themes, revisions, and textual relations. Contributors are: Aidan Conti, Robert Getz, Thomas N. Hall, Susan Irvine, Esther Lemmerz, Stephen Pelle, Thijs Porck, Winfried Rudolf, Donald G. Scragg, Robert K. Upchurch, Jonathan Wilcox, Charles D. Wright, Samantha Zacher. See inside the book.

This is the first comprehensive study of the contribution that texts from Britain and Ireland made to the development of canon law in early medieval Europe. The book concentrates on a group of insular texts of church law—chief among them the Irish Hibernensis—tracing their evolution through mutual influence, their debt to late antique traditions from around the Mediterranean, their reception (and occasional rejection) by clerics in continental Europe, their fusion with continental texts, and their eventual impact on the formation of a European canonical tradition. Canonical collections, penitentials, and miscellanies of church law, and royal legislation, are all shown to have been 'living texts', which were continually reshaped through a process of trial and error that eventually gave rise to a more stable and more coherent body of church laws. Through a meticulous text-critical study Roy Flechner argues that the growth of church law in Europe owes as much to a serendipitous 'conversation' between texts as it does to any deliberate plan overseen by bishops and popes.