Author: Niamh Wycherley
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503551845
Category : Christian saints
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
As the cult of saints became increasingly important to the Christian religion during the latter centuries of the Roman Empire, so too the veneration of relics became a central element of Christian piety. The relics of holy men and women--the very tangibility of which ensured their lasting appeal--could be used to heal the sick, improve the weather, ensure victory in battle, and represent power and authority. Even today, in an era of declining church attendance, famous relics such as the head of St Catherine of Siena or the tongue of St Anthony of Padua continue to draw hundreds of thousands of pilgrims; the need to preserve and venerate objects associated with the important and the famous is a well-established human trait. This book is the first to explore the historical roots of the cult of relics in early medieval Ireland, deepening our understanding of how the pagan Irish adapted to the new religion. Examining the cult of relics from the earliest Irish sources up to the ninth century, it provides insights into the role of relics and the culture and people to whom they were so significant. The volume investigates how the Christian phenomenon of relic veneration developed in early Ireland and it evaluates the continuity between Irish practice and that on the continent. By offering a new model of how the cult of relics evolved and by exploring the extent to which it helped forge early Irish Christianity, the arguments presented here have the potential to reshape views of the entire period.
Author: Nancy Edwards
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351546570
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 753
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Book Description
This volume focuses on new research on the archaeology of the early medieval Celtic churches c AD 400-1100 in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, south-west Britain and Brittany. The 21 papers use a variety of approaches to explore and analyse the archaeological evidence for the origins and development of the Church in these areas. The results of a recent multi-disciplinary research project to identify the archaeology of the early medieval church in different regions of Wales are considered alongside other new research and the discoveries made in excavations in both Wales and beyond. The papers reveal not only aspects of the archaeology of ecclesiastical landscapes with their monasteries, churches and cemeteries, but also special graves, relics, craftworking and the economy enabling both comparisons and contrasts. They likewise engage with ongoing debates concerning interpretation: historiography and the concept of the Celtic Church, conversion to Christianity, Christianization of the landscape and the changing functions and inter-relationships of sites, the development of saints cults, sacred space and pilgrimage landscapes and the origins of the monastic town .
Author: Nancy Edwards
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135951497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
In the first major work on the subject for over 30 years, Nancy Edwards provides a critical survey of the archaeological evidence in Ireland (c. 400-1200), introducing material from many recently discovered sites as well as reassessing the importance of earlier excavations. Beginning with an assessment of Roman influence, Dr Edwards then discusses the themse of settlement, food and farming, craft and technology, the church and art, concluding with an appraisal of the Viking impact. The archaeological evidence for the period is also particularly rich and wide-ranging and our knowledge is expanding repidly in the light of modern techniques of survey and excavation.
Author: Clare Downham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110854794X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
Medieval Ireland is often described as a backward-looking nation in which change only came about as a result of foreign invasions. By examining the wealth of under-explored evidence available, Downham challenges this popular notion and demonstrates what a culturally rich and diverse place medieval Ireland was. Starting in the fifth century, when St Patrick arrived on the island, and ending in the fifteenth century, with the efforts of the English government to defend the lands which it ruled directly around Dublin by building great ditches, this up-to-date and accessible survey charts the internal changes in the region. Chapters dispute the idea of an archaic society in a wide-range of areas, with a particular focus on land-use, economy, society, religion, politics and culture. This concise and accessible overview offers a fresh perspective on Ireland in the Middle Ages and overthrows many enduring stereotypes.
Author: Charles Freeman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300166591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396
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Book Description
Relics were everywhere in medieval society. Saintly morsels such as bones, hair, teeth, blood, milk, and clothes, and items like the Crown of Thorns, coveted by Louis IX of France, were thought to bring the believer closer to the saint, who might intercede with God on his or her behalf. In the first comprehensive history in English of the rise of relic cults, Charles Freeman takes readers on a vivid, fast-paced journey from Constantinople to the northern Isles of Scotland over the course of a millennium.In "Holy Bones, Holy Dust," Freeman illustrates that the pervasiveness and variety of relics answered very specific needs of ordinary people across a darkened Europe under threat of political upheavals, disease, and hellfire. But relics were not only venerated--they were traded, collected, lost, stolen, duplicated, and destroyed. They were bargaining chips, good business and good propaganda, politically appropriated across Europe, and even used to wield military power. Freeman examines an expansive array of relics, showing how the mania for these objects deepens our understanding of the medieval world and why these relics continue to capture our imagination.
Author: Chris Jones
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110546485
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
When scholars discuss the medieval past, the temptation is to become immersed there, to deepen our appreciation of the nuances of the medieval sources through debate about their meaning. But the past informs the present in a myriad of ways and medievalists can, and should, use their research to address the concerns and interests of contemporary society. This volume presents a number of carefully commissioned essays that demonstrate the fertility and originality of recent work in Medieval Studies. Above all, they have been selected for relevance. Most contributors are in the earlier stages of their careers and their approaches clearly reflect how interdisciplinary methodologies applied to Medieval Studies have potential repercussions and value far beyond the boundaries of the Middles Ages. These chapters are powerful demonstrations of the value of medieval research to our own times, both in terms of providing answers to some of the specific questions facing humanity today and in terms of much broader considerations. Taken together, the research presented here also provides readers with confidence in the fact that Medieval Studies cannot be neglected without a great loss to the understanding of what it means to be human.
Author: Tadhg O’Keeffe
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003850677
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
This book presents a fresh perspective on eleventh- and twelfth-century Irish architecture, and a critical assessment of the value of describing it, and indeed contemporary European architecture in general, as “Romanesque”. Medieval Irish Architecture and the Concept of Romanesque is a new and original study of medieval architectural culture in Ireland. The book’s central premise is that the concept of a “Romanesque” style in eleventh- and twelfth-century architecture across Western Europe, including Ireland, is problematic, and that the analysis of building traditions of that period is not well served by the assumption that there was a common style. Detailed discussion of important buildings in Ireland, a place marginalised within the “Romanesque” model, reveals the Irish evidence to be intrinsically interesting to students of medieval European architecture, for it is evidence which illuminates how architectural traditions of the Middle Ages were shaped by balancing native and imported needs and aesthetics, often without reference to Romanitas. This book is for specialists and students in the fields of Romanesque, medieval archaeology, medieval architectural history, and medieval Irish studies.
Author: Crawford Gribben
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198868189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
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.
Author: Edel Bhreathnach
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781846823428
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This is a study of Ireland's people, landscape, and place in the world from late antiquity to the reign of Brian Borama. The book narrates the story of Ireland's emergence into history, using anthropological, archaeological, historical, and literary evidence. The subjects covered include the king, the kingdom and the royal household, religion and customs, free and unfree classes in society, exiles, and foreigners. The rural, urban, ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and mythological landscapes of early medieval Ireland anchor the history of early Irish society in the rich tapestry of archaeological sites, monuments, and place-names that have survived to the present day. A historiography of medieval Irish studies presents the commentaries of a variety of scholars, from the 17th-century Franciscan Micheal O Cleirigh to Eoin Mac Neill, the founding father of modern scholarship. *** "Bhreathnach draws on archaeological evidence to supply insights into a society that has left only oblique views in the written record, proposing a revised view of the place of Ireland in medieval Europe....the book features eight pages of color plates and many photos, and is a must for academic libraries, particularly those with extensive history or archaeology collections. Essential." - Choice, Vol. 52, No. 4, December 2014 *** Featured in 'Outstanding Academic Titles', a prestigious list of publications for the year 2014. - Choice, January 2015 [Subject: History, Medieval Studies, Archaeology, Anthropology, Irish Studies, Religious Studies]
Author: Tomás Ó Carragáin
Publisher: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 414
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Book Description
This is the first book devoted to churches in Ireland dating from the arrival of Christianity in the fifth century to the early stages of the Romanesque around 1100, including those built to house treasures of the golden age of Irish art, such as the Book of Kells and the Ardagh chalice. � Carrag�in's comprehensive survey of the surviving examples forms the basis for a far-reaching analysis of why these buildings looked as they did, and what they meant in the context of early Irish society. � Carrag�in also identifies a clear political and ideological context for the first Romanesque churches in Ireland and shows that, to a considerable extent, the Irish Romanesque represents the perpetuation of a long-established architectural tradition.
