Much of our knowledge of early medieval Ireland comes from a rich literature written in a variety of genres and in two languages, Irish and Latin. Who wrote this literature and what role did they play within society? What did the introduction and expansion of literacy mean in a culture where the vast majority of the population continued to be non-literate? How did literacy operate in and intersect with the oral world? Was literacy a key element in the formation and articulation of communal and elite senses of identity? This book addresses these issues in the first full, inter-disciplinary examination of the Irish literate elite and their social contexts between ca. 400-1000 AD. It considers the role played by Hiberno-Latin authors, the expansion of vernacular literacy and the key place of monasteries within the literate landscape. Also examined are the crucial intersections between literacy and orality, which underpin the importance played by the literate elite in giving voice to aristocratic and communal identities.

This book examines and compares the religious experience of an African group with a European one. It offers an ethnographical investigation of the Jukun of north central Nigeria. The author also organically weaves into the narrative the Christianization of the Irish in a comparative fashion. Throughout, he makes the case for an African Christianity connected to a Celtic Irish Christianity and vice-versa -- as different threads in a tapestry. This work is a product of a synthesis of archival research in three continents, interviews with surviving first-generation Christians who were active practitioners of the Jukun indigenous religion, and with former missionaries to the Jukun. On the Irish side, it draws from extant primary sources and interviews with scholars in Celtic Irish studies. In addition, pictures, diagrams, and excerpts from British colonial and missionary journals provide a rich contextual understanding of Jukun religious life and practices. The author is among the emerging voices in the study of World Christianity who advocate for the reality of "poly-centres" for Christianity. This perspective recognizes voices from the Global South in the expansion of Christianity. This book serves as a valuable resource for historians, anthropologists, theologians, and those interested in missions studies, both scholars and lay readers seeking to deepen their understanding of World Christianity.

GLOBAL RHETORICAL TRADITIONS is unique in design and scope. It presents, as accessibly as possible, translated primary sources on global rhetorical instruction and practices of Asia, Africa, the Near East, the Middle East, Polynesia, and precolonial Europe. Each of the book’s chapters represents a different rhetorical region and includes a prefatory introduction, critical commentary, translated primary sources, a glossary of rhetorical terms, and a comprehensive bibliography. The general introduction helps contextualize the project, justify its organization and coverage, and draw attention to the various features, characteristics, and/or philosophies of the rhetorics included in the book. The book’s significance lies in its contributions to both studying and teaching global rhetorical traditions by offering representative research methods and primary sources in a single volume. It can be read as scholarship, as reference, and as textbook. BRIEF CONTENTS: Foreword by Patricia Bizzell Renewing Comparative Methodologies by Tarez Samra Graban 1 Arabic and Islamic Rhetorics: Early Islamic, Medieval Islamic, Arabic-Islamic 2 Chinese Rhetorics; Spring-Autumn and Warring States Period (Classical), Han Dynasty, Six Dynasties (Early Medieval), Tang Dynasty, Song Dynasty, and Ming Dynasty, The Modern Period (20th Century) 3 East African Rhetorics: Nilotic 4 Indian and Nepali Rhetorics: Indian-Poetic, Indian-Logical, Hindu 5 Indonesian Rhetorics: Post-National 6 Irish Rhetorics: Medieval Irish-Gaelic (Non-European) 7 Mediterranean Rhetorics: Byzantine, Hebraic Mediterranean 8 Polynesian-Hawaiian Rhetorics: Post-Colonial Hawaiian (Non-European) 9 Russian Rhetorics: Kievan Rus’ Traditions 10 Turkish Rhetorics: Middle Turkish (Central Asia)

The early medieval manuscripts of Ireland and Britain contain tantalizing clues about the cosmology, religion and mythology of native Celtic cultures, despite censorship and revision by Christian redactors. Focusing on the latest research and translations, the author provides fresh insight into the beliefs and practices of the Iron Age inhabitants of Ireland, Britain and Gaul. Chapters cover creation and cosmogony, the deities of the Gaels, feminine power in narrative sources, druidic belief, priestesses and magical rites.

Texts of the past were often not monolingual but were produced by and for people with bi- or multilingual repertoires; the communicative practices witnessed in them therefore reflect ongoing and earlier language contact situations. However, textbooks and earlier research tend to display a monolingual bias. This collected volume on multilingual practices in historical materials, including code-switching, highlights the importance of a multilingual approach. The authors explore multilingualism in hitherto neglected genres, periods and areas, introduce new methods of locating and analysing multiple languages in various sources, and review terminology, theories and tools. The studies also revisit some of the issues already introduced in previous research, such as Latin interacting with European vernaculars and the complex relationship between code-switching and lexical borrowing. Collectively, the contributors show that multilingual practices share many of the same features regardless of time and place, and that one way or the other, all historical texts are multilingual. This book takes the next step in historical multilingualism studies by establishing the relevance of the multilingual approach to understanding language history.

The Hibernensis is the longest and most comprehensive canon-law text to have circulated in Carolingian Europe. Compiled in Ireland in the late seventh or early eighth century, it exerted a strong and long-lasting influence on the development of European canon law. The present edition offers—for the first time—a complete text of the Hibernensis combining the two main branches of its manuscript transmission. This is accompanied by an English translation and a commentary that is both historical and philological. The Hibernensis is an invaluable source for those interested in church history, the history of canon law, social-economic history, as well as intellectual history, and the history of the book. Widely recognized as the single most important source for the history of the church in early medieval Ireland, the Hibernensis is also our best index for knowing what books were available in Ireland at the time of its compilation: it consists of excerpted material from the Bible, Church Fathers and doctors, hagiography, church histories, chronicles, wisdom texts, and insular normative material unattested elsewhere. This in addition to the staple sources of canonical collections, comprising the acta of church councils and papal letters. Altogether there are forty-two cited authors and 135 cited texts. But unlike previous canonical collections, the contents of the Hibernensis are not simply derivative: they have been modified and systematically organised, offering an important insight into the manner in which contemporary clerical scholars attempted to define, interpret, and codify law for the use of a growing Christian society.

A History of Irish Women's Poetry is a ground-breaking and comprehensive account of Irish women's poetry from earliest times to the present day. It reads Irish women's poetry through many prisms – mythology, gender, history, the nation – and most importantly, close readings of the poetry itself. It covers major figures, such as Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, as well as neglected figures from the past. Writing in both English and Irish is considered, and close attention paid to the many different contexts in which Irish women's poetry has been produced and received, from the anonymous work of the early medieval period, through the bardic age, the coterie poets of Anglo-Ireland, the nationalist balladeers of Young Ireland, the Irish Literary Revival, and the advent of modernity. As capacious as it is diverse, this book is an essential contribution to scholarship in the field.

The Handbook takes as its subject the complex phenomenon of Christian monasticism. It addresses, for the first time in one volume, the multiple strands of Christian monastic practice. Forty-four essays consider historical and thematic aspects of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican traditions, as well as contemporary 'new monasticism'. The essays in the book span a period of nearly two thousand years—from late ancient times, through the medieval and early modern eras, on to the present day. Taken together, they offer, not a narrative survey, but rather a map of the vast terrain. The intention of the Handbook is to provide a balance of some essential historical coverage with a representative sample of current thinking on monasticism. It presents the work of both academic and monastic authors, and the essays are best understood as a series of loosely-linked episodes, forming a long chain of enquiry, and allowing for various points of view. The authors are a diverse and international group, who bring a wide range of critical perspectives to bear on pertinent themes and issues. They indicate developing trends in their areas of specialisation. The individual contributions, and the volume as a whole, set out an agenda for the future direction of monastic studies. In today's world, where there is increasing interest in all world monasticisms, where scholars are adopting more capacious, global approaches to their investigations, and where monks and nuns are casting a fresh eye on their ancient traditions, this publication is especially timely.

The crannog on Llangorse Lake near Brecon in mid Wales was discovered in 1867 and first excavated in 1869 by two local antiquaries, Edgar and Henry Dumbleton, who published their findings over the next four years. In 1988 dendrochronological dates from submerged palisade planks established its construction in the ninth century, and a combined off- and on-shore investigation of the site was started as a joint project between Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales. The subsequent surveys and excavation (1989-1994, 2004) resulted in the recovery of a remarkable time capsule of life in the late ninth and tenth century, on the only crannog yet identified in Wales. This publication re-examines the early investigations, describes in detail the anatomy of the crannog mound and its construction, and the material culture found. The crannog’s treasures include early medieval secular and religious metalwork, evidence for manufacture, the largest depository of early medieval carpentry in Wales and a remarkable richly embroidered silk and linen textile which is fully analysed and placed in context. The crannog’s place in Welsh history is explored, as a royal llys (‘court’) within the kingdom of Brycheiniog. Historical record indicates the site was destroyed in 916 by Aethelflaed, the Mercian queen, in the course of the Viking wars of the early tenth century. The subsequent significance of the crannog in local traditions and its post-medieval occupation during a riotous dispute in the reign Elizabeth I are also discussed. Two logboats from the vicinity of the crannog are analysed, and a replica described. The cultural affinities of the crannog and its material culture is assessed, as are their relationship to origin myths for the kingdom, and to probable links with early medieval Ireland. The folk tales associated with the lake are explored, in a book that brings together archaeology, history, myths and legends, underwater and terrestrial archaeology.

What does it mean to identify oneself as pagan or Christian in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages? How are religious identities constructed, negotiated, and represented in oral and written discourse? How is identity performed in rituals, how is it visible in material remains? Antiquity and the Middle Ages are usually regarded as two separate fields of scholarship. However, the period between the fourth and tenth centuries remains a time of transformations in which the process of religious change and identity building reached beyond the chronological boundary and the Roman, the Christian and ‘the barbarian’ traditions were merged in multiple ways. Being Pagan, Being Christian in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages brings together researchers from various fields, including archaeology, history, classical studies, and theology, to enhance discussion of this period of change as one continuum across the artificial borders of the different scholarly disciplines. With new archaeological data and contributions from scholars specializing on both textual and material remains, these different fields of study shed light on how religious identities of the people of the past are defined and identified. The contributions reassess the interplay of diversity and homogenising tendencies in a shifting religious landscape. Beyond the diversity of traditions, this book highlights the growing capacity of Christianity to hold together, under its control, the different dimensions – identity, cultural, ethical and emotional – of individual and collective religious experience.