Literary Culture in Early Christian Ireland: Hiberno-Latin Saints' Lives
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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses October 2018 Literary Culture in Early Christian Ireland: Hiberno-Latin Saints’ Lives as a Source for Seventh-Century Irish History John Higgins University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Celtic Studies Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Medieval History Commons, and the Medieval Studies Commons Recommended Citation Higgins, John, "Literary Culture in Early Christian Ireland: Hiberno-Latin Saints’ Lives as a Source for Seventh-Century Irish History" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1353. https://doi.org/10.7275/12430067 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1353 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Literary Culture in Early Christian Ireland: Hiberno-Latin Saints’ Lives as a Source for Seventh-Century Irish History A Dissertation Presented by JOHN M. HIGGINS Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2018 History © Copyright by John M. Higgins 2018 All Rights Reserved Literary Culture in Early Christian Ireland: Hiberno-Latin Saints’ Lives as a Source for Seventh-Century Irish History A Dissertation Presented By JOHN M. HIGGINS Approved as to style and content by: _________________________________________________ Anna Taylor, Chair _________________________________________________ Jason Moralee, Member _________________________________________________ Richard Lim, Member _________________________________________________ Elizabeth Keitel, Member Brian Ogilvie, Department Head Department of History MEMORIAE SACRUM COLUMBAE FILII CARISSIMI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project has been many years in the making. I have therefore many years’ worth of debts to acknowledge. The National Endowment for the Humanities granted me two fellowships at an early stage: the Council for Basic Education/ NEH, National Fellowship for Independent Study in the Humanities, and especially the Teacher-Scholar Fellowship that allowed me the luxury of an entire sabbatical year reading, thinking though, and writing an early draft of what turned into this dissertation. During my sabbatical year I was granted a Research Scholarship at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies which allowed me office space and access to perhaps the best library in the world for early Irish history; Trinity College, Dublin, accorded me the status of Visiting Academic. To both those institutions I owe a debt of thanks. I must also mention my previous institution, The Gilbert School, for graciously permitting me to take a sabbatical and for various other indulgences over many years. I have given parts of this dissertation as papers in various venues over the years. I am grateful to the audiences for discussion of my work and for questions that have helped me to clarify my arguments. In particular, I acknowledge Trinity College, Dublin; the TCD/UCD Classical Colloquium; the Harvard Celtic Colloquium; the Irish Conference of Medievalists; the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo; the Classical Association of New England; and Classical Association of Connecticut. To all my thanks. My greatest debt is to my dissertation director, Anna Taylor, per quam non licet esse neglegentem. Anna’s constant encouragement and demanding responses to her v probing reading of my drafts have done more than anyone to help me clarify my argument and especially my expression. I cannot thank her enough. The members of the committee, Richard Lim, Jason Moralee, and Elizabeth Keitel, have all been generous with their time and interest. They have all commented helpfully on the various drafts of chapters. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and Anthony Harvey graciously read and commented on several draft chapters. Maria Tymoczko and Stephen Harris were very helpful at an early stage of the dissertation process. Brian Shelburne, Head of the Digital Scholarship Center at the DuBois Library, helped with the production of the map. My most profound debt, as always, is to my wife, Dr. Ann Higgins. Most students writing a dissertation on a medieval topic do not have the advantage of living in the same house as a medieval scholar. Her influence is evident on every page of this dissertation, both in helping me to develop the argument and in helping me to hone the presentation. Le mo ghrá, go brách. vi ABSTRACT LITERARY CULTURE IN EARLY CHRISTIAN IRELAND: HIBERNO-LATIN SAINTS’ LIVES AS A SOURCE FOR SEVENTH-CENTURY IRISH HISTORY SEPTEMBER 2018 JOHN M. HIGGINS, B.A., FORDHAM UNIVERSITY M.LITT., UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Anna Taylor The writers of seventh-century Irish saints’ Lives created the Irish past. Their accounts of the fifth-and-sixth century saints framed the narrative of early Irish Christianity for their contemporary and later audience. Cogitosus’s Life of Brigit, Muirchú’s and Tírechán’s accounts of Saint Patrick, and Adomnán’s Life of Columba have guided the understanding of early Irish history from then until now. Unlike other early texts these Lives are securely dated. Composed as tools in the discourse regarding authority in seventh-century Irish ecclesiastical and secular politics, they provide historical insights not available from other sources. In the seventh century Armagh and Kildare competed for primacy over the Irish church; these religious centers also were involved in politics, with Armagh’s claims supported by the Uí Néill kings, whom Armagh supported. Kildare, in Leinster, was outside the Uí Néill political sphere. The Lives are part of the historicizing understanding of their past that the Irish developed vii in the seventh century. These Lives were weapons in the conflicts between North and South for political and ecclesiastical power. The authors used stories of saints to create the narrative of early Ireland. Their literary choices included the literary form of hagiography, miracle stories, and the stories’ rhetorical style. The Lives are Christian biographies. They create a world through miracle stories. Individual details of expression associated ecclesiastical foundations and secular dynasties with religio-political power derived from the saints. The saints’ Lives create the past by representing the words and actions of the saints in elaborately decorated language. Because of the elaborate language, the saints’ words and actions acquire authoritative credibility: the rhetoric indicates that the words participate in divine reality. The source of the style of seventh-century Hiberno-Latin writing includes elements of Late Latin, the Bible, and native Irish poetry. This is not merely decorative, but functions to show that saints are not bound by mundane reality, but have a direct connection to heaven; their deeds and sayings acquire even more power and effect in this world. The style ultimately promotes the political/ecclesiastical elites of the seventh century by showing that they derived power from actions of their saints. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ V ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................... VII LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................XII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................ XIII CHAPTER Page 1. IRISH LIVES AND THE IRISH PAST ................................................................................ 2 1. Constructing the Past with Literary Sources ............................................................... 7 Computus and the Date of Easter................................................................................ 9 Hymns and Poetry ..................................................................................................... 10 Legal Literature ......................................................................................................... 11 Annals and Genealogies ............................................................................................ 13 2. Saints’ Lives .............................................................................................................. 14 3. Saints’ Lives as a Component of the Historical Dossier ........................................... 15 4. Biography, Miracles, and Words............................................................................... 22 5. Structure of this Study ............................................................................................... 28 ix 2 THE LIVES: A RESPONSE TO SEVENTH-CENTURY IRELAND ............................. 31 1. The Paschal Controversy in Seventh-Century Ireland .............................................. 34 2. The Dispute over Primacy ......................................................................................... 44 3. The Rise of the Uí Néill in the Saints’ Lives ..........................................................