Early Christian Ireland

Description

Celtic Ireland was never conquered by the Romans but was converted to Christianity by Roman missionaries just at the time when the barbarians were breaking through the Imperial frontiers. While the rest of western Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages by the fall of the Roman Empire, Ireland entered her Golden Age of literature, learning and art. This is the first book to deal with that remarkable Early Christian culture as a whole, and the first that summarises the evidence of the excavations of the past quarter-century. Much unpublished material has been used, and new views are offered on various aspects of the subject. The story of Ireland’s conversion by St. Patrick in the fifth century, of the process by which the country became literate and acquired culture and scholarship, and of the development of a complex art under the patronage of the most vigorous institution of the age — the Church — is told here with the aid of the evidence of archaeology, history, Old Irish and Latin literature, and legend. And the decline of Irish culture, first under the onslaughts of the Vikings and then as a result of the Norman invasion, is traced down to the completion of the process by the Elizabethan conquest of the sixteenth century. 77 photographs, 31 line drawings and 5 maps. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 6 FOREWORD 13 INTRODUCTION 15 I IRELAND AND ROME 25 II THE MONASTERIES 49 III THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE 73 IV THE ART OF THE GOLDEN AGE 110 V THE VIKINGS 131 VI RENAISSANCE AND REFORM 161 NOTES TO CHAPTERS 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY 187 SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND QUOTATIONS 196 THE PLATES 197 NOTES ON THE PLATES 245 INDEX 255