John
Carey, Máire Herbert & Pádraig Ó Riain, eds.
Studies
in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Scholars.
Dublin, Four Courts
Press,
2001.
xii, 418pp.
Hardback ISBN
1851824863.
Publisher's
recommended price
€50/£37.50/$65
This
volume records
the proceedings of the first international conference on Irish
hagiography
held in University College, Cork in April 1997 in commemoration of the
1400th anniversary of the death of St Colum Cille. As well as devoting
a particular section to Columban hagiography these proceedings also set
it in its wider contexts. Lives of other irish saints are studied, both
those whose careers belonged primarily to the irish world, and those
associated
with continental Europe. Moreover, the identity of holy persons
commemorated
abroad as irish is scrutinized, as texts surviving from the seventh
century
onwards disclose how saints were perceived and represented by insular
and
continental hagiographers.
The
present collection
also concerns itself with broader questions relating to the study of
Irish
hagiography, both its seventeenth-century beginnings and its
contemporary
analysis, informed by insights from various scholarly disciplines. The
necessity that the study of Irish hagiography be integrated into the
general
study of hagiographical literature is also emphasized as a major
contemporary
project on Western European saints' Lives is surveyed. A variety of
perspectives,
therefore, informs this present collection, illuminating facets of the
ecclesiastical, social, and political worlds of early Irish
Christianity.
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