Abstract
Geoffrey Keating’s lasting achievement is his monumental Foras Feasa ar Èirinn (‘Foundation of Knowledge on Ireland’), compiled around 1634, one of the aims of which was to refute what he regarded as the long-standing denigration of Ireland by foreign, mainly English commentators, and to assert its right to sovereign status. Ireland is, he says, a ‘kingdom unique to itself, like a little world’.1 However sincerely he may have held that view, Keating’s analysis, which has been shared by many others down through the centuries, has only served to perpetuate the notion that there was something immutable and archaic about early Irish society, an ‘enduring tradition’ (to borrow from the title of one recent work on the subject),2 which merited preservation in its own right, and which prevailed in spite of the country’s repeated subjection to external assault. This view does not do justice to its subject, in that it fails to recognize that Irish society was an evolving entity which was not only responsive to external stimulus but had within itself the capacity to change.
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Notes and references
Geoffrey Keating [Seathrún Céitinn], Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, 4 vols (London: Irish Texts Society, 1902–14).
Michael Richter, Medieval Ireland: The Enduring Tradition (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1988).
D. A. Binchy, ‘The passing of the old order’, in Brian Ó Cuív (ed.), The Impact of the Scandinavian Invasions on the Celtic-speaking Peoples c. 80a-1100 AD (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1962), pp. 119–32.
The standard work on this is still A. T. Lucas, ‘The plundering and burning of churches in Ireland, 7th to 16th century’, in Etienne Rynne (ed.), North Munster Studies (Limerick: Thomond Archaeological Society, 1967), 172–229.
See Seán Duffy, ‘Irishmen and Islesmen in the kingdoms of Dublin and Man, 1052–1171’, Ériu, 43 (1992), 101, 103, 114, 119, note 128.
See Donncha Ó Corráin, Ireland before the Normans (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1972), pp. 1–9.
See F. J. Byrne, The Rise of the Uí Néill and the High-kingship of Ireland, O’Donnell Lecture (Dublin: National University of Ireland, 1970).
Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Brian in Armagh (1005)’, Seanchas Ard Mhacha, 9 (1978–9), 35–50.
See Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Dál Cais — church and dynasty’, Ériu, 24 (1973), 52–63.
See John Ryan, ‘The battle of Clontarf’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 68 (1938), 1–50.
See John Ryan, ‘The O’Briens in Munster after Clontarf’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 2 (1941), 141–52; 3 (1942–3), 1–52; 189–202.
See Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘The career of Diarmait mac Máel na mBó, king of Leinster’, Journal of the Old Wexford Society, 3 (1970–1), 27–35; 4 (1972–3), 17–24.
For what follows, see Sean Duffy, ‘Ostmen, Irish and Welsh in the eleventh century’, Peritia, 9 (1995), 378–96; and
Marie Therese Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 61–9.
Arthur Jones (ed.), The History of Gruffydd ap Cynan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1910);
D. Simon Evans (ed.), A Medieval Prince of Wales. The Life of Gruffudd ap Cynan (Lampeter: Llanerch Press, 1990).
For this, see Ben Hudson, ‘The family of Harold Godwinsson and the Irish Sea province’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 109 (1979), 92–100.
See Benjamin Hudson, ‘William the Conqueror and Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, 29 (1994), 145–58.
See Anthony Candon, ‘Muirchertach Ua Briain, politics, and naval activity in the Irish Sea, 1075 to 1119’, in Gearóid Mac Niocaill and P. F. Wallace (eds), Keimelia: Studies in Medieval Archaeology and History in Memory of Tom Delaney (Galway: Galway University Press, 1988), pp. 397–415.
See Donnchadh Ó Corraín, ‘Irish regnal succession: a reappraisal’, Studia Hibernica, 11 (1971), 7–39.
J. H. Todd (ed.), Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (London: Rolls Series, 1867).
George Broderick (ed.), Cronica Regum Mannie & Insularum (Douglas: Manx Museum, 1979), fol. 33v.
See Rosemary Power, ‘Magnus Barelegs’ expeditions to the west’, Scottish Historical Review, 65 (1986), 107–32.
William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, ed. William Stubbs (London: Rolls Series, 1889), II, pp. 484–5;
Edmund Curtis, ‘Murchertach O’Brien, high-king of Ireland, and his Norman son-in-law, Arnulf de Montgomery, circa 1100’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 51 (1921), 116–24.
James Ussher, Veterum Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge (Dublin, 1632), no. XXXVII.
Orderic Vitalis, Historica Ecclesiastica, ed. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969–80), VI, pp. 48–51.
J. E. Lloyd, ‘Bishop Sulien and his family’, National Library of Wales Journal, 2 (1941), 1–6; Bede, History of the English Church
See, for example, Aubrey Gwynn, ‘Ireland and the Continent in the eleventh century’, in idem, The Irish Church in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1992), pp. 34–49.
For this, see Dennis Bethell, ‘English monks and Irish reform in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, Historical Studies, 8 (1971), 111–35.
For the role of Canterbury in the Irish church and for the history of the Irish church in general during this period, see J. A. Watt, The Church and the Two Nations in Medieval Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), chap. 1;
Marie Therese Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), chap. 1;
Aubrey Gwynn, The Irish Church in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1993).
James Ussher (ed.), Veterum Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge (Dublin, 1632), no. XL.
See John Ryan, Toirdelbach O Conchobair (1088–1156), King of Connacht, King of Ireland ‘co fresabra’, O’Donnell Lecture (Dublin: National University of Ireland, 1966).
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© 1997 Seán Duffy
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Duffy, S. (1997). A Kingdom Unique to Itself?. In: Ireland in the Middle Ages. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25171-1_3
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