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department of History
roinn na staire

PROF. DÁibhÍ Ó CrÓinÍn

 

Contact Details Email: daibhi.ocroininnuigalway.ie Office: Room 407, History Department Extension: 2697 Telephone: 353 91 492697

Research Interests

Ireland, Britain and Europe during the Early Middle Ages; Computistics; Medieval Latin Palaeography; Irish traditional music and song.

Research  Supervision

• Director of The Foundations of Irish Culture project in The Moore Centre, NUI, Galway
• Director of Irish Inscribed Stones project in The Moore Centre, NUI, Galway

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching:

• HI327: Early Irish Law
• HI211 Medieval Ireland, 5th to 9th centuries
• HI229 Medieval Europe, 5th to 9th centuries
• HI368 The Development of Irish Script from the Cathach of Colm Cille to the Book of Kells
• HI476 History Seminar: Columcille & Iona: Irish Cultural & Political Expansion, 563-729

Postgraduate Teaching:

• Founder of and contributor to the MA in Medieval Studies, an interdisciplinary 2 year degree
• Team lecturer on the MA History

SELECTED Publications  

BOOKS

 

Whitley Stokes (1830-1909): the lost Celtic notebooks rediscovered, (Four Courts Press, 2010)
Whitley Stokes was described as 'the greatest of living Celtic philologists'.  the discovery, by Professor Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, NUI Galway, of all Stokes's 150 working Celtic notebooks, unnoticed since 1919 in the Universirty Library, Leipzig, has only now revealed the extent of Stokes's astonishing industry in his later years, and makes available the manuscript notebooks that Stokes used during a lifetime of research in Celtic studies. Four Courts Press 

 

 

 

Computus and its Cultural Context in the Latin West, AD 300 - 1200, Immo Warntjes & Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (eds), in the series Studia Traditionis Theologiae - Explorations in Early and Medieval Theology (Brepols 2010) 
This publication is the proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Science of Computus in Ireland and Europe, Galway, 14 -16 July 2006. The conference was organised by the Foundations of Irish Culture project, directed by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, and drew together international scholars interested in computus, astronomy and related subjects in the period AD 400-850.  The success of the first conference and the interest it engendered resulted in two more biennial conferences  (2008 & 2010) whose proceedings are forthcoming soon, and the promise of a fourth in 2012.

 

The Royal Irish Academy New History of Ireland, Vol. 1, Prehistoric & Early Medieval Ireland (editor and contributer:  Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, (Oxford University Press, 2005) 
In this first volume of the Royal Irish Academy's multi-volume A New History of Ireland a wide range of scholars have produced studies of Ireland's archaeology, art, culture, geography, geology, history, language, law, literature, music, and related topics. Initial chapters examine geography and the physical environment, neolithic, bronze-age, and iron-age Ireland, and Ireland up to 800. Society, laws, church, and politics are all analysed separately as are architecture, literature, manuscripts, language, coins, and music. The volume is brought up to the twelfth century with chapters, amongst others, on the Vikings, Ireland and its neighbours, and opposition to the High-Kings. This is the first truly comprehensive and authoritative account of Irish history from the dawn of time down to the coming of the Normans in 1169.
This 1200-pp volume brings to a close the Academy's long-running project to produce a modern history of Ireland in all its periods.  

Chapters contributed:
VII: Ireland, 400-800, pp 182 - 234
XI: Hiberno-Latin Literature to 1169, pp 371 - 403
Bibliography, pp 996 - 1147

More details from OUP

 

Early Irish History and Chronology. Four Courts Press. Dublin 2003. Xi 228 pp. ISBN 1-85182-635-1. €55.00

This is a collection of 15 essays on the subject of computus and the related topics of Irish annals, historical chronology, and manuscript history, published by me over the last 20 years, here reprinted together with one previously unpublished essay. The papers are:

(1) 'The oldest Irish names for the days of the week' [= Ériu 32 (1982) 95-114];
(2) 'New light on Palladius' [= Peritia 5 (1986) 276-83];
(3) 'Mo Sinu maccu Min and the computus at Bangor' [= Peritia 1 (1982) 281-95];
(4) 'The computistical works of Columbanus' [= Michael Lapidge (ed), Columbanus: studies on the Latin writings (Woodbridge 1997) 264-70];
(5) 'Hiberno-Latin calcenterus' [= Peritia 1 (1982) 296-97];
(6) 'The "lost" Irish 84-year Easter table rediscovered' [= Peritia 6-7 (1987-88) 227-42 (with Dan McCarthy)];
(7) 'Early Irish annals from Easter tables: a case restated' [= Peritia 2 (1983) 74-86];
(8) '"New heresy for old": Pelagianism in Ireland and the papal letter of 640' [= Speculum 60 (1985) 505-16];
(9) 'A seventh-century Irish computus from the circle of Cummianus' [= PRIA 82 C 11 (1982) 405-30];
(10) 'An Old Irish gloss in the Munich Computus' [= Éigse 18 (1981) 289-90];
(11) 'Early Echternach manuscript fragments with Old Irish glosses' [= Georges Kiesel & Jean Schroeder (eds), Willibrord. Apostel der Niederlande, Gründer der Abtei Echternach. Gedenkgabe zum 1250. Todestag des angelsächsischen Missionars (Luxembourg 1989) 135-43];
(12) 'Rath Melsigi, Willibrord, and the earliest Echternach manuscripts' [= Peritia 3 (1984) 17-49];
(13) 'The Irish provenance of Bede's computus' [= Peritia 2 (1983) 229-47];
(14) 'The date, provenance, and earliest use of the works of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus' [= Günter Bernt, Fidel Rädle & Gabriel Silagi (eds), Tradition und Wertung: Festschrift Franz Brunhölzl (Sigmaringen 1989) 13-22];
(15) 'Bede's Irish computus' (new).

 More details from Four Courts Press...

Eachtra Phinocchio. Coiste Litríochta Mhúscraí: Baile Mhic Íre, Co. Cork 2003. 142 pp. ISBN 0-95445-54-01.€28.00.

A reprint of the 1933 Irish translation by Pádraig Ó Buachalla (1879-1954) of this international classic. The original translation was published by An Gúm (the Government Publication Office), with illustrations by Carlo Chiostri. This edition has a revised and corrected Irish text (with spelling normalised to modern orthographical standards - but without sacrificing the dialectal features of the original). The corrections were made from an annotated copy of the 1933 edition with the translator's own handwritten corrections and emendations (kindly supplied by Dónal Ó Buachalla, a nephew of Pádraig Ó Buachalla's). The illustrations in the new edition are by Roberto Innocenti, a contemporary Italian artist, and are in full colour. This new edition was prepared in collaboration with Dr Seán Ó Súilleabháin, University College Cork.

 

 

The Songs of Elizabeth Cronin, Irish Traditional Singer. Four Courts Press, 2000, ISBN 1-85182-259-3
Elizabeth (Bess) Croinin, 'The Queen of Irish Song' as Séamus Ennis called her, is probably the best-known Irish female trditional singer of our time. This publication offers the complete Bess Cronin collection (in Irish and English), with the texts of all the songs, and a biographical essay.  Accompanying the book is a set of remastered recordings, from public and private collections, illustrating the wide range of her repertoire, which included Child ballads, songs in Irish and English, and children's songs.

 

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS  

FORTHCOMING: Articles in History of the Irish Book Project
Articles: Palaeography; scripts and their derivation; abbreviations; notae iuris; Tironian notae;history; the earlier Insular manuscripts; relationship with antiquity; Britain; western mainlan European; the Echternach manuscripts; The Computus: Texts and Transmission; the Writings of Cummianus Logus al. Cummian al. Cuimmíne Fota; Würzburg, Universitätsb. ,M. ch. F 206, Boniface Gospels: Fulda Landesbibl., Cod. Bonif. 3; Codex Sancti Pauli: Unterdrauberg, Carinthia, Kloster S. Pauli 25.2.31 olim 25.d.86; Epistola Cyrilli, De Ratione temporum; Cummian, De controversia Paschali; De ratione conputandi; Sinlanus/Mo-Sinnu (moccu Min

Articles in The Oxford Companion to the Book, Michael F. Suarez, SJ,  & H.R. Woudhuysen (eds), OUP (Oxford 2010), 2 vols
Articles: Irish Script; Kells, Book of

The Cathach and Domnach Airgid in Treasures of The Royal Irish Academy Library, Bernadette Cunningham & Siobhán Fitzpatrick (eds), (Dublin 2009) 1-9

Dionysius Exiguus in the Classroom in Mathematics Celestial and Terrestrial, Festschrift f ür Menso Folkerts zum 65. Geburtstag, Acta Historica Leopoldina (Halle, Saale 2008) 253-74

'The Kings Depart': The prosopography of Anglo-Saxon royal exile in the sixth & seventh centuries, University of Cambridge, ASNAC Quiggin Pamphlets on the Sources of Gaelic History 8, (Cambridge 2007)

Articles in Medieval Ireland, an encyclopaedia, Seán Duffy (ed), Routledge (NY 2005)
Articles: Armagh, Book of; Christianity, conversion to; Palladius, Paschal Controversy

A Tale of two Rules; Benedict and Columbanus in The Irish Benedictines. A history, (eds Martin Browne and Colmán Ó Clabaigh, OSB, Columba Press (Dublin 2005) pp 11-24

'The Reception of Johann Kaspar Zeuss's Grammatica Celtica in Ireland and Britain, and on the Continent: Some New Evidence'
In Michael Wollenschläger, Eckhard Kreßel, Johann Egger (eds), Recht-Wirtschaft-Kultur: Herausforderungen an Staat und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter der Globalisierung - Festschrift für Hans Hablitzel zum 60. Geburtstag, 83-93, (Berlin, 2005) 

Articles in   Encyclopedia of Irish History & Culture, James S. donnelly (ed), Thomson/'ale (Detroit 2004) 2 vols
Articles: Hiberno-Latin Culture, Religion: The coming of Christianity

Contributor to The dictionary of Irish Biography, University of Cambridge and RIA, Ireland, 2003
Articles: Virgilius of Echternach, Willibrord of Rath Melsigi

Chapter 6 in Wendy Davies (ed), The Short Oxford History of the British Isles 2. From the Vikings to the Normans (Oxford 2003) 168-200. 

A survey of literary activity in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales during the period c. 800 - c.1100.

'A New Old Irish Gloss in a Munich Manuscript'
Éigse, vol XXXIII (2002), 75-76

'An Eriugenian miscellany in a Munich manuscript?'
Peritia 16 (2002) 242-49. Argues that the Munich MS., Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14429, which is an important witness to the scribal and scholarly activities of an Irish man of learning on the continent in the mid-ninth century, also contains several pages of Greek and Latin glossary material that may have originated with Iohannes Scottus Eriugena.

'A New Seventh-Century Irish Commentary on Genesis'
Sacris Erudiri 40 (2001) 231-65. This paper argues - against Michael Gorman - that the commentary in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 17739, fols 2r-35v, entitled Pauca de Genesi, was composed in Ireland or in an area of Irish influence (possibly Northumbria) c. 700. Among its sources are some common and some less common patristic and post-patristic writings by Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Eucherius, Philip the Presbyter, Gregory the Great; Victor of Capua, and Isidore of Seville, as well as works of Irish origin or provenance, such as Pseudo-Theophilus, Acta synodi Caesareae and Pseudo-Augustinus Hibernicus, De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae.

'The Earliest Old Irish glosses'
In Rolf Bergmann, Elvira Glaser & Claudine Moulin-Fankhänel (eds), Mittelalterliche volkssprachige Glossen (Heidelberg 2001) 7-31. Reviews the evidence for the earliest Old Irish glosses, with an appendix that lists all the manuscript sources of the glosses printed in Stokes & Strachan (eds & trans), Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (Cambridge 1901, 1903).

'Ireland c. 1000'
In Pietoslaw Urbanczyk (ed), Europe around the year 1000. Institute of Archaeology & Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw 2001) 289-306. A panorama of Irish history in the period leading up to the turn of the first millennium.

'Saint Patrick'
Chapter 2 in A.J. Hughes & William Nolan (eds), Armagh, history and society (Dublin 2001) 43-62. A general review of the evidence concerning St Patrick and the first century of the Irish Church.

  'Bischoff's "Wendepunkte" Fifty Years On'  
Revue Bénédictine 110/2-3 (2000) 204-37. This paper is a response to 2 articles by Michael Gorman, 'A critique of Bischoff's theory of Irish exegesis. The commentary on Genesis in Munich Clm 6302 (Wendepunkte 2)', Journal of Medieval Latin 7 (1996) 178-233, and 'The myth of Hiberno-Latin exegesis', Revue Bénédictine 110/1-2 (2000) 42-85. It argues that Gorman's criticisms of Bischoff are unfounded, by reference to evidence that Gorman has either misrepresented or ignored.

 'Who was Palladius, "First Bishop of the Irish"?'
Peritia 14 (2000) 205-37. Argues that the Palladius mentioned by Prosper of Aquitaine as the 'first bishop sent to the Irish by Pope Celestine' in 431, but who disappeared from Irish and continental sources after that date, is to be identified with the Palladius mentioned by Claudius Rutilius Namatianus in his poem De reditu suo (417). 

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