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department of History
roinn na staire

DÁibhÍ Ó CrÓinÍn (Acting head of department)

 

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:

• HI100: Introduction to History: St Patrick and the Coming of Christianity to Ireland (Unit 1 of  the First Year History course)
• 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

Recent Publications  

The Royal Irish Academy New History of Ireland, Vol. 1, Prehistoric & Early Medieval Ireland (ed. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Oxford University Press, 2000) 
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.  

BOOKS

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  

'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)

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). 

Full Curriculum Vitae and Publications available here.

    

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