The Medieval Irish History Podcast

Happy New Year! To soothe fragile minds after the Christmas break we are easing you in to 2025 with St Columbanus part 2 — a further, more relaxed, reflection, on the career and legacy of Irish monastic founder Columbanus with Dr Alexander O'Hara. Do listen to our previous episode from November 22nd first if you get the chance. In this episode, we hear lots of Columbanus' own words, from his own writings. Dr O'Hara discusses how Columbanus became a dynastic holy man to the Merovingians, high politics, murder, marriage alliances, the appeal of Irish radical asceticism, the tension between temporal and spiritual power, the physical layout of Irish monastic sites, the legacy of St Gall (Sankt Gallen). Suggested reading: Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. G. S. M. Walker, (Scriptores Latini Hiberniae Vol. II) The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, (Dublin, 1957 [repr. 1970]) Ian Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms (450-751) (London, 1994) Alexander O'Hara (ed.), Saint Columbanus: Selected Writings (Veritas, Dublin, 2015)  J.-Michel Reaux Colvin & Alexander O'Hara, "Réécriture and the cultus of Saint Gallus, ca. 680-850: A fidelissimis testibus indicata", Traditio 79 (2024) Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday). Email: [email protected] X (formerly Twitter): @EarlyIrishPod Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University, & Taighde Éireann (formerly Science Foundation Ireland/Irish Research Council). Views expressed are the speakers' own. Production: Tiago de Oliveira Veloso Silva. Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa Music: Lexin_Music

Happy Christmas everyone! In today's episode, Professor Liam Breatnach (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), one of Ireland's leading experts on the Old/Middle Irish language, medieval Irish law (so-called Brehon Law), poets and the Irish language, explains what the law tracts can tell us about medieval Irish society, the intellectual networks and frameworks that influenced and were influenced by the large corpus of legal material, and how the highly stratified Irish society understood itself in legal terms. We chat cats, what people ate in medieval Ireland, the Senchas Már, lost texts, polygamy, zombie concepts and much more! Suggested reading: Breatnach, Liam, ‘On Old Irish Collective and Abstract Nouns, the Meaning of cétmuinter, and Marriage in Early Mediaeval Ireland’, Ériu 66 (2016). ‘The Early Irish Law Text Senchas Már and the Question of its Date’. E.C. Quiggin Memorial Lectures 13 (Cambridge 2011) Breatnach, Liam, A Companion to the Corpus Iuris Hibernici, Early Irish Law Series 5 (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 2005) Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday). Email: [email protected] X (formerly Twitter): @EarlyIrishPod Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University, & Taighde Éireann (formerly Science Foundation Ireland/Irish Research Council). Views expressed are the speakers' own. Production: Tiago de Oliveira Veloso Silva. Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa Music: Lexin_Music

Today, Dr Sharon Greene tells us how archaeologists explore how people lived in the past, what they believed and so on through the material remains they left behind. This can sometimes confirm or deny what the written records tell us – but most often it adds another layer to our understanding medieval Ireland. We chat about disciplinary challenges, how scholars can work together, Killeen Cormac, ringforts, cattle, sheep, St Brigit, ogham stones, the 'remote' western islands and settlement cemeteries. Suggested reading: OʼSullivan, Aidan, Finbar McCormick, Thomas R. Kerr, and Lorcan Harney, Early medieval Ireland, AD 400–1100: the evidence from archaeological excavations (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2014). Sharon Greene, 'Killeen Cormac – the archaeology and history of a significant early Christian foundation', Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, Volume 20 2012/2013 Fergus Kelly, Early Irish farming: a study based mainly on the law-texts of the 7th and 8th centuries AD, Early Irish Law Series, 4 (Dublin: School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1997) Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday). Email: [email protected] X (formerly Twitter): @EarlyIrishPod Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University, & Taighde Éireann (formerly Science Foundation Ireland/Irish Research Council). Views expressed are the speakers' own. Production: Tiago de Oliveira Veloso Silva. Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa Music: Lexin_Music

Happy anniversary to St Columbanus, famous as a monastic founder, and a symbol of a united Europe, who is remembered as having died on Nov 23rd in the year 615! (Happy birthday also to Dr O'Hara's wife! More info in episode). Columbanus aficionado Dr Alexander O'Hara brings us through Columbanus' auspicious beginnings as a handsome aristocrat in Leinster, his superlative scholarly career in Bangor, his illustrious travels around Europe and the cosmopolitan mixed monastic communities he founded in Annegray, Luxeuil and Bobbio. Referring to Columbanus' monks as akin to the SAS, O'Hara answers the question was he 'zero craic' and explains his impressive literary legacy. Suggested reading: Alexander O'Hara, “A lacuna in Irish historiography: the Irish peregrini from Eoin MacNeill to The Cambridge history of Ireland and beyond,” Irish Historical Studies 47 (2023), 1-18 Alexander O'Hara (ed.), Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe (Oxford University Press, 2018)  O'Hara, Jonas of Bobbio and the Legacy of Columbanus: Sanctity and Community in the Seventh Century (Oxford University Press, 2018) O'Hara (ed.), Saint Columbanus: Selected Writings (Veritas, Dublin, 2015)  Regular episodes every two weeks (on a Friday). Email: [email protected] X (formerly Twitter): @EarlyIrishPod Supported by the Dept of Early Irish, Maynooth University, & Taighde Éireann (formerly Science Foundation Ireland/Irish Research Council). Views expressed are the speakers' own. Production: Tiago de Oliveira Veloso Silva. Logo design: Matheus de Paula Costa Music: Lexin_Music