1st Edition

Latin Letters in Early Christian Ireland

By Michael W. Herren Copyright 1996
    360 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book is concerned with the transmission and reception of Latin literary culture in the early Middle Ages, and with the production of Latin works in Ireland and in Irish centres on the Continent. In these articles, Professor Herren deals with several closely related themes: the introduction of Latin into Ireland and the study of Latin literary heritage; the language and metre of Hiberno-Latin writings; and questions of dating and authorship pertaining to a number of crucial texts, from Columbanus to John Scottus Eriugena.

    Contents: Classical and secular learning among the Irish before the Carolingian Renaissance; Die Anfänge der Grammatikstudien auf den Britischen Inseln: von Patrick bis zur Schule von Canterbury; On the earliest Irish acquaintance with Isidore of Seville; The commentary on Martianus attributed to John Scottus: its Hiberno-Latin background; The pseudonymous tradition in Hiberno-Latin: an introduction; An early Irish precursor of the ’Offiziendichtung’ of the Carolignian and Ottonian periods; Some new light on the life of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus; A 9th-century poem for St Gall's feast day and the ’Ad Sethum’ of Columbanus; Eriugena's ’Aulæ Sidereæ’, the ’Codex Aureus’, and the Palatine Church of St Mary at Compiègne; St Gall 48: a copy of Eriugena’s glossed Greek Gospels; Sprachliche Eigentümlichkeiten in den hibernolateinischen Texten des 7. und 8. Jahrhunderts; Old Irish lexical and semantic influence on Hiberno-Latin; Insular Latin c(h)araxare (craxare) and its derivatives; Hiberno-Latin lexical sources of Harley 3376, a Latin-Old English glossary; The stress systems in Insular Latin octosyllabic verse; Hibernolateinische und irische Verkunst mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Siebensilbers; The stress system of the Hiberno-Latin hendecasyllable; The Hiberno-Latin poems in Virgil the Grammarian; Addenda and Corrigenda; Indexes.
    'Professor Michael Herren has been in the vanguard of Hiberno-Latin studies for twenty-five years...This exceptionally useful collection brings together eighteen of [his] papers, many of them not readily available in most libraries, and provides an impressive overview of Herren’s range and scope of interests....[it] is one of the finest to appear in the Collected Studies series, and is a real service to the field.' Peritia, No. 14