Abstract
The Book of the O’Conor Don (BOCD), housed at the O’Conor-Nash family home of Clonalis, County Roscommon, is without doubt one of the most important extant collections of Irish bardic poetry, comprising some 340 poems, which represent about 17 per cent of the surviving corpus of bardic poetry from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries.1 Its significance is heightened when one considers that over 20 per cent of the 84 religious poems are exclusive to this collection, occurring in no other manuscript discovered to date.2 This compendium was compiled at Ostend between January and September 1631 and was written in the main by Aodh Ó Dochartaigh (although the work of at least two other hands has been identified in the manuscript) for Captain Somhairle Mac Domhnaill (Sorley MacDonnell, c.1592–1632?), son of Sir James of Dunluce, County Antrim.3 Mac Domhnaill had had a rather varied career up to this point; having been dispossessed of family lands in Ulster, Mac Domhnaill plotted a rebellion in Ulster in 1615 and participated in the rebellion of his cousin, Sir James McDonnell of Knockrinsay on Islay. When this failed, he became a privateer, operating out of Rathlin Island in early 1616.4 By late 1616 he was being actively pursued by the planter, Sir Thomas Phillips, whose ship he had previously seized, and, after some time on the run, he ended up joining the tercio or military unit of his cousin John O’Neill (Seán Ó Néill) in Flanders, which three years earlier had been acknowledged as ‘the very best in the king of Spain’s service’ by King James I’s ambassador to the Lowlands, William Trumbull.5
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Notes
Ruairí Ó hUiginn, ‘Irish Literature in Spanish Flanders’, in Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons (eds), The Ulster Earls and Baroque Europe: Refashioning Irish Identities, 1600–1800 (Dublin, 2010), p. 353.
Salvador Ryan, ‘Florilegium of Faith: The Religious Poems in the Book of the O’Conor Don’, in Pádraig Ó Macháin (ed.), The Book of the O’Conor Don: Essays on an Irish Manuscript (Dublin, 2010).
Ó hUiginn, ‘Irish Literature’, p. 354. For an outline of his life and career see Ruairí Ó hUiginn, ‘Captain Somhairle and His Books Revisited’, in Ó Macháin (ed.), Book of the O’Conor Don, pp. 90–100. For the wider story of the MacDonnells on the Continent see Hector MacDonnell, The Wild Geese of the Antrim MacDonnells (Dublin, 1996);
MacDonnell, ‘Responses of the MacDonnell Clan to Change in Early Seventeenth-Century Ulster’, in Thomas O’Connor and Mary Ann Lyons (eds), Irish Migrants in Europe after Kinsale, 1602–1820 (Dublin, 2003).
Ruairí Ó hUiginn, ‘Duanaire Finn: Patron and Text’, in John Carey (ed.), Duanaire Finn: Reassessments (Dublin, 2003).
Pádraig Ó Macháin, ‘Two Nugent Manuscripts: The Nugent Duanaire and Queen Elizabeth’s Primer’, Ríocht na Midhe 23 (2012), p. 125.
Pádraig Ó Macháin, ‘The Iconography of Exile: Fearghal Óg Mac an Bhaird in Louvain’, in Liam Breatnach, Caoimhín Breatnach and Meidhbhín Ní Urdail (eds), Léann Lámhscríbhinní Lobháin: The Louvain Manuscript Heritage, Éigse: A Journal of Irish Studies, Publications 1 (Dublin, 2007); Pádraig A. Breatnach, ‘The Book of the O’Conor Don and the Manuscripts of St Anthony’s College, Louvain’, in Ó Macháin (ed.), Book of the O’Conor Don, p. 120.
Mary Ann Lyons, ‘St Anthony’s College: Louvain and the Irish Franciscan College Network’, in Edel Bhreatnach, Joseph MacMahon OFM and John McCafferty (eds), The Irish Franciscans, 1534–1990 (Dublin, 2009), p. 34. Ó hUiginn, ‘Captain Somhairle’, p. 96.
Salvador Ryan, ‘A Slighted Source: Rehabilitating Irish Bardic Religious Poetry’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 48 (2004), p. 75.
Aodh Mac Aingil, Scáthán Shacramuinte na hAithridhe, ed. Cainneach Ó Maonaigh (Dublin, 1952), p. 5 (my translation). It should be noted that this was a common trope in catechetical works of this period.
Geoffrey Keating, The history of Ireland from the earliest period to the English invasion. By Geoffrey Keating. Tr. from the original Gaelic and copiously annotated by John O’Mahony (New York, 1866), p. lv.
See especially Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988), p. 127, n.17.
Richard Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts — from the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance (Oxford, 2008), p. 72.
For its Irish manifestation see Salvador Ryan, ‘Reign of Blood: Aspects of Devotion to the Five Wounds of Christ in Late Medieval Gaelic Ireland’, in Joost Augusteijn and Mary Ann Lyons (eds), Irish History: A Research Yearbook (Dublin, 2002).
Lambert McKenna (ed.), Aithdioghluim Dána: A Miscellany of Irish Bardic Poetry, Historical and Religious, including the Historical Poems of the Duanaire in the Yellow Book of Lecan, 2 vols (Dublin, 1940), 2, poem 96.
For a wide-ranging discussion of tears in the Middle Ages see Elina Gertsman (ed.), Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History (London and New York, 2012). Many of the contributions in this volume are relevant to our current concerns.
The encouragement of tears as a concomitant of contrition had a long history. The fourth-century bishop, Ambrose of Milan, stated that Christ the physician, when treating us in confession, ‘orders therapeutic baths through our outpouring of tears’. Such passages were routinely included in medieval manuals of penance as, for instance, in Walter Cantilupe’s Summula for the diocese of Exeter, issued in 1240. See John Shinners and William J. Dohar, Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England (Notre Dame, IN, 1998), pp. 170–85.
Jan Plamper, ‘The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein and Peter Stearns’, History and Theory 49 (2010), p. 242.
Bonaventura Ó hEoghusa, An Teagasg Críosdaidhe, ed. Fearghal Mac Raghnaill (Dublin, 1976), p. 84.
The scholarly literature on penance in early modern Europe is vast. Some notable works include: John Bossy, ‘The History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 25 (1975); T. N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, NJ, 1977); Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13 th –18 th Centuries (New York, 1990);
W. David Myers, “Poor sinning folk”: Confession and Conscience in Counter-Reformation Germany (Ithaca, 1996);
Katharine Jackson Lualdi and Anne T. Thayer (eds), Penitence in the Age of the Reformations (Aldershot, 2000);
Patrick J. O’Banion, The Sacrament of Penance and Religious Life in Golden Age Spain (University Park, PA, 2012).
See Salvador Ryan, ‘Windows on Late Medieval Devotional Practice’, in Rachel Moss, Colmán Ó Clabaigh and Salvador Ryan (eds), Art and Devotion in Late Medieval Ireland (Dublin, 2006).
Colmán N. Ó Clabaigh, The Franciscans in Ireland, 1400–1534: From Reform to Reformation (Dublin, 2002), p. 152.
Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe, The Poems of Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe, ed. N. J. A. Williams (Dublin, 1980), poem 22, stanzas 18, 20 and 21.
For the wider context see Anne T. Thayer, ‘Judge and Doctor: Images of the Confessor in Printed Model Sermon Collections, 1450–1520’, in Katharine Jackson Lualdi and Anne T. Thayer (eds), Penitence in the Age of Reformations (Aldershot, 2000). For examples of Ambrose of Milan’s use of this image and its appearance in a medieval manual of penance see Shinners and Dohar, Pastors and the Care of Souls, pp. 170–85. In an Irish context see
Wendy Davies, ‘The Place of Healing in Early-Irish Society’, in Donnchadh Ó Corráin, Liam Breatnach and Kim McCone (eds), Sages, Saints and Storytellers: Celtic Studies in Honour of Professor James Carney (Maynooth, 1989).
See especially Thomas O’Loughlin, Celtic Theology: Humanity, Word and God in Early Irish Writings (London, 2000).
Damian McManus and Eoghan Ó Raghallaigh (eds), A Bardic Miscellany: Five Hundred Bardic Poems from Manuscripts in Irish and British Libraries (Dublin, 2010), pp. 26–7.
Antoin Gearnon, Parrthas an Anma, ed. Anselm Ó Fachtna (Dublin, 1953), p. 110.
Benjamin J. Hazard, Faith and Patronage: The Political Career of Flaithrí Ó Maoilchonaire, c.1560–1629 (Dublin, 2010), p. 12.
Tomás Ó Cléirigh, Aodh Mac Aingil agus an scoil Gaeilge i Lobháin, 2nd edn (Baile Átha Cliath, 1985), p. 49.
Íde Ní Uallacháin, ‘An cnuasach exempla Gaeilge i G 867 i Leabharlann Náisiúnta na hÉireann’ (MA thesis, St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, 1992), p. 30.
Geoffrey Keating, Trí bior-ghaoithe an bháis: The Three Shafts of Death, ed. Osborn Bergin (Dublin, 1931), p. 303. A version of this story also appears in the fourteenth-century Gesta Romanorum and also in John Mirk’s Festial: see
Frederic C. Tubach, Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales (Helsinki, 1969), p. 232, n.2960.
Salvador Ryan, ‘Popular Religion in Gaelic Ireland, 1445–1645’, 2 vols (PhD thesis, NUI Maynooth, 2002), 2, p. 252.
Robin Flower (ed.), Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the British Museum, 2 vols (London, 1926), 2, pp. 27–32.
For these and further examples see Salvador Ryan, ‘“Wily women of God” in Breifne’s Late Medieval and Early Modern Devotional Collections’, in Brendan Scott (ed.), Culture and Society in Early Modern Breifne/Cavan (Dublin, 2009).
Katharine K. Olson, ‘“Y Ganrif Fawr?” Piety, Literature and Patronage in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Wales’, in Peter Clarke and Charlotte Methuen (eds), The Church and Literature, Studies in Church History 48 (Woodbridge, 2012).
For this point see Salvador Ryan, ‘“New wine in old bottles”: Implementing Trent in Early Modern Ireland’, in Thomas Herron and Michael Potterton (eds), Ireland in the Renaissance, c.1540–1660 (Dublin, 2007).
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Ryan, S. (2014). Penance and the Privateer: Handling Sin in the Bardic Religious Verse of the Book of the O’Conor Don (1631). In: hAnnracháin, T.Ó., Armstrong, R. (eds) Christianities in the Early Modern Celtic World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306357_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306357_9
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