Medieval History

As I mention over on my Digital Humanities page, I’m a dabbler. In my DH work, that takes the shape of hopping from field to field and supporting projects from literature to linguistics to anthropology. In my own research on medieval Ireland, it means that I employ a wide variety of methodologies and lenses to explore the questions of identity and authority that really fascinate me. So at any given moment, I might be writing about environmental history, church history, or literary history – but I’m always using those lenses to think about how people in medieval Ireland thought about themselves and their relationship to others.

Current Projects

Won by the Sword: Identity and Authority in the Irish Borderlands, 1366-1594

My current book project, Won by the Sword? Identity and Authority in the Irish Borderlands, 1366-1594, explores the mechanisms by which the structure and character of lordship were developed in Gaelic polities in the later Middle Ages. The book follows the MacCarthy Reagh lords of Carbery in West Cork between 1366 and 1594, to trace the ways in which their interactions, allegiances, and self-expressed identity evolved in relation to dynastic opportunities. Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, Ireland was wracked by economic crises, frequent rebellions, and shifts in governance that by turns helped and hindered the growth of Gaelic lordships like the MacCarthy Reagh. This case study serves as a lens for understanding the social, cultural, and political forces that shaped Irish society in this transitional and transformative period. It also illuminates mechanisms of hybridity and cultural negotiation, contributing to a range of fields, including borderland studies and identity studies.

Submission Strategies: The Irish Submissions to Richard II, 1395

In 1395, at what appeared to be the end of a protracted conflict with Art Óg MacMurrough and his allies, Richard II received the submissions of dozens of Irish lords. The submissions followed a well-established formula: the submitting parties prostrated themselves and paid homage to the king. They then swore an oath, usually in Irish, which was relayed through a trusted interpreter. Finally, they bound themselves to pay fines and other penalties should they break their oaths. While the particulars of the ritual sometimes varied from party to party, the overall consistency of the formula produced an invaluable resource in the accounts of the submissions. Transcribed and translated by Edmund Curtis in 1927, the notarial instruments offer a glimpse of the informal networks that exercised an often invisible influence on the ruling class of fourteenth-century Ireland.

Submission Strategies visualizes the social and spatial networks embedded in the notarial instruments. The project also contextualizes those relationships with authority files on each person and place that link to references in surviving primary sources, antiquarian works, and scholarship. Wherever possible, these authority files link to free and/or public domain sources, in keeping with the project’s commitment to transparency and open access.

View the project (in development) here!

Climate Events and Climate Anxieties in the Papal Letters

This nascent project maps climate events and climate anxieties described in papal letters during the later Middle Ages. In contrast to the Irish annals, which recount one-off, significant events with an eye toward posterity, the papal letters reflect concerns about changing climate patterns and the interpretation of climate events by local authorities. They thus provide clearer insights into the entanglements between climate impacts (both climate change and its attendant anxieties), local politics, and church organization.

The map currently contains data from Volume 13 of the Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. J.A. Twemlow (London: Stationery Office, 1955), and data from earlier volumes is forthcoming. Each popup contains the date of the letter, the location of the event, the type of event (most often floods), its impact, and a reference to the entry in the Twemlow calendar. Places are georeferenced through a combination of primary sources, placenames, and archaeological sites.

This map is intended to serve as a companion to an article in preparation, “Climate Change, Local Authority, and the Parish in Late Medieval Britain and Ireland.” However, I hope that it might serve as a useful resource for other researchers interested in the environment, economy, and politics of late medieval Ireland.

View the project (in development) here!

Past Projects

Overlords, Underlords, and Landlords: Negotiating Land and Lordship in Plantation Munster

This article explores the legal strategies of negotiation employed by Gaelic lords in early modern Munster through a case study of the O’Driscoll lordship of Collymore, co. Cork. The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries produced an environment of intense legal contestation, as indigenous legal practices and hierarchies were methodically attacked by the colonial administration. But as English administrators attempted to eradicate Irish legal precedent (and with it the legitimacy of the Gaelic aristocracy), Gaelic lords responded with new and often innovative legal strategies. The territory of Collymore presents a microcosm of the legal tensions produced by and under the Munster plantation, subject to competing claims by rival O’Driscoll heirs, MacCarthy Reagh overlords, ‘Old English’ neighbors, and incoming planters. This article offers a reconstruction and analysis of the complex legal disputes surrounding Collymore. It argues that through otherwise routine legal interactions like inheritance disputes and chancery suits, Irish lords reframed their authority in the vocabulary of English law, trading tanistry for primogeniture and the language of overlordship for that of landlordship. Through these rhetorical and theoretical shifts, they attempted to redefine the very basis and nature of their authority.  

(Accepted with revisions)

Kinship and Kingship: Identity and Authority in the Book of Lismore

This article offers a codicological examination of the fifteenth-century Book of Lismore and posits that its contents represent the interests of its patron, Finghín Mac Carthaigh Riabhach, supporting his authority on three levels: within the region of Cork, as a Gaelic lord, and within the broader context of Christendom.

Peritia 27 (2016): 121-139