Ailbe and the Elements

Ailbe and the Elements
Author: Lind Edwards
Publisher: Balboa Press
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2019-07-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1982232188

Ailbe spent her life alone trying to survive on the blue mountains. Once she is accepted into Nightshade Academy for Dark Magic, she thinks her problems are over. However, life at a dark arts school is no fairy tale. Danger and death are everywhere and Ailbe must fight to make it through school alive.

The Legend of St Brendan

The Legend of St Brendan
Author: Jude Mackley
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2008-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047442806

The Legend of St Brendan is a study of two accounts of a voyage undertaken by Brendan, a sixth-century Irish saint. The immense popularity of the Latin version encouraged many vernacular translations, including a twelfth-century Anglo-Norman reworking of the narrative which excises much of the devotional material seen in the ninth-century Navigatio Sancti Brendani abbatis and changes the emphasis, leaving a recognisably secular narrative. The vernacular version focuses on marvellous imagery and the trials and tribulations of a long sea-voyage. Together the two versions demonstrate a movement away from hagiography towards adventure. Studies of the two versions rarely discuss the elements of the fantastic. Following a summary of authorship, audiences and sources, this comparative study adopts a structural approach to the two versions of the Brendan narrative. It considers what the fantastic imagery achieves and addresses issues raised with respect to theological parallels.

Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages

Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages
Author: Dominic Alexander
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 1843833948

A thorough investigation of the saint and animal topos: its origins, growth and development.

Hiberno-Latin Saints’ ‘Lives’ in the Seventh Century

Hiberno-Latin Saints’ ‘Lives’ in the Seventh Century
Author: John Higgins
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2024-03-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501515594

As part of the historicizing corpus of seventh-century Irish writing, the Lives framed the narrative of the early saints as an effective weapon in contemporary political and ecclesiastical conflicts. Cogitosus’s Life of Brigit, Muirchú’s and Tírechán’s accounts of Saint Patrick, and Adomnán’s Life of Columba created the understanding of the history of early Ireland that has endured to this day. How did the writers accomplish this through their literary choices? The authors of Irish saints’ Lives used the literary form of hagiography (Christian biography), miracle stories, and an elaborate rhetorical style to present the words and actions of their subjects. These Lives created a narrative of early Irish history that supported the political/ecclesiastical elites by showing that their power derived from the actions of their patron saints.

Perceptions of Femininity in Early Irish Society

Perceptions of Femininity in Early Irish Society
Author: Helen Oxenham
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 1783271167

An examination of how the feminine was viewed in early medieval Ireland, through a careful study of a range of texts.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice
Author: Philip Freeman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2015-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1605988901

Someone is killing the nuns of Ireland.The grisly discovery of an elderly sister of Saint Brigid’s monastery strangled, bled dry, and thrown into a bog is just the beginning. Soon a beautiful young nun is found decapitated and hung from a barren tree. It doesn’t take long before the members of the struggling monastic community of Kildare realize that not only are the nuns being hunted by a serial killer, but the murderer is preforming the gruesome slayings in the manner of the ancient druid sacrifices.Set in the turmoil of sixth-century Ireland, where ruthless tribal kings wage constant war for survival and the powerful religious order of the druids is threatened by the newly-arrived Christian church, the desperate task of finding the killer falls to Sister Deirdre, a young women torn between the world of the monastery and her own druidic heritage. Unless Deirdre can find the killer before the cycle of sacrifices is complete, more of her friends will die, the monastery will face destruction, and the whole of Ireland may be plunged into civil war.

Early Christian Ireland

Early Christian Ireland
Author: T. M. Charles-Edwards
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 729
Release: 2000-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521363950

A fully documented history of Ireland and the Irish from the fifth to the ninth centuries.