LAUNCH OF NEW BOOK ON MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS OF CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL DUBLIN

The chairman of the Friends of Medieval Dublin, Dr Seán Duffy, will launch the new book Raymond Gillespie & Raymond Refaussé (ed.) The medieval manuscripts of Christ Church cathedral, Dublin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006) on Thursday 30 November 2006 at 6.45pm.

The book studies one of the most remarkable collections of medieval manuscripts in Ireland. In the popular mind the medieval manuscripts of Ireland were all destroyed in the Four Courts fire of 1922 but this is far from the truth. From the 1170s the Augustinian cathedral priory at Christ Church in Dublin commissioned, collected and used manuscript materials in its everyday life. In the process they created an important series of codices and deeds that remained in the cathedral and so survived the Record Office fire. This large assemblage of material from the 12th-century martyrology to the 16th-century 'Book of Obits' reflects the changing religious, social, cultural and intellectual concerns of the world in which they were written. Each essay analyses a manuscript and places it in its wider context; therefore this volume makes a significant contribution to the intellectual and cultural history of medieval Ireland.

The contributors include Alan Fletcher (UCD), Colm Lennon (NUIM), Colmán Ó Clabaigh (Glenstal Abbey), Pádraig Ó Riain (UCC) and both editors, Raymond Gillespie, who is an associate professor in the Department of History in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth and Raymond Refaussé, who is the librarian and archivist of Representative Church Body Library, Dublin.