Texts
Irish world chronicle
Incoming data
The catalogue entry for this text has not been published as yet. Until then, a selection of data is made available below.
Manuscript witnesses
Text
Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS 5301-5320/pp. 97-162
context: Annals of Roscrea
In Irish and Latin.
pp. 1(97)–24(120)
Text
Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1282
context: Dublin fragment of pre-Palladian annals
An abbreviated text of which the first leaves are wanting. The surviving text begins in the reign of Domitian (in AD 81) and ends in AD 378. It precedes a copy of the Annals of Ulster, although there is variance of opinion whether or not this part of the manuscript is historically distinct and so if it can be regarded as a part of the Annals of Ulster.
ff. 12r–14v
Text
London, British Library, MS Cotton Titus A xxv/ff. 2-35
context: Annals of Boyle Begins with Enos (B. of Genesis).
ff. 2r–13r
Text
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 488/ff. 1-26
context: Annals of Tigernach
Text prefixed to a fragmentary copy of the Annals of Tigernach.
ff. 1–6
Text
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 502/1
context: Annals of Tigernach
Beg. with the reign of Azariah (Uzziah), king of Judah, and the prophets Hosea, Amos, etc. Breaks off (f. 12v).
ff. 1r–12v
Text
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B 503
context: Annals of Inisfallen Perhaps two leaves are lost at the beginning. The extant text begins with the time of Abraham and Ishmael.
ff. 1r–9v
Sources
Primary sources Text editions and/or modern translations – in whole or in part – along with publications containing additions and corrections, if known. Diplomatic editions, facsimiles and digital image reproductions of the manuscripts are not always listed here but may be found in entries for the relevant manuscripts. For historical purposes, early editions, transcriptions and translations are not excluded, even if their reliability does not meet modern standards.
[ed.] [tr.] Mac Airt, Seán [ed. and tr.], The annals of Inisfallen: MS. Rawlinson B. 503, revised ed., Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1951.
[ed.] Stokes, Whitley [ed. and tr.], “The Annals of Tigernach [part 1]: the fragment in Rawlinson B. 502”, Revue Celtique 16 (1895): 374–419.
Internet Archive – offprint: <link>
Text from Rawl. B 502.
[ed.] [tr.] Stokes, Whitley [ed. and tr.], “The Annals of Tigernach [part 2]”, Revue Celtique 17 (1896): 6–33, 119–263, 337–420.
‘Second fragment, AD 143–361’ (from Rawl. B 488, ff. 4-6), pp. 6-33 -- ‘Third fragment, AD 489–766’ (from Rawl. B 488 [not 482 as indicated], ff. 7-14), pp. 119–263 -- ‘The fourth fragment, AD 973–AD 1088’ (in fact, two fragments from Rawl. B 488), pp. 337–356 (fragment of f. 15), 356-420 (part of the next fragment, ff. 16–19ra).
[ed.] Stokes, Whitley [ed. and tr.], “The Dublin fragment of Tigernach’s annals”, Revue Celtique 18 (1897): 374–391.
comments: These annals are not part of the Annals of Tigernach, edited in [[Stokes 1897f
|this volume]] of RC and elsewhere.
[ed.] Freeman, A. Martin, “The annals in Cotton MS Titus A xxv [part 1]”, Revue Celtique 41 (1924): 301–330.
CELT – edition: <link>
301–317 Annals of Boyle version.
[ed.] Jaski, Bart, and Daniel Mc Carthy, The Annals of Roscrea: a diplomatic edition, Roscrea: Roscrea People and Roscrea Heritage Society, 2012. xxxvi + 66 pp.
[ed.] Mac Niocaill, Gearóid [ed. and tr.], and William M. Hennessy [tr.], “Chronicon Scotorum”, CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts, Online: University College Cork, 2008–. URL: <http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/G100016 http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100016>.
[ed.] Mac Niocaill, Gearóid [ed. and tr.], and William M. Hennessy [tr.], “Chronicon Scotorum”, CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts, Online: University College Cork, 2008–. URL: <http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/G100016 http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100016>.
Secondary sources (select)
Evans, Nicholas, The present and the past in medieval Irish chronicles, Studies in Celtic History, 27, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010.
abstract:
Ireland has the most substantial corpus of annalistic chronicles for the early period in western Europe. They are crucial sources for understanding the Gaelic world of Ireland and Scotland, and offer insights into contacts with the wider Christian world. However, there is still a high degree of uncertainty about their development, production, and location prior to 1100, which makes it difficult to draw sound conclusions from them.
This book analyses the principal Irish chronicles, especially the Annals of Ulster, Annals of Tigernach, and the Chronicum Scotorum, identifying their inter-relationships, the main changes to the texts, and the centres where they were written in the tenth and eleventh centuries - a significant but neglected period. The detailed study enables the author to argue that the chroniclers were in contact with each other, exchanging written notices of events, and that therefore the chronicle texts reflect the social connections of the Irish ecclesiastical and secular elites. The author also considers how the sections describing the early Christian period (approximately 431 to 730 AD) were altered by subsequent chroniclers; by focussing on the inclusion of material on Mediterranean events as well as on Gaelic kings, and by comparing the chronicles with other contemporary texts, he reconstructs the chronicles' contents and chronology at different times, showing how the accounts were altered to reflect and promote certain views of history. Thus, while enabling readers to evaluate the sources more effectively, he also demonstrates that the chronicles were sophisticated and significant documents in themselves, reflecting different facets of contemporary medieval society and their shifting attitudes to creating and changing accounts of the past.
Mc Carthy, Daniel P., The Irish annals: their genesis, evolution and history, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008.
comments: Contents: Chronicles and annals: origins, compilation, taxonomy and nomenclature (p. 1); Witnesses to the annals: the primary manuscripts (18); Annalistic literature (61); World history in Insular chronicles (118); The Iona chronicle (153); The Moville and Clonmacnoise chronicles (168); Liber Cuanach and its descendants (198); The Armagh and Derry chronicles (223); The Connacht and Fermanagh chronicles (245); The Regnal-canon chronicles (271); Final compilation stages (304); Reliable annalistic chronology (342); Epilogue (355); Twelve centuries of Irish chronicling: from Bethlehem to Bundrowes (355); Necessity for a comprehensive analysis of chronicle features (357); Outstanding chronicle compilations (358); Manuscript witnesses to the annals (361); Survey of annalistic verse up to A.D. 1000 (364); The regnal-canon (368); Bibliography (375) and index (393).
Charles-Edwards, T. M., The Chronicle of Ireland: translated with an introduction and notes, 2 vols, Translated Texts for Historians, 44, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006.
Maund, K. L., “Sources of the ‘World Chronicle’ in the Cottonian annals”, Peritia 12 (1998): 153–176.
abstract:
This is an analysis of the sources used in the world history section of the Cottonian annals, with an assessment of the relation this section of the text bears to world history sections in other extant Irish chronicle-texts. It identifies a number of sources, and points to a previously unnoticed dependence on the Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis of Johannes Beleth.
Mc Carthy, Daniel P., “The status of the pre-Patrician Irish annals”, Peritia 12 (1998): 98–152.
abstract:
This investigation of the pre-Patrician material in Irish annals first reviews the historiography, then examines the chronology of Roman imperial successions, and reveals a conflation of Eutropius’s Breviarium with Jerome’s Chronicle. Collation with Bede’s Chronicon maior shows these annals and Bede have a common source. The annals preserve more of this source and its chronological apparatus. The Alexandrian episcopal succession in AT derives directly from Rufinus’s History, and the errors suggest that he himself constructed it. The Hebrew succession in Bede and AI reveals divergences from Jerome’s chronology, not plausibly the work of Bede but appropriate to Rufinus. Hence the hypothesis that Rufinus compiled a chronicle in the early fifth century, that it came to Ireland with the 84-year paschal table of Sulpicius Severus, and that it was used in Iona in the mid-sixth century as the basis for the Iona Chronicle.
Schmidt, Jürgen, “Zu einer Neuausgabe des Annalen-Fragments in der HS. Rawl. B. 502 (sog. Tigernach-Annalen, erstes Fragment)”, in: Martin Rockel, and Stefan Zimmer (eds), Akten des ersten Symposiums Deutschsprachiger Keltologen (Gosen bei Berlin, 8.–10. April 1992), 11, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993. 267–286.
Miller, Molly, “The chronological structure of the Sixth Age in the Rawlinson fragment of the ‘Irish world-chronicle’”, Celtica 22 (1991): 79–111.
Morris, John, “The chronicle of Eusebius: Irish fragments”, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 19 (1972): 80–93.
OʼRahilly, T. F., Early Irish history and mythology, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946.
249–255; 409–412
Hamel, A. G. van, “Über die vorpatrizianischen irischen Annalen”, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 17 (1927–1928): 241–260.
