By Elizabethanne Boran
This year witnesses two important anniversaries: the 1,500th anniversary of the death of St Brigid and the 1,010th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf. The current exhibition at the Edward Worth Library, located in Dr Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin 8, marks these two events with a small exhibition on the theme ‘Early Medieval Ireland’.
Edward Worth (1676–1733) was an early eighteenth-century Dublin physician who bequeathed his collection of over 4,300 volumes to Dr Steevens’ Hospital. The Worth Library is perhaps best known for its extensive collection of medical and scientific texts, and for its extraordinary collection of rare printings and fine bindings, many of which are explored in a host of online exhibitions available on its website (www.edwardworthlibrary.ie). Worth was also an avid collector of historical works, however, and within his large cohort of books on history and antiquarianism there is a small but remarkably comprehensive collection of texts by some of the most important early modern commentators on early medieval Ireland.
Worth was clearly interested in the subject: he had not one but two copies of the 1603 Frankfurt re-issue of Anglica, Normannica, Hibernica, Cambrica, a veteribus scripta, written by the famous English historian William Camden (1551–1623). Crucially for historians of early medieval Ireland, Camden’s text (which had initially been printed the previous year in Frankfurt) included the first full printing of the controversial Topographia Hibernica by Gerald of Wales (c. 1146–c. 1223). This inflammatory text inspired various refutations over the course of the seventeenth century. Worth not only bought them but also, in the case of the Dublin edition of Geoffrey Keating’s The general history of Ireland (Dublin, 1723), subscribed to them.
He was clearly interested in refutations by Catholic authors such as Keating (c. 1580–1644), Peter Walsh (c. 1616–88) and Roderick O’Flaherty (1629–1718), who sought to refute not only Topographia Hibernica but also the late sixteenth-century outpourings of English authors such as Edmund Campion (1540–81) and Meredith Hanmer (1543–1604), whose works Worth owned in the seminal 1633 publication by Sir James Ware (1594–1666): Two histories of Ireland. The one written by Edmund Campion, the other by Meredith Hanmer (Dublin, 1633). Campion’s hastily written text owed much to the library of James Stanihurst (1522–73), who was the father of Campion’s protégé, the Dublin historian Richard Stanihurst (1547–1618), and with whom Campion had stayed in 1570–1. Richard Stanihurst not only revised Campion’s text but also produced two other texts which Worth collected: a history of Ireland called De rebus in Hibernia gestis, libri quattuor (Antwerp, 1584) and a life of St Patrick, De vita S. Patricii, Hiberniae apostoli, libri II (Antwerp, 1587).
To this collection Worth added an even more important hagiographical account of the early medieval church: Florilegium insulae sanctorum seu Vitae et acta sanctorum Hiberniae (Paris, 1624) by Thomas Messingham (c. 1575–1638?), who, like Stanihurst, was a member of an Old English family. In this he explores the lives of saints such as Patrick, Brigid and Colum Cille (Columba) in the context of the Continental Catholic Counter-Reformation of the early seventeenth century. Messingham’s work also included valuable information about the renowned St Patrick’s Purgatory, a topic which was also explored in Worth’s copy of Ware’s second (and much augmented) London edition of De Hibernia & antiquitatibus ejus, disquisitiones (London, 1658). Ware’s works are well represented, for Worth owned his De praesulibus Hiberniae, commentarius. A prima gentis Hibernicae ad fidem Christianam conversione, ad nostra usque tempora (Dublin, 1665), and a work on much later history, his Rerum Hibernicarum annales, regnantibus Henrico VII. Henrico VIII. Edwardo VI. & Maria. Ab anno … 1485; ad … 1558, which focused on the reigns of the Tudor monarchs.
This exhibition explores early modern approaches to some of the most famous ‘saints and sinners’ of early medieval Ireland. It investigates the early modern historiography of early Christian saints such as Patrick and Brigid; various descriptions and interpretations of St Patrick’s Purgatory; and, last but not least, the depiction of two of the most important generals at the Battle of Clontarf: Brian Bórama (Bóruma, Boru) (d. 1014), high-king of Ireland, and his intriguing opponent Sitriuc Silkbeard (Sitric, Sigtryggr Ólafsson Silkiskeggi) (d. 1042), king of Dublin.
The Edward Worth Library is open by appointment, Monday to Friday, and the staff love giving tours! Tours (which may not exceed 23 persons) may be booked via the Library’s e-mail (info@edwardworthlibrary.ie) or by phone (01-635 2215). The physical exhibition will be on view until the end of July 2024 and, for those unable to visit the Library, a longer online version of the exhibition is also available under the ‘Smaller Exhibitions’ tab of ‘Exhibitions’ at www.edwardworthlibrary.ie.
Elizabethanne Boran is the Librarian of the Edward Worth Library, Dublin.