The Life of Colum Cille.
Author: O’DONNELL, Manus (Edited by Brian Lacey).
Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998. 240 pages. Paperback.
From c.1510 Maghnus O Domhnaill (Manus O’Donnell) was a leading political figure in the north-west of Ireland. Between 1537 and 1555 he was chieftain of Tir Conaill. In 1532 he completed the greatest cultural achievement of his life, the composition of the Beatha Colaim Chille or ‘Life’ of the sixth-century monastic founder whom Manus claimed as his ‘high saint and kinsman in blood’. The ‘Life’ is an extraordinary work, running to nearly 100,000 words of verse and prose, written, for the most part, in clear, elegant Irish. It is a compendium of all that was known or (more correctly) believed about Colum Cille in Manus’ day.
Like the life of Manus himself, the Beatha Colaim Chille is being recognized increasingly as an example of the extension to Gaelic Ireland of Renaissance ideas and standards. Although the Beatha is not our best source for reconstructing the life of Colum Cille, it does provide an insight into the beliefs, practices and cultural interests of Gaelic Ireland in the early part of the sixteenth century, prior to the onset of the Reformation and the Tudor conquest.
ISBN: 1851823956
|
