Why medieval history?
Niall C.E.J. O’Brien
In 2010 the website – medievalists.net
– asked its readers why they are interested in medieval history with the title
of “Why medieval? Go medieval”. This is what I wrote.
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Why medieval? I think it was medieval that picked me.
At an early age I viewed and read
books and comics on ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt and Babylon along with ancient
Irish history. My father and teachers made such material available. I quickly
took to enjoying it.
On many sunny days (it seemed to
be always sunny back when we were young) Dad would take my sister and me to
visit old castles and ruined abbeys. It was great fun. When I was 10 years old
he took me to the National Library of Ireland. I walked around the large round
reading room and wanted to stay there forever. I was already in love with books
by then.
One of the first history books
that I purchased was when I was about 6 or 7 years old. It was Ireland before
the Vikings by Gearóid MacNiocaill. The book said that early medieval Ireland
had few writers since the death of Eoin MacNeill in 1945. This is an important
statement that we’ll return to later. Shortly after this I brought Ireland
before the Normans by Donnchadh O Corráin. People need to learn about the
history of their own country first.
In my teens all kinds of history
was of interest as I collected history books on any and every subject. By my
late twenties there were so many books in the house that cutbacks were needed.
I sold and gave away unwanted books – established a yearly budget for buying
books and concentrated my purchases on Irish local history. The new buying
policy still covered all time zones until 2004/2005.
Two years previously I looked on
all my books and said they should be used rather than just for reading. Thus I
began to write articles on local history after 1700 and a local history book on
the navigation of a local river. This was published in 2008 as Blackwater and
Bride navigation and trade 7000 BC to 2007.
In 2003 I was thinking about
writing a history of the Diocese of Lismore from 653 to 1653. This was to
count-balance a series of articles that were written on the Diocese of
Waterford. In 1353 the two dioceses were joined into one. Having completed two
chapters I went off in search of more material and came across a book by
Philomena Connolly called Irish Exchequer Payments 1270-1446 (Dublin, 1998). It
was a edited version of a series of medieval manuscripts. Up to then I had only
purchased history books written by others. This book was an original source
book upon which all other history articles and books should be based. [The
Lismore book is still unfinished but we a gathering material.]
The book only gave a page of
information relating to Lismore and so I left it in the shop for a year –
viewing it from time to time whenever I was passing that shop. I finally
purchased in July 2004 and my eyes were opened to the real medieval world. I
started to fall in love with the first hand accounts of medieval people.
On 10th April 2005 I attended an
antique fair in Cork and purchased a number of medieval books from a dealer.
Purchased Irish Monastic and Episcopal Deeds by Newport White and a two volume
set of the Royal Letters of Henry III. All three books were in Latin. I had no
Latin but did have a Latin/English dictionary purchased years before and so
began to translate the books.
Within the month I started buying
every and any edited manuscript book that one could find. Especially works by
the Irish Manuscripts Commission. The first chairman of that body was the same
Eoin MacNeill mentioned earlier.
The two volume Royal Letters of
Henry III were a presentation copy. There were given in 1886 to Sir Henry
Maxwell-Lyte. At the time I had no idea who he was but learnt from Google that
he was for 40 years Deputy Keeper of the English Public Record Office. Off I
went to find more books by Lyte and came across a whole world of edited
manuscript books published by such organisations as the Somerset Record Society
and the Bristol Record Society.
In 2006 I purchased Medieval
Record Sources by the same Philomena Connolly mentioned earlier. In that same
year I began to use all the record books to write articles on medieval Irish
history and continue to do so to this day and hopefully for many days to come.
In 2009 I moved into writing
early medieval Irish history. When compared to other periods in history,
medieval history is very accessible, especially for those who live far from the
great libraries and archive institutions. A great volume of manuscript material
is now in book form or available on the web. For history after 1600 you have to
travel to the libraries and archive offices to examine original manuscripts.
For history before 550 AD you have to go out and dig up the countryside and
learn from archaeology. Medieval history can for the most part by written from
home.
One could say I spent half a life
time trying to avoid medieval history and then finally came home. Philomena
Connolly and Sir Henry Maxwell-Lyte guided me there where I again met Eoin
MacNeill. MacNeill was professor of early and medieval history at University
College Dublin. He was also first chair of the Irish Manuscripts Commission and
they have published many record books from medieval Ireland. Eoin’s brother,
Charles, edited a few of these books.
And then we come to the strangest
part of story. I began life in an orphanage with no family. A farming couple
came along and made a home for me in their house. My new grandfather turned out
to be a first cousin of Eoin MacNeill. Any family in the world could have
adopted me or I could have stayed in the orphanage. Yet it was a family of
medieval historians who took me in and that have made all the difference.
Thus I find myself in the
medieval world, on a voyage of exploration and discovery. I hope to a have a
long and fruitful voyage and to meet all the great and the good, and the
ordinary people of the medieval age and become their friend.
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End of post
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