Perceiving Palestine in Early Christian Ireland: Martyrium, Exegetical Key, Relic and Liturgical Space

Abstract

Adomnán's De locis sanctis provided to its readers in the late seventh century a landscape of Palestine and other eastern Mediterranean lands. This landscape's structure was determined by readers' own expectations of those places based in their religious culture as Latin Christians. The text appears to use four categories in its exploration of what can be seen as particularly significant in those places; as such it is less a portrait of locations in its period of composition, and more a description of an icon.