The Friars in Ireland, 1224–1540, by Colmán Ó Clabaigh, OSB

Abstract

As the author and editor of several significant studies in the field of Irish monasticism in the course of little more than a decade, Colmán Ó Clabaigh is well positioned to undertake this synoptic history of the mendicant orders. Nor does he disappoint. In his own words, this book ‘represents an expansion of an earlier work on the late medieval Irish Franciscans and constitutes the first attempt to examine the Irish mendicant phenomenon as a whole, rather than focusing on individual orders and houses’. What follows is a comprehensive account of the friars from their arrival in Ireland in 1224 to their suppression in 1540. An enterprise of this kind is inevitably circumscribed by the patchy nature of the sources, appropriately described in the introduction. His skilful use of a wide range of source materials may be gauged by his adroit exploitation of the issue rolls of the Irish exchequer, hardly, one would imagine, a first, or even final, port of call in a study of this kind. Readers will also find his treatment of diverse aspects of the Irish mendicants’ life, governance, patronage, critics, liturgies, devotions, education, architecture, art, and formation, instructive. Maintaining a balance between the particular histories of the mendicants, both in the Anglo-Norman and Gaelic territories of Ireland, while also paying attention to their international connections, is a challenge in itself, but one that the author navigates successfully. The result is that the book not only speaks to Irish historians but also to students of medieval monastic history generally. In this respect, Ó Clabaigh’s grasp of the political contexts of a deeply regionalised Ireland, coupled with its ethnic and cultural tensions, is both necessary and illuminating.