This collection will be of obvious interest to specialists in martyrological and calendrical materials, and in the Irish language. Non-specialists, however, will almost inevitably be faced with a baffling reading experience, for the editor makes little effort to render his texts accessible to the uninitiated. This is unfortunate, for the source value of liturgical materials for the study of politics and culture is increasingly being recognized by medievalists, most of whom do require some level of editorial guidance to understand and appreciate the significance of liturgical texts. Forward-thinking editors such as Yitzhak Hen, who published the Sacramentary of Echternach for the Henry Bradshaw Society in 1997, have taken care to accompany the edited texts with introductions and annotations that ease the way even for non-specialists to profit from the availability of the source in print. In contrast, O Riain, the leading expert on Irish martyrological materials, has crafted both his textual introductions and his luxuriant annotations in the sort of impenetrable style, which has long contributed to the neglect of liturgical materials by non-specialists.
There are, however, solid reasons why intrepid non-specialistsmight venture to exploit these sources, and this review willseek to highlight those reasons.
More than half the volume (pp. 1-120) is devoted to the Martyrology of Drummond, contained in the Drummond Missal (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS 627), a text which has twice been edited, albeit well over a century ago. Against the views of previous commentators, O Riain both re-localizes (to the Augustinian priory attached to the metropolitan church of Armagh) and re-dates (to c. 1170) the creation of the martyrology. His arguments are, to my mind, inconclusive; for instance, the ubiquity of interest in St. Martin of Tours would seem to speak for many possible sites of composition, rather than peculiarly pointing to Armagh, as O Riain would have it (pp. 6, 29). If, however, O Riain's dating and localization turn out to carry the day when subjected to the scrutiny of other scholars of Ireland, a relatively broad segment of medievalists might be interested in exploring the implications of his proposed context for production of this liturgical manuscript, namely the "sudden surge in martyrological activity" (23) that accompanied the Armagh-led reform of the Irish church during the 1160s, on the very eve of the arrival of the conquering Anglo-Normans (1169), and then continued during the opening decades of the Anglo-Norman occupation of Ireland. Students of "national" and "ethnic" identities, of conquests, and of cultural interactions, might well find certain strategies of the martyrologist (such as the decision to privilege, both numerically and in terms of precedence, non-Irish over Irish saints) worthy of investigation. An even broader segment of medievalists may be interested to know that both the Drummond Missal and its martyrology display a noteworthy interest in nuns (sanctimoniales) and female saints (see especially p. 7). However, scholars who approach these texts from the perspective of gender history or post-colonial studies, will find little to help them in O Riain's annotations, for they rarely identify or discuss the individual saints included in the Martyrology of Drummond. Instead, the notes focus almost exclusively on points of linguistic significance [[1]] or compare the contents of the Martyrology of Drummond with those of a selection of other martyrologies [[2]].
Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale D IV 18, a copy of Gregory the Great's Homily on the Gospels, is prefaced by five originally separate folios containing a elaborate calendar (complete with zodiacal information, lunar positions, names of the months in various languages, etc.) for January through October (the folio containing November and December having been lost). Along the right hand margin of each page, there appears a selection of Irish and non-Irish saints, which O Riain has named the Martyrology of Turin and which he edits here on pp. 133-161. Along the lower margin of each page, there appears a unique Irish version of the Metrical Martyrology of York (itself originally a product of the period around 800), which O Riain edits here on pp 190-194. Scattered along the top and lower margins of each page are a series of Latin and Irish notes, which O Riain edits here as an appendix (pp. 195-199). This calendrical-martyrological complex was originally discovered and edited, in 1981-82, by A. Vitale Brovarone and F. Granucci. Like O Riain, they separated the two martyrologies and the miscellaneous notes, both from each other and from the calendar which they frame. It is truly disheartening that O Riain did not see fit to improve upon the previous editors' dismemberment of the Turin calendar by publishing the five folios in a holistic, integral manner. Ten years after it was written, the condemnatory plaint of John Dagenais still rings true: "medievalism...is the only discipline...that takes as its first move the suppression of its evidence" [[3]]. O Riain does not explicitly justify the need for a new edition, but does refer on at least two occasions to errors in the editions of Granucci and Brovarone (p. 134 n. 8 and p. 194 n. 65 respectively).
As was the case with the Drummond Missal, the fragmentary yet multi-faceted Turin calendrical complex may be of interest for historians of women and gender, for historians of Irish-English relations and identities, and for historians of the Augustinian Order. O Riain dates and localizes the creation of the calendar to Skreen, a house of Augustinian canonesses, during the 1170s or subsequent decades, "when English interests officially began to dominate locally" (130). The Martyrology of Turin he considers to be an original compilation of that period, like Drummond a reflection of "the perceived need for new martyrologies" (128). In contrast, the Irish version of the Martyrology of York is said to have been created around Clonmacnoise at some unknowable point between the eighth and the twelfth century (188); O Riain does not speculate on the reason for its original creation, or its inclusion (in its only extant copy) in the canonesses' calendar. Although he calls the calendar "the earliest surviving manuscript written for an Irish convent of nuns" (130), O Riain throughout assumes that the actual author was a male cleric. Whatever the gender of the compiler, the calendar should interest those concerned with the history of women in Ireland. As was the case with the Martyrology of Drummond, O Riain's considerable erudition is focused primarily on elucidating the linguistic significance of the Turin manuscript and the relationship of its martyrologies to others in the Irish tradition [[4]]. However, his annotations on the Martyrology of Turin also include some substantive, content-oriented information which could help in a gendered analysis of the liturgical experiences of the canonesses of Skreen [[5]].
The final text in the collection, the Irish-language Martyrology of Cashel, is partially reconstructed (perforce in a Latin version) by O Riain based on a combination of references to, and Latin translations from, a now-lost manuscript martyrology in the various Latin works of the early seventeenth-century scholar, John Colgan. Because Colgan only discussed some saints (and therefore only utilized some entries from the martyrology), O Riain's "edition" may well represent only a fraction of the lost text. Colgan himself had placed the creation of martyrology at Cashel in approximately 1030, but O Riain argues for Lismore during the mid-1170s or later. Anyone who is already interested in the martyrological contents of the New York and Turin manuscripts will certainly want to look at this reconstruction as well, but it is hard to see how it could ever come to serve as a truly solid source for medieval Ireland.
The volume includes a bibliography and 53 pages of indices (of saints, of place and tribal names, of other personal names, of computistical/astronomical entries, and a general index).
NOTES: [[1]] For instance, "The author seems to have treated the name [Anteros] as an Irish first declension noun [Anterois], with palatal genitive" (26).
[[2]] For instance, "Several auctaria of MU [=Martyrology of Usuard] agree with the Irish MA [= Martyrology of Ado] in adding et confessoris to the description of the saint [Leo]. MCh [= Martyrology of Christ Church] and the second line of transmission of MA add further detail" (74).
[[3]] John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture. Glossing the Libro de buen amor (Princeton, 1994) p. xviii.
[[4]] For instance, "The nominative Findlog (cf. gen. Findlugo, MT [= Martyrology of Tallaght]), indicates the use of MO [= Martyrology of Oengus] (Findlugb & Duin Blesce). The form Flesce is found in several versions of the Commentary on MO" (p. 133).
[[5]] For instance, concerning a Marian festival on January 18th: "The attachment here of virginis to Maria seems peculiar to MTur [= Martyrology of Turin]. Most MO [= Martyrology of Oengus] manuscripts have tasc, 'tidings' of Mary, but one (Lb [= Leabhar Breac MS]) refers to her bas, 'death'" (p. 135).