details known of his life are what can be garnered from
incidental references in his works. He was teacher at
the Palace School of Louis the Pious in about 815. The
date of Dicuil’s death is not known.
His first work, Liber de astronomia, is a verse-
computus written between 814 and 816 in four books,
to which a fifth book was later added. In 818, he wrote
theEpistula censuum, a verse treatise on weights and
measures. He also made a copy of Priscian’s Parti-
tiones XII Versuum Aeneidos Principalium, which he
summarized in twenty-seven hexameters appended to
it. He also wrote an Epistola de questionibus decim
artis grammaticae, which no longer survives.
In 825, he wrote two treatises, De prima syllaba, a
tract on prosody, and Liber de mensura orbis terrae,
a treatise on geography and unquestionably his most
important work. Dicuil used a wide range of sources,
directly or indirectly, for this treatise. Some of these
are now lost or only partly preserved, such as the
Cosmographia of Julius Caesar in the recension of
Julius Honorius, as well as some derivative of the
emperor Agrippa’s map of the world, probably that
known as the Diuisio(orMensuratio)orbisof emperor
Theodosius. Among his other sources are Pliny the
Elder, Solinus, Isidore of Seville, and Caelius Sedulius.
He had clearly spent some time in the islands north of
Britain and Ireland. As he says himself: “Near the
island Britannia are many islands, some large, some
small, and some medium-sized. Some are in her sea
south and some in the sea to her west, but they abound
mostly to the north-west and north. Among these I
have lived in some, and have visited others; some I
have only glimpsed, while others I have read about.”
(Liber de mensura orbis terraeVII § 6)
Dicuil tells us that he was present when a monk,
who had returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land
sometime before 767, was received by Suibne on Iona.
This “master Suibne” to whom Dicuil refers was most
likely Suibne, abbot of Iona from 767 to 772. Dicuil
had acquired his geographical knowledge of the islands
around Britain from some time spent as a monk on
Iona, and from first-hand oral accounts of the voyages
of Irish hermit-monks in the eighth century to the
islands north of Britain, to the Orkneys, Shetlands, and
Faroes, and to Iceland (Thule), where they sojourned
from February to August. Some of the islands—perhaps
the Faroes—had been occupied by Irishmen “for
nearly a hundred years.” His description of the eastern
Mediterranean, including Egypt and Palestine, is
largely derived from written sources, though he also
refers to oral information communicated from a traveler
to those parts, a “brother Fidelis,” from whom he also
got one of the earliest descriptions in Western vernac-
ular literature of a Nile crocodile!
AIDAN BREEN
References and Further Reading
Bermann, Werner. “Dicuils De Mensura Orbis Terrae.” In Science
in Western and Eastern Civilization in Carolingian Times,
edited by P. L. Butzer and D. Lohrmann, 527–537. Basel, 1993.
Esposito, M. “An Unpublished Astronomical Treatise by an Irish
Monk Dicuil.”R.I.A. Proc. 26C (1907): 378–446 (with addenda
and corrigenda by the editor in Z.C.P. 8 (1910): 506–07).
Gautier-Dalché, Patrick. “Tradition et Renouvellement dans la
Représentation d’Espace Geographie au IX Siecle.” Studi
Medievali ser. 3, 24.1 (1983): 121–165.
Howlett, D. R. The Celtic Latin Tradition of Biblical Style.
Dublin, 1995, pp.124–129. idem: “Dicuill on the Islands of
the North.” Peritia13 (1999): 127–34.
Manitius, M. “Micons v. St-Riquier ‘de primis syllabis,’”
Münchener Museum 1 (1912).
Strecker, K. “Studien zu karolingischen Dichtern: Zu Micons
Schrift de prima syllaba,” Neues Archiv 43 (1920): 477–87.
van de Vyver, A. “Dicuil et Micon,” Revue Belge de Philologie et
d’Histoire14 (1935): 25–47 (with an edition of Liber censuum).
Tierney, J. J. (ed.), with contribution by L. Bieler, Dicuili Liber
de Mensura Orbis Terrae. SLH 6 (1967).
Smyth, A. Kings, Warlords and Holymen, Edinburgh University
Press, 1984, 167–69.
Wooding, J. M. “Monastic Voyaging and the Navigatio.” In
Smyth, A., ed., The Otherworld Voyage in Early Irish Lit-
erature. An Anthology of Criticism. Dublin: Four Courts
Press, 2000, pp. 226–245, at p. 238 ff.
For further bibliography, see Lapidge, Michael, and Richard
Sharpe.A Bibliography of Celtic-Latin Literature 400–1200.
Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1985, nos. 660–664.
See alsoClassical literature, Influence of; Eachtrai;
Ériugena (John Scottus); Grammatical Treatises;
Hiberno-Latin Literature; Poetry, Hiberno-Latin;
Sciences; Sedulius ScottusDIET AND FOOD
In the Middle Ages, the production of food was a sig-
nificant aspect of most people’s lives, involving endless
labor in the sowing and harvesting of crops and the
management of cattle, sheep and other animals. It also
involved work in the preparation of foods both for
immediate consumption and for long-term storage.
However, food was also immensely important in social
and ideological terms, being used to perform and
express identities of social rank, gender, and ethnicity.
Food—its production, preparation and exchange—
provided the basis of most social and economic rela-
tionships between people. It was also the means by
which households extended hospitality to kin and
strangers, and Simms, Kelly, and O’Sullivan have all
discussed the elaborate customs and traditions that
evolved around the display, consumption, and use of it
(Kelly 1997, 321; Simms 1978; C. M. O’Sullivan, 2004).Early Medieval Cereals and Vegetables
In the early medieval period (A.D. 400–1200), historical
and archaeological evidence indicates that bread andDIET AND FOOD