RENAISSANCEas in the case of Oswald in contemporary Anglo-Saxon
England. The shrine of St. Lachtaín’s arm, of approx-
imately 1120, is among the earliest of its kind; the
shrine of St. Patrick’s hand (another arm-reliquary) is
the only example of Gothic form in Ireland.
Ireland shared in the cult of the True Cross, a relic
of which was enshrined (in the Cross of Cong) in the
1120s, while another gave its name and fame to Holy
Cross, County Tipperary, a twelfth-century Cistercian
foundation. An early hint of native diversification is
Tírechán’s allusion in the seventh century to contain-
ers,bibliothicae, made for patens in honor of Patrick,
and books (which themselves enshrined the Word),
belts, and bells were afterward enshrined, typically
with the effect of removing the relic from its primary
functional context. The earliest book shrine, from
Lough Kinale, County Longford, dates to the eighth
century; the latest, that of St. Caillín of Fenagh, County
Leitrim, was made in 1536. Neither retains its original
contents, but in the case of the Cathach, a psalter, both
manuscript and reliquary survive. Of belt shrines one
is extant, from Moylough, County Sligo, and encloses
a relic in four pieces. Bell shrinesfor iron bellsare
a numerous group, a reflection of the ubiquity of hand
bells as cult accessories and of their creative adapta-
tion when superannuated by physical deterioration.
Croziers are likewise numerous; although unlikely to
be the staffs of saints encased in metalwork, they are
shrines to the extent that the crook can be designed to
house relics.
The reliquaries referred to were symbols of eccle-
siastical succession and sometimes made under
royal patronage but were doubtless once outnum-
bered by the personal and smaller sort, albeit that
these rarely survive: a twelfth-century silver box
just 2 centimeters square from “Straidcayle,”
County Antrim, although of English or Continental
origin, contains a ring of plaited rush wrapped in
linen that is conceivably a Brigidine relic; tin-lead
ampullae that held water have been found in Dublin
and were brought from Canterbury and Worcester
in the thirteenth century as pilgrims’ souvenirs; and
adventitious in the Irish record is a gold, book-shaped
reliquary of the sixteenth century from the Girona,
a ship of the Spanish Armada that sank off the County
Antrim coast.
Portability is characteristic of Irish reliquaries,
many being designed to be carried on a strap around
the neck, a quality that allowed their use in proces-
sions, in oath-taking, in healing, in levying tribute, in
solemnizing treaties, and as battle talismans. However,
this is not to state their whole function or application.
The tombs of the saints in dedicated churches or parts
of churches were a focus of pilgrimage in which it
seems that portable insignia, including croziers, were
combined with statues or otherwise displayed. The Ref-
ormation dissolved this nexus or conjunction and reli-
quaries, by their very portability, were at once sundered
from their settings and enabled to survive. Their custo-
dianship, often hereditary, was a social institution,
bound up with status and the tenure of land. They were
dignified, and familiarized, with proper names: the
Breacwas the “speckled” shrine of Máedóc; the Ballach
was the “spotted” shrine of Damnat. The nineteenth
century was an age of antiquarian acquisition, but some
reliquaries are still in Church hands.
CORMAC BOURKERENAISSANCE
In the absence of a native university before 1592 and
a developed printing industry until after 1600, it is
perhaps understandable that sixteenth-century Ireland
did not foster an indigenous intellectual and cultural
ferment as did the Renaissance elsewhere. Yet even
before the Reformation and Counter-Reformation
brought fresh thinking, humanist and religious strains
of the European revival of learning were influencing
sections of the island’s population. Resort by Irish
students to the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and
other academies in Europe as well as the Inns of Court
in London may have given rise to the strand of civic
humanism detected in their engagement with political
and social reform in the earlier Tudor period. Signs of
religious renewal inspired by northern Renaissance
spirituality may be seen in pre-Reformation lay devo-
tional practice among the older English community,
while the upsurge of observant mendicantism in the
Gaelic regions from about 1450 bore the hallmarks of
the reformed piety and culture of the late medieval
Italian city-states.
Among the socio-political leadership, the Anglo-
Norman aristocratic families such as the Fitzgeralds of
Kildare and Butlers of Ormond showed signs of being
animated by the English courtly Renaissance, most
notably in the case of the former’s library of humanistic
and other works at Maynooth and the stately architec-
ture of the latter in Kilkenny and Carrick-on-Suir. The
Gaelic lords too manifested an openness to trends in
contemporary power politics in their more professional
administrations, their patronage of innovative poetry
and biographical projects, and their adroitness at dip-
lomatic maneuvring, as during the Geraldine League,
for example.
The Reformation brought not only an upsurge of
theological debate but also a boost for the vernacular
languages. The printing press, established in Dublin
in 1551, produced an English book of common prayer,
and a Gaelic typeface for Irish printing sponsored
byQueen Elizabeth was used briefly as a tool of