hospitality for considerable numbers of Anglo-Saxon
students who came to study in its schools of higher
learning. Moreover, Anglo-Saxon literature in the ver-
nacular was unlikely to have had much influence on
its Irish counterpart, not only because of the language
barrier but also because the English literary tradition
was not well established until a full century after that
of Ireland. An exception may be King Aldfrith of
Northumbria (685–705), known as Flann Fína in Irish,
to whom Irish literary tradition dubiously attributed
several gnomic works in Irish.
The available evidence suggests that Anglo-Saxon
literary influence—such as it was—was exercised
through the medium of ecclesiastical Latin, a culture
which both areas shared as part of their common Chris-
tian heritage. Verifiable instances of that influence are
the Latin works of Anglo-Saxon England’s greatest
scholar, the Venerable Bede (d. 735). His commentar-
ies on biblical exegesis, metrics, and computistics
seem to have been known and studied in Ireland by
the second half of the eighth century. Two manuscripts
written by Irish scribes contain between them three of
Bede’s computistical works, De rerum natura, De tem-
poribus,andDe temporum ratione. Although copied
in the first half of the ninth century and on the Conti-
nent, these manuscripts contain glosses which from
their language (Old Irish) and phonology suggest that
Bede was being studied in the Irish schools by the
second half of the eighth century. Further evidence of
Bede’s influence on the Irish schools as a biblical
scholar is found in the “Old-Irish Treatise on the
Psalter,” a commentary composed in Irish in the first
half of the ninth century which attributes to him a
comment on Psalm 1. Although no such work on the
Psalms has been verified for Bede, the appeal to his
authority and the use of the Irish form of his name
(Béid) testifies to his high status in Ireland. Moreover,
Bede’s most famous work, the Ecclesiastical History
of the English People, which was partially translated
into Irish in the early tenth century, left its mark on
medieval Irish annals and historiography.
Other influences can be traced to Anglo-Saxon
England’s continuing contacts throughout most of the
eighth century with the Gaelic monastery of Iona, the
center from which the Irish mission to Northumbria had
been directed. The so-called Penitential of Theodore,
composed in southern England in the late seventh cen-
tury, is cited as an authority in the Collectio canonum
Hibernesis, a collection of Irish ecclesiastical legislation
co-authored in the early eighth century by Cú Chuimne
of Iona. Likewise, the presence of a stratum of Anglo-
Saxon saints in the early Irish martyrologies probably
derived from a Northumbrian martyrology which passed
to Iona and thence to Ireland during the eighth century.
PÁDRAIGÓ NÉILL
References and Further Reading
Dillon, Myles. “The Vienna Glosses on Bede.” Celtica3 (1956):
340–343.
Hull, Vernam. “The Middle Irish Version of Bede’s De locis
sanctis.” Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie17 (1927):
225–240.
Ireland, Colin. Old Irish Wisdom Attributed to Aldfrith of
Northumbria: An edition of Bríathra Flainn Fhína maic
Ossu. Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 1999.
Kenney, James F. The Sources for the Early History of Ireland:
Ecclesiastical. New York: Columbia University Press, 1929.
Ní Chatháin, Próinséas. “Bede’s Ecclesiastical Historyin Irish.”
Peritia: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland 3
(1984): 115–130.
Ó Riain, Pádraig. Anglo-Saxon Ireland: The evidence of the
Martyrology of Tallaght. H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lec-
tures 3. Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and
Celtic, University of Cambridge, 1993.
See alsoGlosses; Hagiography and MartyrologiesANNALS AND CHRONICLES
The Irish Chronicles, kept in Ireland throughout the
medieval period, are a major source for Irish society
and politics. They are largely annalistic in form, being
divided into years, called “annals,” rather than having
other time-periods, such as reigns, as the main struc-
tural principle. They record the deaths of notable eccle-
siastical and lay figures, battles, military campaigns,
droughts, plagues, and unusual events, such as eclipses
and miracles, but they very rarely provide evidence for
life among the lower grades of society.
The style of the Irish chronicles is generally terse
and factual, generally lacking the long descriptions,
detailed accounts, statements of sympathy, animosity,
or references to causation that are found in many chron-
icles from the rest of Europe. Initially predominantly
written in Latin, but increasingly in Irish from the ninth
century onwards, the vocabulary and syntax of the Irish
chronicles is very formulaic and repetitive, producing
a highly artificial chronicle style shared by scholars in
a number of different centers. However, in the twelfth
century, the chronicles do start to become more verbose
to some extent, although the lack of a narrative thread
between events continues to be an important feature.
At roughly the same time Irish chronicles were adapted
in texts such as the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland
(probably compiled in the eleventh century for Osraige
dynasts) and Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib (from the early
twelfth century, portraying Munster as the savior of
Ireland from the Scandinavians) to form non-annalistic
narrative chronicles with clearer political messages.
It is quite likely that the chronicles’ origins were in
the practice of noting down events in the margins of
Easter tables, although earlier continental chroniclesANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE, INFLUENCE OF