Making Ireland Roman

This collection emanating from the Centre for Neo Latin Studies at University College Cork is most welcome in bringing more of this group s findings to a wider audience. Taking their title with reference to Nicholas Canny s study Making Ireland British 1580 1640 2001 the editors have here gathered essays that demonstrate recourse to a competing source of authority and identity in Ireland s early modern period: Romanitas. As Jason Harris and Keith Sidwell note in their introduction Romanitas carried a rich sense of endowment for both Protestant writers participating in the notion of British imperial Romanitas and Catholic writers engaging with the historical and spiritual universalism of the Roman Church p. 11 . The sources explored by the collection s contributors however reveal ambivalence in the concept of Romanitas and therein resides the depth and wealth of the collection p. 11 . Spanning the period of intensified English domination over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the subjects of these essays trace the evolving and sometimes conflicting definition and employment of Romanitas in both its Catholic and classical guises by Gaelic and Old English writers alike as a counter to Rome as model for British colonialism. In addition to the use of Latin and classical rhetoric a number of other themes such as collection practices are carried through the essays supplying a cohesiveness not always evident in essay collections. Several essays consider the same authors notably Richard Stanihurst and Philip O Sullivan Beare providing even greater contextualization for the individuals texts and issues under consideration. While the collection should certainly be essential reading for historians and literary scholars of early modern Ireland it will also be of considerable importance to scholars of early modern Europe more broadly. It offers novel studies and perspectives that affirm not only that Ireland was influenced substantially by such European developments as Renaissance humanism but also that Ireland in turn has much to offer studies of this period. This is demonstrated admirably in the first two essays considered below. Elizabethanne Boran considers Archbishop James Ussher s collection activities as he participated in a network of scholarship in the Republic of letters grounding him within European wide practices and contacts that straddled confessional networks p. 183 . Boran works closely with Ussher s correspondence to emphasize that attention to the relationships that developed between collectors is important in delineating the role that religious fault lines could also play as works were shared p. 183 . Diarmaid Cath in s essay provides an excellent complement to Boran s similarly considering collection activities and continental contacts and experience essential to the exchange of manuscripts but here from the perspective of the Gaelic community. Muiris Ficheallaigh is but one of the individuals Cath in considers whose careers reflect extensive travel and increasingly influential positions. Ficheallaigh for instance began as student at Oxford before attaining respect as a scholar in Padua and Venice after which he returned to Ireland as archbishop of Tuam in 1506 pp. 19 20 . Cath in s essay is also welcome for its detailed consideration of the heretofore little studied but often remarked upon library list for the 8th and 9th Earls of Kildare rare as one of the very few extant library lists from this period in Ireland. The Kildare library rivaled many in its reflection of Renaissance texts including Juvenal Vergil and Boccaccio among others. Cath in adroitly employs this information to emphasize that Renaissance tastes as well as Florentine ancestry and contacts were as important to Kildare identity as their powerful connections in the English and Gaelic worlds. Another powerful Old English noble Thomas Butler 10th Earl of Ormond serves as the focus of Sidwell and David Edwards essay on Dermot O Meara s 1615 poem Ormonius. Ormond s age and failing health compounded the subsequent threat to his family s traditional position as new policies came into play following Elizabeth s death and the end of the Nine Years War. To arrest the Butlers declining reputation and to help restore the family to its rightful glory as Ireland s premier noble dynasty Ormond commissioned O Meara s composition of the Ormonius p. 66 . Writing in Latin and applying classical references and models to Gaelic literary forms O Meara utilized the medium of published poetry to secure Ormond s legacy. The threatened status of the Old English community runs throughout several essays encapsulated in the person of Stanihurst. Stanihurst exemplifies the declining position that confronted many of the Old English as well as the competing purposes to which classical learning could be put. Following his self imposed exile from Ireland in 1581 Stanihurst spent time in the Low Countries before making his way to Spain in late 1591. His time at the University of Leiden brought him into contact with the Dutchman Justus Lipsius one of Europe s leading humanists. Colm Lennon s essay explores their exchange of letters written in 1592 at a critical juncture in both men s careers p. 57 . As Lennon demonstrates the friendship that developed between them was fundamental to the professional and spiritual development of each. Stanihurst is also addressed in John Barry s essay which offers a comparative reading of passages in two of Stanihurst s works his Description of Ireland 1577 incorporated into Raphael Holinshed s Chronicles and his later De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis 1584 with both the text and images in John Derricke s Image of Irelande 1581 . Arguing that Stanihurst s Description influenced Derricke s Image and that Derricke s Image in turn influenced Stanihurst s De Rebus Barry demonstrates an engagement between the authors that accounts specifically for the nature of episodes they chose to consider. Among many other examples Barry notes that Stanihurst s description of horseboys in De Rebus reads almost like an explication of the image of horseboys in the first plate that accompanied Derricke s work and suggests further that Stanihurst had The Image of Irelande in front of him as he wrote p. 41 . Stanihurst figures prominently yet again in an accomplished essay by Harris. Here Stanihurst represents the deployment of classical learning in the service of colonialism as countered by Stephen White a seventeenth century Old English Jesuit representative of an element within the Old English now labeled nua Gaedhil or New Irish. Harris considers White s Apologiae the first composed ca. 1611 13 the second likely in the 1630s in which White attacks both Stanihurst and Giraldus Cambrensis staple sources for English denigrations of the Irish with an eloquent and an exceptionally advanced display of classical learning and rhetoric. White was not alone in deploying classical training to challenge the legitimacy of English colonial claims and behavior as the essays by Gr inne McLaughlin David Caulfield and Hiram Morgan demonstrate. As McLaughlin notes in her essay the Commentarius Rinuccinianus composed 1661 66 published 1932 49 turned the table on the colonial rhetoric of cultural superiority. It was in fact the civilized who speak Latin and Irish demonstrated by a close reading of invective verse from the Commentarius that drew on Vergil and Ovid among others p. 155 . O Sullivan Beare similarly utilized classical learning to challenge English domination notably in the Zoilomastix composed ca. 1626 where like White above he refuted both Giraldus and Stanihurst. Two of O Sullivan s other works Tenebriomastix composed ca. 1636 and the Compendium of the Catholic History 1621 are explored in essays by Caulfield and Morgan. The Tenebriomastix represents O Sullivan s contribution to the Scotic debate in which Scottish writers asserted that Scotia referred to Scotland not Ireland thus robbing Ireland of its history p. 111 . As Caulfield shows classical learning was fundamental to O Sullivan s restoration of Ireland s ownership of the past key to its identity and his defense of Gaelic Ireland s cultural and religious traditions p. 125 . In a carefully constructed essay Morgan builds on his extensive work on Hugh O Neill and the Nine Years War as well as earlier work on the Compendium to consider O Sullivan s presentation of the Tudor conquest of Ireland. Morgan stresses the importance of O Sullivan s decision to include the decision of the dons and divines of Salamanca and Valladolid on the legitimacy of O Neill s war against England. Their decision drew fundamentally on Spanish natural law theory and its use by O Sullivan as Morgan details underscored O Sullivan s principal concerns: English Protestant tyranny Irish divisions and Irish reliance on Spain p. 88 . This collection will prove most useful to scholars and graduate students though advanced undergraduate students will find it a beneficial complement to survey studies. Historical background on early modern Ireland is presented in the introduction and translations are provided for all primary source excerpts in Latin and Irish ~Valerie McGowan Doyle H Net

Roughly 1000 printed works in Latin were written by over 300 Irish authors between 1500 and 1750 on top of a substantial number of manuscript texts and this collection of groundbreaking essays gives us something of the rich flavour of this remarkable corpus of Irish neo Latin works. As well as presenting new studies of better known writers such as Richard Stanihurst and Philip O Sullivan Beare who are the subjects of two chapters apiece the value of this collection lies in its attention to previously unstudied writings especially those in manuscript. Accessible to non Latin readers with an introduction that thoroughly contextualises Irish Neo Latin writing the collection showcases the unique Irish contribution to the republic of letters and demonstrates the vibrancy of Irish neo Latin culture through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The chapters are organised chronologically. In the first Dairmaid Cathin reflects on the extent to which Gaelic Ireland was influenced by Renaissance ideas and identifies figures such as Maghnas Domhnaill Finghn Mathna and Thomas 8th Earl of Desmond as exemplary. Emphasising the deep connections between Gaelic Ireland and Europe especially Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries he illuminates the rich intellectual culture that surrounded these men. In the following chapter John Barry turns to two of the most influential writers of sixteenth century Ireland Richard Stanihurst and John Derricke. Arguing that Derricke s Image of Irelande 1581 was inspired by Stanihurst s Description of Ireland 1577 and that Stanihurst s De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis 1584 responded in turn to Derricke s poem and accompanying woodcuts he asserts a Latin English intertextuality which can deepen our perception of them all 37 . Continuing with Stanihurst Colm Lennon contributes a fascinating discussion of the epistolary exchange between Stanihurst and Justus Lipsius one of the leading humanists of late sixteenth century Europe in the spring of 1592. Likening their friendship to that of Thomas More and Erasmus Lennon illustrates Stanihurst s influence on Lipsius and his participation in the debates of Christian humanism. Situating Stanihurst in an international humanist network that transcended the Irish community from which he came 57 Lennon s paper sheds important new light on the intellectual milieu of Stanihurst and his fellow exiles. Moving into the seventeenth century Keith Sidwell and David Edwards introduce Dermot O Meara s neglected poem Ormonius 1615 a military epic celebrating the achievements of the great Irish nobleman Black Thomas Butler 10th Earl of Ormond. Advertising their forthcoming edition of the poem they argue that as well as offering insight on the struggle of Old English Catholics during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods the poem is significant for its adaptation of classical Latin models to a specifically Gaelic literary form. The interaction between Latin and Gaelic literary culture is thus excitingly illustrated. Turning from an unfamiliar writer to a familiar name Philip O Sullivan Beare is the subject of the next two chapters. The first by Hiram Morgan focuses on O Sullivan s political writings attending in particular to his influential Compendium of the Catholic History 1621 . With the book describing Ireland s golden age of Christianity being eclipsed as a result of savage and tyrannical persecution by English heretics 87 Morgan shows that O Sullivan highlights the injustices of English Protestant rule in Ireland emphasises Irish reliance upon Spain and argues for unified military action against England by Irish Catholics. Like Morgan David Caulfield also showcases O Sullivan s vivid polemical prose. Tenebriomastix 1636 was an impassioned response to David Chambers On the Courage Piety and Learning of the Scots 1631 a book that attempted to claim Scotia the ancient name for Ireland along with Hibernia and thus its rich cultural heritage for the Scots. Discussing O Sullivan s unique intervention in this paper war between Scottish and Irish Catholic exiles Caulfield underlines his unflagging devotion to his native land and unstinting effort in the defence of Gaelic Ireland and its cultural and religious traditions 125 . Latin writing in manuscript is the subject of the last three essays in the collection. In the first of these Jason Harris writes on the two manuscript Apologiae Apologia pro Ibernia written around 1615 and Apologia pro innocentibus Ibernis written in the late 1630s composed by the Irish Jesuit Stephen White in response to Giraldus s and Stanihurst s controversial writings on Ireland. Through meticulous examination and comparison of the texts Harris presents an incisive analysis of the rhetorical dimensions of White s writing proving that it is deeply revealing of the Latinity and intellectual fibre of early and mid seventeenth century Europe 153 . Staying in the mid seventeenth century Grinne McLaughlin looks at the Commentarius Rinuccinianus one of the most important Counter Reformation historical sources for Ireland in the seventeenth century a source which is particularly important because it is Irish Catholic virulently anti Ormond and anti Cromwell 155 . Focusing on the wonderful Latin invective verse that illuminate the pages of the collection her essay discusses the way in which the poems aggressively oppose the natives learned Latin and Irish to the invaders vulgar English. Alongside a schedule of poetry in the Commentarius an anti elegy on Cromwell is provided in full in an appendix. This remarkable poem is a significant addition to our growing collection of verse from early modern Ireland and indicates the jewels that can be found in the Commentarius. Finally bringing the collection to a close Elizabethanne Boran s fascinating essay on Archbishop James Ussher focuses on his role as collector of manuscripts. Situating him as part of a dynamic community of scholars working across Europe she identifies him as facilitator 178 of manuscript collection through Ireland Britain and Europe. Using Ussher s voluminous Latin correspondence her excellent account of the intellectual world of the scholar who was eulogized as a breathing library 194 showcases his significant contribution to learning in Ireland and beyond. This collection of genuinely pioneering essays transforms our understanding of early modern Irish writing especially Catholic writing. Demonstrating Irish participation in the republic of letters through manuscript circulation and print publication it situates Irish Latinity within its European context proving the distinctiveness and sophistication of Irish neo Latin writing. My only criticism but it is an important one is that Making Ireland Roman entirely overlooks Irish women s engagement with Latin. The pirate queen Grinne N Mhille who famously conversed with Elizabeth I in Latin and Eleanora Burnell who composed a prefatory poem in Latin for the publication of her father Henry Burnell s play Landgartha 1641 are just two of the women who used Latin in early modern Ireland.1 Work on these and other women will add an important new dimension to Irish neo Latin studies as it develops. Still this book is an excellent advertisement for the groundbreaking research activities of the Centre for Neo Latin Studies at Cork as well as in other Irish universities Trinity College Dublin and the University of Ulster in particular . It is an important and exciting book which shows the significant potential of further work in this field. ~Irish Studies Review Naomi McAreavey

this collection of essays is an important contribution to Neo Latin studies and has a full scholarly apparatus of notes and references some 40 pages ~The Classical Review

This fine and motley collection of nine essays with Introduction by the editors heralds an important occasion for early modern Irish and European studies: the arrival of the Centre for Neo Latin Studies in University College Cork as a formidable force on the published academic scene. One edition reared in this industrious stable Philip O Sullivan Beare s patriotic natural history Zoilomastix reviewed in these pages has already been trotted out and others such as Dermot O Meara s epic laud of the 10th Earl of Ormond Ormonius are chomping at the bit. As the editors note sustained attention to the world of Irish neo Latin letters is long overdue: From the advent of humanism and printed texts in Ireland in the sixteenth century until the beginnings of the decline of Latin literacy in the eighteenth more than one thousand books were published in Latin by Irish authors. p. 5 It is moreover a fact that up to [the year] 1680 most books exhibited at the Frankfurt Book Fair were in Latin; that of those published in Oxford from 1690 to 1710 more than half were in Latin; that 31 per cent of all the entries in Bibliotheque raisonnee des ouvrages des savants de l Europe 1728 40 were in Latin; and that in many European states academic dissertations were written in Latin as a matter of course until the early nineteenth century p. 3 . Neglect of the Irish Latin scene in particular is not extraordinary however given the academy s general disinterest in neo Latin studies. The modern academy has been far too interested in its vernacular traditions including authors Shakespeare Petrarch Ronsard and Cervantes et al. to properly taste much less digest the mountains of scholarly butter slowly melting before it. But as nationalist fires fade and scholarship on early modern Ireland becomes part of a new internationalising trend we can see here how the Irish are saving civilitas as well as the traces of so many civilizations left on their doorstep. One of the book s central messages is a political one: Latin the lingua franca of Europe s scholars diplomats and many artists politicans and lawyers continued to unify even as it provided the language of division in an Ireland sharply divided along sectarian and ethnic lines p. 13 . On the one hand appeals to a Latinised civility including renovated notions of imperium puffed up the self worth of a colonial ruling elite mostly English Protestants and justified their conquest against a supposedly barbaric Irish speaking native foe in the later sixteenth century; but appeals to a classical notion of patria lent ammunition and linguistic unity to their well educated and increasingly internationally minded opponents. These were supported by Spanish imperial ambition and fuelled on the heady vapours of the Counter Reformation a Tridentine religious agenda in a humanist linguistic register p. 11 . Simultaneously Latin brought native and newcomer together in a range of common interests from humanistic appreciation of classical genres and authors to antiquarian pursuits such as book collecting and biblical scholarship. With neo Latinity comes the Renaissance whose scope or mere existence in Ireland a much debated topic is explored in the first chapter Some reflexes of Latin learning and of the Renaissance in Ireland c.1450 c.1600 by Diarmaid Cathain. Cathain s richly informed discussion of local patronage of learning by the native nobility including abortive university schemes claims of geneaological links to Italy and large private libraries is invaluable and it is hoped that his call for further studies of these great patrons such as the Old English 8th Earl of Desmond and the earls of Kildare will be heeded. In the spirit of spying cross cultural trends the second chapter Derricke and Stanihurst: a dialogue by John Barry demonstrates in somewhat tenuous fashion the influence of John Derricke s highly derogatory Protestant polemic the Image of Irelande on the works of historian poet and translator Richard Stanihurst. The work of both authors furthermore attests to the highly varied patronage of Lord Deputy Sir Henry Sidney pp. 46 7 a man of Caesarian ambitions and limited resources. Stanihurst s later correspondence and fraternization with the intellectual giant of the Netherlands and Germany Justus Lipsius is explored in the third essay The Richard Stanihurst Justus Lipsius friendship: scholarship and religion under Spanish Hapsburg patronage in the late sixteenth century . Colm Lennon here explores the parameters of both men s faith as they tended gradually and daringly towards Catholicism in an international context of learned exile and political intrigue. The essay makes a nice companion to that of Hiram Morgan Making Ireland Spanish : the political writings of Philip O Sullivan Beare. This essay the fifth in the collection documents the travails and ambitions of another scholar and plotter in Spain the exiled noble O Sullivan Beare who blames internal division and not only English oppression and strategems for Ireland s many woes p. 102 . Likewise as described in detail by David Caulfield in the collection s sixth essay The Scotic debate: Philip O Sullivan Beare and his Tenebriomastix O Sullivan Beare proved a true Irish patriot by writing vociferously and at length but not in print in Latin to refute the saintstealing efforts of Scotsmen Thomas Dempster and David Chambers. Defenders of Barack Obama s birthright to the U.S. Presidency could learn useful rhetorical strategies from O Sullivan Beare s angry polemic. The book s fourth essay The Tipperary Hero : Dermot O Meara s Ormonius 1615 by Keith Sidwell and David Edwards offer a substantive preview of their upcoming edition of this muchneglected stunted Virgilian epic with Irish poetic caithrem and aisling devices written in Latin and hastily finished and published in London soon after the death of its celebrated subject the tenth earl of Ormond. Ormond s family apparently intended the work to appeal to the British monarch James I so as to demonstrate their family s loyalty and past service p. 67 ; but was the book also intended to intimidate Irish rivals at court like the earls of Thomond and/or Clanrickard? Ormond spends much of his time not only defending English interests but capitalising on Irish especially Ulster weaknesses. Religion plays little part in the book p. 85 . The collection shifts technique towards denser literary analysis in Jason Harris chapter 7 A case study in rhetorical composition: Stephen White s two Apologiae for Ireland . White educated as a Jesuit in Spain wrote in sophisticated baroque style Latin p. 146 full of venom and bombast p. 153 and Tridentine spirit so as to refute insults to the nation promoted by the histories of both Stanihurst and Giraldus Cambrensis. Grainne McLaughlin s Chapter 8 Latin invective verse in the Commentarius Rinuccinianus follows suit with an equally eloquent and erudite analysis of classical and Irish literary influence found in this anti Cromwellian anti Ormond pro papal version of events of the tumultuous 1640s. The article makes new connections between the Commentarius and contemporary tracts and its second appendix translates a satiric funeral epitaph for the devil p. 165 Cromwell the great dictator who fostered ferment and stabbed Religion through the heart and in a memorable Irish ism chanced his arm often but filled his arms even more often . p. 174 The collection concludes on a more general note with Elizabethanne Boran s wideranging and well researched study Ussher and the collection of manuscripts in early modern Europe on the collecting habits of the great and greatly polemical Protestant Archbishop of Armagh. Ussher was known not only as a collector but as a facilitator of the collection and publication of manuscripts and generously shared his knowledge of biblical and other subjects. This disparate collection of essays therefore fittingly concludes with an essay on assembling disparate collections. We are the wiser for it. If there is an agenda here it is a timely one serving to highlight the learned patronage of local magnates and to promote the neglected voice of the native Irish writer whatever his origins and destinations may have been as he sings above the accompanying orchestration of the international Counter Reformation. Only a few Protestant singers are let into the cathedral colonial planters with Latin erudition like Sir William Herbert for example get short shrift in the analysis . The editors are nonetheless sympathetic to an entire generation of writers raised in brutal circumstances p. 6 who adhered to classical notions of civility and conquest . ~W Ann Trindade Australian Journal of Irish Studie

This important book uncovers an Ireland of confident aristocrats and intellectuals effective combatants in one or another war of words not starving and disposed peasants. For that reason alone it would be a valuable contribution to the history of Ireland in the context of its immediate neighbours but also sheds a flood of light on Ireland s interrelations with other European countries. ~Jane Stevenson TLS

This book is a timely and welcome introduction to the work in Latin produced in the early modern period by Irish writers of all communities. This collection of essays reflects the sheer energy of the group of scholars working on the renaissance and baroque Latinity of Ireland many of them based around the Centre for Neo Latin Studies at University College Cork. The publisher promises that this book aims to rewrite Irish cultural history through recovery and analysis of Latin sources : it does exactly that and does so with style verve and profound learning. It whets the appetite for the forthcoming Cambridge Handbook to Irish Neo Latin and makes one grateful for the Irish Latin texts already published electronically by the Centre. The contemporary academy especially in the Anglophone world however loosely we might use that term has inherited a skewed and partial attitude to the Latin writings of the period 1500 1750 covered by this book. Like the whole complex system of the Baroque arts in visual symbol and emblem the international system of Latinity which this book celebrates is supra national profoundly international encompassing those important early modern communities exiles for example or Jesuits who might be said not to have had a nationality in any simple sense. England was not perhaps the most enthusiastic patricipant in the international republic of Latin letters which has left a specific legacy of perceptibly low enthusiasm for renaissance Latin. To some degree all literary and historical study based on the vernaculars of the nation states finds Latin writing for an international audience to some degree anomalous or embarassing. But no real study of the early modern period is possible without taking full account of Latin. As Keith Sidwell and Jason Harris remind us in their Introduction: Despite the onset of both literary and scholarly production in the vernacular languages of Europe it is a fact that up to 1680 most books exhibited at the Frankfurt Book Fair were in Latin ... Latin survived one upheaval that might have spelled its doom the Reformation and Counter Reformation before it gradually fell victim to another the rise of the twin gods of nationalism and utilitarianism. These facts will not go away however much renaissance studies in some quarters seem to be in the process of redefining renaissance as Anglophone printed books easily available via Early English Books Online . To understand the early modern world at all and to understand the self perception of nations and religious confessions we have to look to the language which all communities used when facing outwards explaining themselves engaging in debate or controversy Latin. This is particularly true of nations whose vernaculars were marginal Poland Scandinavia the United Provinces or overshadowed by a dominating imported vernacular as is the case in different degrees in Scotland and Ireland. After the admirably concise introduction with its closing reminder that the culture of learning was crucial to both sides in the religious debate the book begins with Diarmaid Cath in s survey of the Latinity of Ireland through the renaissance. This offers a strongly argued case for seeing a Renaissance culture among Irish magnates of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries offering the example of the correspondence between the Fitzgeralds and the City of Florence which played on a shared origin myth of Trojans in Etruria. The letter of 1440 in which Florence made overtures to the seventh earl of Desmond was written by the pioneering humanist Leonardo Bruni 1370? 1444 correspondence from the heartlands of the Italian renaissance as it was gathering its full strength. It is unsurprising with this background that the eighth earl of Desmond in 1464 was instrumental in the attempt to found a university at Drogheda four years before he fell foul of the English government for his intimacy with the Gaelic lite and the initiative failed. We move in the second chapter to the world of the recusant Catholics in Ireland and the important figure of Richard Stanihurst 1547 1618 in whose lifetime the status of the Old English changed dramatically as English hostility to Catholicism hardened into outright persecution and Stanihurst himself had to flee to the continent. John Barry s thoughtful essay explores the play between Stanihurst s Ciceronian re casting of works by Giraldus Cambrensis De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis published at Antwerp by the celebrated firm of Plantin in 1584 and John Derricke fl.1580 whose illustrated Image of Irlande was published in 1581 itself drawing on Stanihurst s earlier Description of Ireland contributed to Holinshed s Chronicles. This account of Stanihurst is amplified by Colm Lennon s fine account of his later career on the continent at one point as an alchemist working at the Escorial in the laboratories of Philip II of Spain but chiefly as the correspondent of the distinguished Netherlandic humanist Justus Lipsius whose own reconciliation to Catholicism and appointment as professor at Louvain took place in 1592. This correspondence is not only of lasting interest as the record of two profoundly educated men trying to make sense of the political and religious conflicts of their times but also as a testimony to the high place which Stanihurst was accorded by one of the leaders of the northern renaissance. The fourth chapter is Keith Sidwell and David Edwards s account of Dermot O Meara s Ormonius an epic poem celebrating the career of Black Thomas Butler 10th earl of Ormonde. This was published in London in 1615 facing outwards to an Ireland in process of further rapid change partly speaking to the New English but also clearly addressing a learned class among the Catholics both Old English and Irish. Thus it works within one of the most interesting and problematic linguistic territories of Latin. In Ireland Latin is the potential language of communication between those who do not share a vernacular therefore an area of some danger to the New English in their attempts to represent the Irish Catholic community as uncivilised and inarticulate. It is also pragmatically a useful medium of communication in a country filling up with diverse settlers. The authors emphasise the adroit way in which the Ormonius remains almost entirely a battlefield epic thus avoiding some of the political and religious questions which were growing ever more problematic through the lifetime of the epic s subject to the degree that the English government and later Rinnunccini the Papal Nuncio doubted from different viewpoints whether it was possible to be a loyal Catholic in Ireland at all. The book then opens out to consider the Irish community in Spain and in Hiram Morgan s contribution specifically Philip O Sullivan Beare c.1590 1636 . His Historiae Catholicae Hiberniae Compendium published at Lisbon in 1621 emphasised the illegality of English actions in Ireland and was itself considered by the generation of Spanish academic jurists who in some degree championed the rights of indigenous peoples in the Spanish colonies. O Sullivan is also the subject of David Caulfield s elegant chapter on his controversial work Tenebriomastix directed against Scottish in the modern sense claims to the ancient designation Scotus and thence to Irish properties such as the successful Scottish annexation of the Irish monasteries in Franconia. The target of O Sullivan s very adroit and very funny invective is David Chambers Camerarius and the large claims advanced in his 1631 publication De Scotorum Fortitudine. O Sullivan has little mercy on the porridge maker lablalyarius of Calvindonia indeed on the whole Scottish historical tradition from Hector Boece onwards who are tenebriones Picti to a man. Chalmers comes under particular attack for dedicating his book to the heretical King Charles I an indication of the way in which attitudes were hardening yet further. On this count not that I am defending Chalmers or the Scots or anything O Sullivan is wrong: some copies are dedicated with a rather double edged epistle to Charles some bear a completely different epistle to the Cardinal Protector of the Scottish nation. The seventh chapter is Jason Harris excellent analysis of the stylistic and rhetorical devices of Stephen White s two Apologiae for Ireland against the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis and Stanihurst s De Rebus of 1584. White 1574 late 1640s was the first student of the Irish College in Salamanca to become a Jesuit and his work even if it lacks a final authorial polish has much of the baroque elegance which characterises Jesuit writing. Controversy and invective are also the subject of Gr inne MacLaughlin s witty and able analysis of Fr Robert O Connel s virulent use of his Latin learning the verses peppered throughout the famous Commentarius Rinuccinianus written at Florence in 1661 6. The opening of this chapter makes an excellent point about English words quoted in contemporary Irish language verse almost all of them curses and profanities thereby proposing that civilised people speak Latin and Irish. The same technique is also used by the Scottish Gaelic poet Iain Lom. The last chapter is Elizabethanne Boran s comprehensive account of the manuscript collecting activities of the Protestant archbishop James Ussher emphasising at once that there were some scholarly networks operating internationally which transcended confessional divisions but also that there were specifically Protestant international circles of collectors and scholars as for example those touching on the new University of Leiden. This study of the economy of exchange is particularly interesting in its emphasis on the importance of transcriptions to early modern scholars and on the frequent purpose of early modern manuscript research being the preparation for publication of national histories . This collection is without exaggeration of international importance. It also sets an urgent agenda for the revision of the cultural history of early modern Scotland. Early modern Scots used Latin for all the purposes for which it was used by their Irish contemporaries but there was also a distinctive cult and culture of Latin so much so that two of the most admired Latin authors of early modern Europe were without question George Buchanan and John Barclay. There are serious recent studies of these two writers but much more is needed. It would be possible to assert that Latin is the primary means of Scottish literary expression between 1603 and 1715 as well as the language in which all serious debate about identity and history is conducted especially in the northern half of the country. This splendid volume shows that Ireland has done what Scotland still needs to do. ~Peter Davidson University of Aberdeen