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  • Chapter 16 - The Professional Historians of Medieval Ireland

  • from Part III - Practice
  • Edited by Jennifer Jahner, California Institute of Technology, Emily Steiner, University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth M. Tyler, University of York
  • Book:
    Medieval Historical Writing
    Published online:
    19 December 2019
    Print publication:
    28 November 2019, pp 279-298

  • Summary

    Medieval Ireland was unusual in supporting a multitude of paid professional historians or senchaide, graduates of specialist schools where the curriculum combined chronological studies and ecclesiastical history inherited from Early Christian monasteries, with mythical and genealogical lore of the bardic poets. After the twelfth-century church reform these schools were run by learned families supported by tax-free lands. The political resurgence of the Gaelic Irish in the fourteenth century was matched by a cultural resurgence which saw the senchaide transcribe and hence preserve for posterity a wealth of Early Irish literary texts. The senchaides’ practical function was as expert witnesses in law-suits to land boundaries, customary tributes and genealogies, but they also served a propaganda purpose, legitimating the authority of both Irish chieftains and Anglo-Irish barons, a function that became increasingly important and well-rewarded as the the power of the English Crown in Ireland shrank during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.