The River-side

Student Exhibition, MA in Medieval History

Mapping Cork: Mass on the Marsh

The Civitates map of Cork names six churches and two abbeys, which are indicated as important features, reflecting the significance of these locations in medieval and early modern ‘Corke’. The history of the churches in Cork provides an interesting outline of the city’s development throughout the Middle Ages. The precursor to the medieval city was the monastic site of St Finbarr, which according to tradition, was established in 606. Around three hundred years later, Vikings established a settlement on the river Lee near this monastery.

The first church listed on the map is Christ’s Church, located on modern-day South Main Street. The site of Christ’s Church is an important remnant of Cork’s medieval past. The current Georgian building was constructed in 1720, however, this was not the first church located on these grounds. Following the coming of the Vikings and the establishment of Cork as a trading hub, a Hiberno-Norse church was built on this site in 1050. It is said to be the first church to be built within the walls of the city. In 1180, the Anglo-Normans built a new church at this location, which survived into the early modern period. This church, originally dedicated to the Holy Trinity, is the Christ’s Church depicted on the map.

The church gained a royal reputation, when it received patronage from King Richard II in the fourteenth century and was referred to as the King’s Chapel. According to tradition, in 1497 it also hosted the coronation of the pretender to the English throne, Perkin Warbeck. Christ’s Church was the main place of worship in the city: the mayor attended festivals here, alongside judges and other notable people. A sixteenth-century mayor called Thomas Ronan (d. 1554) was interred inside, his resting place was marked with the inscription ‘The Modest Man’. The church probably hosted the wedding of the poet, Edmund Spenser, famous for The Faerie Queene, to his wife Elizabeth Boyle in 1594. This poem includes interesting references to the landscape of County Cork.

The second church listed on the map is St Peter’s Church, located on the present-day North Main Street. Said to be the oldest standing church in Cork, dating to the year 1270, St Peter’s Church was financed and constructed by King Henry III. After the Anglo-Norman invasion, English influence created a rift between the Gaelic Irish and the settlers of the now-walled port. The English crown was attempting to consolidate its control in Ireland, collecting £1150 yearly from the island (estimated to be roughly £900,000 today). Royal jurisdiction allowed Henry to tighten his grip on Cork and use it as a source of revenue and land for his English vassals. The political motivation behind the construction of St Peter’s is evident in its design, with the building serving as a tower to watch over the city. The king’s arms were carved into the stone on the western wall of the building and were still visible in the mid-eighteenth century as described by The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Cork. In early modern times, Cork remained a source of income for the English crown and the royal presence within the city was an enduring element of its administration.

A number of churches were located just outside of the medieval city walls.  The church within the ‘new fort’ is marked as ‘Holly Rode’ (number 7) also known as the church of St Mary de Nard in some earlier sources. The earliest mentions of this church are found in twelfth-century letters. The origin of the church’s dedication is unknown: modern scholars suggest that the church was dedicated to the Holy Cross or that its name referred to the holy ointment used by Mary Magdalene to anoint Christ. The church had withered away by the seventeenth century, around the time of the construction of Elizabeth Fort. 

Mendicant or begging orders that arrived in Ireland in the thirteenth century had their friaries established near the city’s walls. The Franciscan friary was established outside the north side (number 3), while the Dominican and Augustinian friars were located south of the city walls (numbers 4 and 9). Their location close to the city walls and city gates allowed the friars easy access to preach to both the urban and rural population as well as beg for alms.

‘S. Barrie’s Church’, or St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, was also located on the south side of the city (number 5 on the Civitates map). It stood on the site of the previously mentioned monastic settlement of St Finbarr, founded in the seventh century. The simple original building continued to be used throughout the early medieval period but became destitute around the time of the Anglo-Norman arrival. It was converted to Anglican use during the time of the Reformation in the 1530s, under the Tudors. On the Civitates map ‘S. Barrie’s Church’ is next to a ‘spyre’ (number 6), that housed the bells. This ‘spyre’ was the only surviving part of the structure during the Siege of Cork in the late seventeenth century. The cathedral spire can still be seen in an illustration of Queen Victoria’s visit to Cork in 1849. What remained of the medieval cathedral however was demolished in 1858 to make way for the construction of the new cathedral by William Burges.

David O’Mahony

Further reading
Kelleher, Hilary, McCarthy, Fintan and Brett, Ciara, ed., Cork City’s Burial Places: A Study of the Cemeteries, Graveyards and Burial Places within Cork City (Cork, 2011).

Leask, Harold G., Irish Churches and Monastic Buildings (Dundalk, 1977).

O’Callaghan, A., The Churches of Cork City: An Illustrated History (Cork, 2016).

Smith, Charles, The Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Cork in Four Books (Dublin, 1750).

Student Exhibition, MA in Medieval History

Mapping Cork: From Rivers to Roads

Like other Irish cities represented in the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Cork was established as a harbour at the mouth of a river. However, more than these cities, Cork has been defined by its unique placement on the river Lee. Built originally on two islands within the river, the city has made effective use of the waterways throughout its history, whether for defence or commerce.  Indeed, as a walled medieval town established on these two islands, Cork benefitted from having a waterway which flowed inside the walls. This allowed merchant ships to dock safely within the protection of the walls, instead of in the open water, which encouraged the growth of a wealthy merchant class and international trade. A 1306 will of Cork merchant, John de Wynchedon, is a witness to the wealth of the city’s medieval merchants. John’s generosity ensured the wellbeing of his family after his death, but he also took great care to offer his benefactions to over a dozen of Cork’s churches for the salvation of his soul as well as to the marginalized groups, including the poor and the lepers.

However, the map of ‘Corcke’ in the Civitates, alongside other early modern maps of the city, reveals an even more subtle fashion in which the riverways shaped Cork.  The map is oriented in an east-west direction, but by reorienting the map north-south and by paying attention to the channels of the river, features of present-day Cork become identifiable. It is also possible to spot the modern street patterns, many of which exist above the earlier river paths.  

In the early maps of Cork, from 1600 to 1650, the city is depicted as based on two islands, separated by a waterway running across town and dividing the city into the north and south sides.  By 1690, this inlet no longer appeared on the maps, a road now ran east-west through the walled town, where it formerly was. This road was situated roughly where the modern Washington Street is located.

By the late seventeenth century the city had also begun expanding outside of the walls, into what would eventually become known as the Huguenot Quarter, north of present-day St Patrick’s Street. However, at that time water still flowed in channels, which correspond to the Grand Parade, St Patrick’s Street, Coal Quay Market, South Mall and the sections of Washington Street that were located outside the walls of the medieval city. Roughly fifty years later, the area presently known as Oliver Plunkett Street began to be developed; quays lined the waterside on the Grand Parade and the curve which later became St Patrick’s Street. The water channels were covered over between the Grand Parade and the Coal Quay Market.  On the map of Cork from 1750, quays are also clearly evident along a spur of the river alongside, where the Opera House and Crawford Art Gallery now exist. 

By the 1770s, most of the waterways beneath the present-day Grand Parade and the Coal Quay Market were covered, which greatly reduced the expanse of waterfront quays available in the eastern half of the city. The overall shape of modern Cork’s central island was established, the city’s development had already reached the easternmost point of the island at the confluence between the north and south branches of the river Lee.  In the western part, the city had not yet expanded far beyond the medieval walls; Abbey Island, located to the south-west and near St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, was still surrounded by the separate channels of the river.

By 1801, St Patrick’s Street had completely replaced the older waterway, as had the Grand Parade, and much of the South Mall. Small spurs of water still remained at the locations of the Coal Quay Market and the Emmett Place, and water channels still separated Abbey Island from the rest of the city centre.  The city was expanding both north and south of the river, and was beginning to grow westward.

By tracing the water paths shown in the early maps of Cork, such as that found within the Civitates Orbis Terrarum, it is possible to recognize the locations of many modern landmarks, because of the unique fashion in which the riverways were directly covered and converted into roads.

Emmanuel Alden

Further reading

Crowley, John and Murphy, Michael, Atlas of Cork City (Cork, 2005).

Johnson, Gina, The Laneways of Medieval Cork: Study Carried out as Part of Cork City Council’s Major Initiative (Cork, 2002). 

O’Callaghan, Antóin, Cork’s St Patrick’s Street: A History (Cork, 2010).

O’Flanagan, Patrick and Buttimer, Cornelius G, eds., Cork History and Society: Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County (Dublin, 1993).

O’Sullivan, D., ‘The Testament of John de Wynchedon of Cork, Anno 1306’, Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 61 (1956), 75-88.

Student Exhibition, MA in Medieval History

Mapping Cork: Fashion and Rags

The Civitates Orbis Terrarum was a carefully thought-out tool to inform the reader about the chief cities of the known world, where individual pages were constructed from existing maps and costume books. Each detail contained cultural references that would have been understood by the early modern viewer. On the Irish page the maps of the four cities (Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork) are flanked by six figures representing Irish society. The order of the figures suggests a scale of affluence, the very richest are depicted on the top and the poorest at the bottom of the page.

The top pair includes an Irish nobleman on the left and an Irish matron on the right.  Their clothes demonstrate what the fabulously rich and well adorned people wore, with the man sporting a splayed collar and a pointed hat, and the woman wearing a ruff and opulent fur-lined coat, which was the fashion of the time among the wealthy.

The middle pair consists of Irish town-folk, with a man on the left and a woman on the right, wearing more modest but very respectable attire.

The bottom pair on the page shows the rural Irish, once again placing the man on the left and the woman on the right. In direct contrast to the Irish nobility, the rural Irish wear functional clothing, including mantles.

It is perhaps little coincidence that the poorest Irish people flank the cities that the map seems to represent as the least busy and rich. In comparison to the bustling city of Galway, with its dozens of buildings, impressive walls and a busy waterway, Cork may appear to be shown as sparse and lacklustre. There are fewer buildings and no ships sailing in its waters, which may suggest to the viewer a lack of trade and commerce, and little in the way of cultural vibrancy in Cork city.  But as can be seen from other blog posts in this online exhibition, Cork acted as an important trade centre in the medieval and early modern periods. 

For the rural Irish to be placed alongside the map of Cork was a means of conveying to the viewer the nature of Cork and its hinterland as uncivilised or at least simple and rather backward. The map reinforces this image through the use of the words ‘rusticus’ and ‘rustica’, Latin words for ‘a country-dweller’, to describe the Irish man and woman who are placed in the lower level of the page that also includes the map of Cork at the same lower level.  While the word ‘rusticus’ can evoke uncivilised qualities of country-dwellers, it can also refer to their simplicity. Saint Patrick, for example, described himself as ‘the most simple country person’ or ‘rusticissimus’. 

In the Civitates, the page with four maps of Irish cities is accompanied by a brief description of each city: Cork is described as not very big, yet densely populated and prosperous, with the surrounding area inhabited by seditious people. This description of the city, labels ‘rusticus’ and ‘rustica’ and the inclusion of the Irish mantles, would evoke to the viewer’s mind the cultural stereotype of the Irish as savage and uncivilised, more at home amongst the wilds.  Such views of the indigenous Irish have their origins in the classical world with some writers describing the Irish as violent, incestuous and cannibalistic. In contrast the English rural dwellers, seen on the Civitates page with the images of the English cities, are presented wearing more elaborate clothing. 

Following the late twelfth-century Anglo-Norman invasion, ideas of Irish barbarism became fully entrenched within the European mindset. The cleric Gerald of Wales (c. 1146 – c. 1223) drew upon ancient ideas of Irish barbarity in his widely copied books The Topography of Ireland and The Conquest of Ireland. Gerald’s texts, written in Latin, were the seminal points of reference for hostile early modern English views concerning the Irish people.

The depiction of Cork as a walled city, which needed multiple fortifications in its suburbs, suggested to the viewer the potential threat from the Gaelic Irish. The surrounding lands of Cork are bereft of roads and have scattered built structures in the countryside. Consequently, Cork’s hinterland appears dangerous and the city with its walls suggests potential threats from the uncivilised Irish. The English readership would identify any civilisation in Cork as a direct result of the Anglo-Norman conquest. The map and accompanying images revealed to the European mindset the dual nature of Cork as influenced by the medieval ideas of civility and barbarity. At the time of the map’s creation, the early modern Gaelic Irish were still viewed as wild and savage, akin to their medieval ancestors, as seen in the artwork of the famous German painter and craftsman Albrecht Dürer and the Flemish artist Lucas d’Heere.

Andrew Neville

Further reading

Ainsworth, Peter F., Jean Froissart and the Fabric of History: Truth, Myth and Fiction in the Chroniques (Oxford, 1990).

Davies, R.R., The First English Empire (Oxford, 2003).

Downham, Clare, Medieval Ireland (Cambridge, 2011).

Friedman, John Block, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1981).

McGettigan, Darren, Richard II and the Irish Kings (Dublin, 2016).

Morgan, Hiram, ‘Albrecht Dürer: First Superstar of Northern European Art’, History Ireland 14 (2006), online edition. 

Student Exhibition, MA in Medieval History

Mapping Cork: Representing Ireland in Maps before the Civitates Orbis Terrarum: Ortelius and English Colonial Perspectives

The pioneering cartographer Abraham Ortelius asserted: ‘Historiae oculus geographia’ (meaning that ‘geography is the eye of history’). His Theatrum Orbis Terrarum or Theatre of the World was the first modern atlas. It was initially published in Antwerp in 1570, and continuously revised and extended until 1612. It was immensely successful and influential.

Ortelius included a map of Ireland in his 1573 edition of the Theatrum. Originating in an erudite Anglo-Flemish milieu, the map is oriented west-east and presents Ireland as ‘a British island’ partially under English control. Cities and towns are dotted along the island’s eastern and southern coasts, where English rule was strongest. Great wildernesses, mountains, woods, rivers and lakes cover much of the rest of Ireland, particularly Ulster and Connacht, where the indigenous Gaelic Irish were dominant. 

The map also contains texts credited to Gerald of Wales’s late twelfth-century Topographia Hibernica or Topography of Ireland (1188). Gerald had revived and extended Graeco-Roman ethnic stereotypes of the Irish as exotic, barbarous and sexually deviant. The Geraldine texts incorporated in Ortelius’s map also emphasise that the Irish live on a remote oceanic island of marvels. These include Lough Erne, where the spires of churches may be seen beneath its waves: evidence that God had flooded the region because of its inhabitants’ bestiality.

The Theatrum was very well received by the English colonial elite in Ireland, whose views had helped to shape its representation of the country and its inhabitants. Because of the map’s inclusion in the Theatrum, their interpretation of Irish geography, history, culture and society now circulated in print among Europe’s intelligentsia and ruling classes. 

Gerald presents the conquest under King Henry II of England as a civilising mission. The Irish are a ‘gens silvestris’ (‘a woodland people’): intelligent, handsome and untamed barbarians who spurn cultural progress for idle pastoralism in an uncultivated wilderness. The Topographia states that in contrast to the ‘literally barbarous’ Irish, ‘man usually progresses from woods to fields, and from fields to settlements and communities of citizens’. 

This idea of human progress was inherited from ancient Greece and Rome. Gerald’s Latin conveys subtleties lost in English. A citizen (civis) lives in an association of citizens or civitas, giving us the word ‘city’. This settled, communal and interdependent way of life leads to civilitas: civility or civilisation. Gerald’s insistence on the literal barbarism of the Irish recalls Cassiodorus’s theory that the Latin word for a barbarian (‘barbarus’) comes from ‘barba’ (‘beard’) and ‘rus’ (‘countryside’). This matches Gerald’s description of the unkempt ‘flowing hair and beards’ of the wild, forest-dwelling Irish. 

A map of Europe, oriented east-west, accompanies Gerald’s Irish narratives in a manuscript (c. 1200) owned by the National Library of Ireland. It emphasises Ireland’s remoteness at the western ends of the earth (Gerald argued that isolation from the wider world caused Irish primitivism).

The map’s depiction of cities in Ireland visually reinforces the texts’ emphasis on Irish rejection of urban life. The Topographic and Expugnatio make it clear that the cities shown on the map – Dublin, Wexford, Waterford and Limerick – were Viking foundations, surrounded ‘with fine trenches and walls’ against the Gaelic Irish. The ‘innate laziness’ of the Irish meant that they allowed the Vikings to build these cities for trading purposes; the Irish themselves ‘did not bother to sail the seas or have much truck with commerce’.

Two cities shown in the Civitates are absent from this map: Galway and Cork. The Anglo-Normans had not yet conquered Connacht and founded Galway. The omission of Cork may be deliberate, since Gerald knew that its origins were Gaelic Irish: ‘the land of St Finbarr’.

Gerald and other sources indicate that the Anglo-Normans seized Cork in the 1170s. In Ortelius’s time, it was a resolutely English city in its cultural affiliations and political loyalties. Ortelius’s map of Ireland shows Cork as an island in the river Lee, its urban status symbolised by an image of buildings surmounted by a cross.  Westwards, the map displays ‘the grene wode’, mountains and open country.

The Civitates Orbis Terrarum: The City and Civilisation

Ortelius’s Theatrum orbis terrarum gave Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg a model for the title and conceptual framework of their Civitates Orbis Terrarum or Cities of the World. This work was first published in Cologne and Antwerp, and appeared in six volumes between 1572 and 1617. Its maps, plans, profiles and bird’s eye views of cities and landscapes were mostly copied from existing publications, and its texts were written in Latin, though versions in French and German also appeared. 

The Civitates provides an urban companion to the Theatrum’s survey of global geography. Both enterprises are interested in far more than the delineation of physical and political space. They are concerned with identity, culture, and society, manifested in appearance, clothing and behaviour, institutions, laws, customs, traditions, beliefs and myths, and the resources and wonders of the natural world that make the human experience possible and pleasurable. For Ortelius, and Braun and Hogenberg, geography is indeed the eye of history, understood as the study of human life in its multifarious aspects and contexts.

The idea of the city as the zenith of human achievement is central to the Civitates and Theatrum. The title page of the Civitates gives visual expression to this idea.

It is dominated by an image of the Graeco-Roman Magna Mater or Great Mother deity, holding instruments vital for the design and construction of buildings. Accompanying texts and images indicate that humanity came together and progressed from barbarous isolation to civilised urban association via the discovery of fire, and the development of settled agriculture and the rudiments of architecture. 

But the title page of the Civitates also cites classical and biblical myths linking cities and civilisation with violence. Athena, the patron goddess of wisdom, crafts and war, is described as the inventor of the citadel. Cain, the first murderer and builder of the first city (Genesis 4:17), is referenced as the founder of towns. 

The Civitates Orbis Terrarum in Geo-Political Context 

The Civitates appeared in an age of high civilisation and bitter wars. Most of its maps feature European cities in lands ranging eastwards from Ireland to Russia. Its city maps of Africa, Asia and the Americas tend to feature centres of spiritual, cultural, political, strategic and mercantile interest to Europeans. Jerusalem, for example, is shown in three separate maps, indicating its exceptional importance in the European Christian thought-world. 

Later sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe was fractured by secular struggles for power and territory, merging with confessional struggles arising from the Reformation. The splintering of the Western Church into Catholic and Protestant denominations added to existing divisions between the West and Eastern Orthodoxy. The Civitates reflects these tensions, but nevertheless posits a common European religious and cultural heritage that faces an existential outside threat. Braun identifies the Ottoman Turkish empire as the mortal enemy of a Europe coterminous with Christendom. Writing only a year after the decisive battle of Lepanto (1571), when the Holy League routed the Ottoman fleet in the Mediterranean, he claims that Islamic prohibitions on the use of images means that the Turks cannot use the Civitates’s detailed urban maps and plans in their wars since they include representations of human beings.

Contexts for the Representation of Ireland in the Civitates Orbis Terrarum

The Civitates map of Cork and the cities of Dublin, Galway and Limerick, and its representation of different social groups in Ireland, also reflects contemporary conflicts, and related ethnic and cultural stereotyping. The materials concerning Ireland appear in the atlas’s sixth and final volume, and offer an imperial English vision of the island within a British context. The extended title of the Civitates’s source, and its allusion to Ortelius, is instructive: The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, Presenting an Exact geography of the Kingdomes of England, Scotland, Ireland and the Iles Adionying.

When the cartographer John Speed produced this atlas (1611-12), the English Crown had achieved hegemony over the entire archipelago. Speed dedicated his work to James I and VI of England and Scotland, ruling as ‘an Imperiall Maiestie’ with the new title of ‘King of Great Britaine’. James I and VI was also King of Ireland. In 1541, Ireland had been declared a kingdom under Henry VIII, who began to reassert English control over the island.

The Irish wars of the late Elizabethan period saw the Crown overwhelm Gaelic Ireland with unremitting violence, atrocity and famine. The poet Edmund Spenser, settling on confiscated lands in North Cork, supported this policy of terror and devastation, and described its impact on the people of Munster in his View of the Present State of Ireland (1596): ‘they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves … in the shorte space there were almost none left, and a most populous and plentifull country suddanly made voyde of man or beast.’

The Harp and the Fort

Visually, Ireland appears to feature in the Civitates as an integral part of mainstream European civilisation: a Christian kingdom with cities and an agricultural base, under English rule but with distinctive regional variations from England in terms of clothing and personal grooming, particularly in the case of its country people.

If anything, the country looks even more soberly normative than the Ireland of Speed’s Theatre. Speed’s map of Cork city is embedded in his map of the province of Munster. Omitting Munster, the Civitates loses the sea-monster glimpsed off the Waterford coast and the boy-harpist riding another great monster in the ocean beyond Kerry.

But indications of violence and Irish otherness emerge from deeper engagement with the Civitates’s images and texts, and the cultural stereotypes that they contain. To conclude with a single example: consider the forbidding image in the upper-right panel next to the map of Dublin (below). It is directly opposite the crowned harp depicted in the upper-left panel next to Galway: a symbol of Ireland under the English Crown.

The upper-right panel displays ‘Enis Kelling Fort’: a tall, moated and fortified structure in ‘Lough Earne’. This image is taken from the Theatre’s map of Ulster, which Speed presents as mountainous, wooded and scarcely urbanised, and – no coincidence – the last stronghold of Gaelic Irish resistance to English rule. The English had captured Enniskillen Fort in 1594: a significant achievement in their advance across Ulster and one that enabled them more easily to defend their gains and suppress further resistance in the surrounding lands.

Enniskillen Fort’s inclusion in the Civitates, and its alignment with the crowned harp, indicates how English power over Ireland was achieved and maintained. The walls and fortifications of Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork, seen in the maps of those cities, were built with good reason.

Diarmuid Scully

Student Exhibition, MA in Medieval History

Introduction: MA in Medieval History, HI6091 Module and Special Collections at University College Cork

Special Collections is delighted to welcome the School of History students engaging with our collections through a series of online exhibitions. UCC Library’s Special Collections holds a variety of early modern maps of Cork city and county such the Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1576-1618) (volume six published in 1618 contains maps of Irish cities). In addition, Special Collections holds maps in print, in facsimile, in critical editions, in limited editions, in illustrated guides, in atlases and reference sources including: 

• John Lindsay’s Map of Cork Harbour (1759);
• William Beauford’s Map of Cork (1801);
• Taschen’s 2011 facsimile of Civitates Orbis terrarum = Cities of the World; original edition published 1675-1618;
• Terrarum orbis series which includes a critical edition of the The Hereford Map, original c. 1300;
• Edward Lynam’s The First Engraved Atlas of the World: The Cosmographia of Claudius Ptolemaeus, Bologna, 1477, 200 copies were printed of which this is #58. In addition, this item is inscribed by Lynam “To University College Cork, from Edward Lynam, September 1942”;
• An illustrated guide to the atlas The Ortelius Atlas Maps (2011), original Latin edition published in 1570;
• Irish Historic Towns Atlas series (1986 – present).

This online exhibition, which uses the Civitates map of Cork as a starting point, is presented as a series of blog posts and celebrates the ongoing collaboration between UCC’s Special Collections and the School of History’s MA in Medieval History. History students, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, who visit Special Collections receive specialised support and access to stimulating rare publications and materials of historical value. These students develop key skills including communication, teamwork and archival intelligence: the practical skills to locate and use special collections material, and artefactual skills: the ability to identify and analyse primary sources. Acquisition of this skill set leads them to a deeper understanding of the artefact far beyond that acquired from modern text reprints.

Special Collections represent research facilities that provide specialised support and access to stimulating resources. In their second and third years, UCC History undergraduate students are introduced to Special Collections as part of their various modules when they get an opportunity to work with rare publications and material of historical value. These undergraduate classes always leave the students animated by a space they usually do not frequent during the course of their studies, by the content of the material that is brought out especially for them and by the kindness and helpfulness of staff.

The initial encounter of undergraduates with Special Collections continues through their postgraduate studies. The MA in Medieval History students in the past three years have availed of an exciting and rare opportunity of being on work placements in Special Collections. They have created online exhibitions inspired by rare books and facsimiles housed by Special Collections as part of the HI6091 Skills for Medieval Historians module; these exhibitions include: The Luttrell Psalter, The Book of Kells and Viking Cork. 

This blog centres on the themes of urban and national identity with a particular focus on Cork city as a centre of trade, culture and politics; all of these themes reflect the research interests of the current MA students, with the images and texts selected by the students themselves to illustrate these themes. Using the Civitates map of Cork, this project is yet another outcome of collaboration between the librarians, academics and students. It represents a collaboration that continues to stimulate all involved and through the online output reaches beyond the walls of UCC. More importantly, the project has been completed during the COVID-19 crisis and its completion is a great testimony to the value of teamwork and collegiality, and the commitment of the MA students to produce high quality research during challenging times.

Students 

Andrew Neville completed his undergraduate studies in History and History of Art at University College Cork. He was awarded the Jennifer O’Reilly Prize in Medieval History, 2020, for his work on the representations of Reginald FitzUrse in medieval treatments of the murder scenes of Thomas Becket. His primary research interests are medieval artistic culture, medieval warfare and cosmology. His MA thesis focuses on the medieval French perceptions of the Irish during Richard II’s campaign in Ireland. Andrew is also interested in the relationship between medieval colour theory and geographical symbolism, and the narratives of Irish barbarity and English civility.  

Emmanuel Alden earned his BA in History at Kutzown University, Pennsylvania, in 2018.  His undergraduate work focused on European history, studying the events which led to the Second World War during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in addition to studies on the Reformation and Crusades.  His undergraduate dissertation was on the historiography of the Viking Age, and his current historical interests lie in the Viking Age, and the connections between the Celtic and Nordic peoples. His MA thesis examines how the medieval Irish portrayed the Hiberno-Norse Viking population in Ireland in the late Viking Age, with an emphasis on the names and phrases used when describing them.

Patrick McKee completed his undergraduate degree in History and English at University College Cork. His final year History dissertation looked at the Christian-Muslim encounters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Before his UCC studies, Patrick served as a senior NCO in the Irish military. Patrick’s main historical interests lie in medieval Christianity and medieval Christian mysticism. His MA in Medieval History dissertation focuses on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and its depiction in pilgrimage accounts from the fourth to the fourteenth century.

David O’Mahony completed his undergraduate studies in History and Geography at University College Cork. David’s undergraduate History dissertation looked at the bardic influences on politics in early modern Ireland. David’s interest in medieval music is inspired by his own musical background and experience in composing and performing music. His MA thesis focuses on the unique musicianship of medieval Irish harpers and poetic skills of the bardic class. It compares their exceptional skills to the continental approaches to music and performance arts. The thesis also looks at medieval Icelandic music culture as a means of comparing two insular places.

The project has been overseen by Elaine Harrington and Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton.

Elaine Harrington is UCC Library’s Special Collections Assistant Librarian. Elaine raises the profile of UCC Library’s Special Collections with local, national and international engagement through classes, social media, exhibitions, events, outreach and broadcasting. She collaborates with 30 academics in UCC and CIT to develop innovative research-led undergraduate and postgraduate modules based on primary sources held in UCC Library’s Special Collections. Elaine is a co-founder of the Sonic Histories of Cork City (SHOCC) Project and the Chair of CONUL’s sub-group for Unique & Distinct Collections. 

Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton is Senior Lecturer at UCC’s School of History. She has published on Irish illuminated manuscripts, manuscripts in Polish libraries, and most recently, on the Irish mendicant orders. She is interested in the intersections between History and other disciplines, History and the arts, and History and students’ skills and employability. Her professional experience includes work on the Franciscan Faith: Sacred Art in Ireland 1600-1750 exhibition as well as the Medieval Ireland exhibition, both on permanent display at the National Museum of Ireland. She collaborates on the Monastic Ireland Project that provides a platform for academic studies on monasticism, combined with heritage and education outputs. She has contributed to programmes on RTÉ’s Lyric FM titled ‘Friars Walk’ (December 2016),  ‘Jerusalem Passion’ (April 2017, finalist at the New York Festivals: World’s Best Radio Programs, June 2018) and ‘Christmas Postcards’ (December 2017). She is a co-editor of Monastic Europe: Community, Landscape and Settlement (Brepols, 2019). 

Acknowledgements 

We wish to acknowledge the generosity of the National Library of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin’s Digital Collections, the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, the Library of Congress and the University of Utrecht for allowing us to use their images of MS 700, the Hardiman Atlas, Blackrock Castle and both editions of Civitiates Orbis Terrarum respectively. We thank Dr Hiram Morgan and Dr Diarmuid Scully for their comments and advice on the text of the blog, and Peter Finnegan for his talk on the Blackstone Launchpad facilities available to postgraduate students. The students of the MA in Medieval History programme wish to convey their gratitude to Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton, coordinator of the HI6091 Skills for Medieval Historians module, and Elaine Harrington, Special Collections Librarian, for their support throughout the editing process of this blog.

Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton & Elaine Harrington

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