Date Thesis Awarded

6-2012

Access Type

Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only

Degree Name

Bachelors of Arts (BA)

Department

History

Advisor

Philip Daileader

Committee Members

John W. Conlee

Nicholas Seth Popper

Abstract

The Iona Chronicle is an important source of chronology for the history of early medieval northern Britain and Ireland, given the prominence of the ecclesiastical center in several spheres of influence. In the mid-eighth century, a copy of the chronicle appears to have been transferred to a monastic house within the Ionan familia in Ireland. This work will explore the reasons for the transfer using both the early chronicle evidence (preserved in the later surviving manuscripts collectively termed the Irish Annals) as well as the seventh- and eighth-century geopolitical and ecclesiastical context of northern Britain and Ireland. In doing so, it will contend that the transfer was part of an Ionan assertion and extension of influence in Ireland, in conjunction with secular kin ties, as opposed to the scholarly view that some outside militaristic pressure necessarily encouraged the transferal of an Iona Chronicle copy to Ireland. On a larger scale, it will illustrate the complexity and sophistication of ecclesiastical and political affairs in the early medieval period, in contrast to the common depictions of northern Britain and Ireland as remote, insignificant or 'savage,' based on their distance from the center of the Christian world.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 1.0 License.

Comments

Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.

On-Campus Access Only

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