Ciaran McDonough

Junior Fellow in the cluster "Cultural memory and cultural heritage in Europe in the context of digital transformation"

Medieval Law in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: The Brehon Law Commission, Sectarianism, and Nationalism

During the nineteenth century, scholars in most European nations turned their attention to their country’s corpus of medieval laws. Most research output around this topic took place between 1830 and 1860. As the largest medieval corpus of vernacular law, the nineteenth-century project to translate the corpus of medieval Irish law was a large endeavour, taking place between 1851 and 1901. The project to translate the laws was funded by the British Government, hence everything was meticulously documented by the project steering committee. Because of both the scope of the nineteenth-century translation project and its long duration, there exists a large amount of what has been termed ‘behind the scenes’ material – documents and memoranda, which shed light on how the project was conducted, people’s impressions of the subject, and the problems that were encountered. Thus, this material provides a wealth of information which is under-utilised in research. 

The nineteenth-century translation project serves as a microcosm of society at the time, reflecting the power balances and injustices which existed between Protestants and Catholics in nineteenth-century Ireland, and these are reflected in the documents. The majority Protestant steering committee was in charge of two Catholic translators and editors, and the minute book of the project bears witness to their poor treatment and the playing down of their expertise as they had not received a standard university education, which was largely denied to them as Catholics. A study of this material will shed valuable light on life as a Catholic scholar in nineteenth-century Ireland in a shifting world.