Art and Devotion in Late Medieval Ireland (review)

The later Middle Ages in Ireland were described by the late Robin Flower as the "Franciscan centuries," a fitting comment given that there were over a hundred Franciscan houses in the country (far more than in England) and, as this book makes clear, popular devotion was to a large degree shaped by the teaching of the friars. This era of Irish art and religious history has attracted little attention from scholars outside the country, the visual culture of the time not infrequently dismissed as peripheral or debased. Even that doyen of Irish art, Francoise Henry, resorted to the word "brutal" (on no less than two occasions) when describing illuminations in one sixteenth-century manuscript. But despite a lack of artistic sophistication, surviving images have much to tell us about the nature of Irish spirituality, a key question being the extent to which devotional practice in Ireland followed that elsewhere.

This volume consists of ten essays by scholars drawn from a variety of disciplines—art history, archaeology, history, and conservation—the first time that such a multi-disciplinary approach has been adopted in the context of late Gothic Ireland. Most of the papers were presented at a conference held at Glenstal Abbey in September 2004 (the location no doubt explains the inclusion of the Catherine Yvard's study of the Glenstal Book of Hours, an English manuscript that otherwise does not fit within the Irish theme). Although "late medieval" is never explicitly defined, it is clear that many of the authors accept that medieval practices flourished at least until the Great Rebellion in 1641, something that emerges clearly from the essay on Marian imagery by Clodagh Tait.

The volume opens with an outstanding contribution from Salvador Ryan, who examines a private "book of piety" commissioned in 1513 by a Gaelic noblewoman, Máire Ni Mháille. Máire's devotions offer a remarkable glimpse of the nature of "popular" religious practice, and Ryan's essay should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the sculpture of the time. This chapter provides a fitting prelude to the essay by Rachel Moss, who examines the contexts of stone carving and the ways in which sculpture functioned in an ecclesiastical setting. The third editor, Colmán Ó Clabaigh, uses his unrivaled knowledge of the documentary evidence to provide a masterly account of the Irish cult of St. Francis. Other essays are less analytical, providing instead surveys of different types of material, including wall painting, manuscript illumination, wood carving, and stained glass. Amongst them is a review of diverse material from Waterford (including little-known wooden figures and some quite stunning imported vestments), many of which deserve further examination. No Irish medieval stained glass survives intact and in view of this it is good to have Josephine Moran's survey of what is known both from the archaeological and the documentary record. One would have welcomed more discussion of metalwork, though the book does conclude with a lively essay from Raymond Gillespie on the political ramifications behind the making of the shrine of St. Caillin of Fenagh. Not all the authors are familiar with the (extensive) literature on art and devotion in Europe as a whole, and in terms of European scholarship the essays might be considered a fairly "mixed bag." Nonetheless, the book points to a new approach in the study of late Gothic Ireland and this is a most welcome development.