Bøker utgitt av Four Courts Press

This beautifully illustrated book explores sources for botany and gardening in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ireland. It investigates the contributions of individuals such as Philip O'Sullivan Beare and Thomas Molyneux in the seventeenth century, and, for the eighteenth century, focuses on the Revd Caleb Threlkeld, whose Synopsis stirpium Hibernicarum (Dublin, 1726) was the first botanical book published in Ireland. Chapters shed light on the books in early eighteenth-century libraries, such as that of Dr. Edward Worth and of Marsh's Library in Dublin, and demonstrate the impact of the explorations of the Dutch East India Company on knowledge of the flora of distant lands. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the glorious botanical works in the Fagel Collection, bought by Trinity College Dublin in 1802. The changing nature of eighteenth-century gardens and landscapes and the factors affecting their growth and renown bring the book to a close.

Throughout the long history of Irish monasticism, the experience of women monastics has, until recently, been relatively sidelined. A desire to redress this inspired the decision in 2021 to dedicate the Fifth Glenstal History Conference to exploring the various ways in which women responded to the monastic and ascetic vocation in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland. Whether as practitioners or as patrons, women found creative and dynamic ways to pursue their calling as 'Brides of Christ' between the fifth and the seventeenth centuries, often in the face of tremendous difficulties and challenges. Their lives of prayer and service are sometimes hard to glimpse but the combined interdisciplinary perspectives of these essays brings them into sharper focus. The collection also demonstrates the current vitality of research on this topic and includes contributions by both established and emerging scholars. The volume is dedicated to Dr. Dagmar Ó Riain Raedel in recognition of her outstanding contribution to Irish and European medieval history and, in particular, to the study of medieval Irish-German monastic relations.

There is ample evidence, from the earliest periods onwards, that mankind has sought to measure and organize temporal movement by means of intellectual theories about historical sequences and the contours of peoples' lives, as well as by practical literary instruments such as calendars, almanacs, and a variety of physical timekeeping devices such as sundials, astrolabes, flame-clocks, hour-glasses, and water-clocks. But in the late thirteenth century and early fourteenth century, because of developments in physics and mechanics, it became possible to develop mechanical clocks, timekeeping machines independent of natural phenomena like the sun, moon, and stars, daylight and darkness. This book seeks to describe the impact of these instruments on the theological, philosophical, political, social, moral, and personal thinking of the period from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and the way that this thinking was expressed, mainly in English texts, but in other linguistic cultures too.

Cathal Brugha's life was extraordinary: member of the Gaelic League, Irish Republican Brotherhood and Irish Volunteers; celebrated survivor of the 1916 Rising despite multiple gunshot wounds; crucial figure in the post-Rising reorganization of the Volunteers; speaker at the first sitting of Dáil Éireann; minister for defence during the War of Independence; passionate and acerbic opponent of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921; a reluctant participant in the Irish Civil War, having tried to prevent it, and that conflict's first high profile fatality in July 1922. This book chronicles Brugha's public and private life and the influences that shaped him; appraises his multi-faceted involvement in the Irish Revolution; contextualizes his relationships with contemporaries such as Michael Collins; reveals how his premature death at the age of forty-seven affected his young family and how his wife, Caitlín, upheld his political principles by standing as a Sinn Féin TD; and reflects on how Brugha's indomitable patriotism was propagandized after his death. Based on wide research, this is a fascinating portrait of an intriguing, complex, and often misunderstood figure.

When the Dominicans arrived in Dublin in 1224, they established a house on the north bank of the river Liffey next to the bridge where the Four Courts are situated today. Anyone who wanted to enter the city of Dublin from the north, or leave across the bridge, had to pass the gate of the priory. It was in this priory in the mid-fourteenth century that a Dominican friar named Prior John de Pembridge wrote these Latin annals. This is the first modern edition of the annals of Pembridge (1162-1348), together with those of his anonymous Dominican continuator (1348-70). In 1884, in a two-volume work entitled The chartularies of St Mary's Abbey, Dublin, Sir John Gilbert printed these Latin annals without an English translation. Gilbert's was a rudimentary edition that did not make use of all available manuscripts. In this new edition, Bernadette Williams, the foremost expert on the Latin annals of Anglo-Norman Ireland, presents an authoritative modern edition of these manuscripts with facing translation. The annals, which cover the period 1162-1370, provide a unique window into the political, religious, and social character of the city of Dublin, and Ireland more generally.

From Viking trading place to modern hi-tech city, Limerick's long history as Ireland's oldest Atlantic port has been played out against its natural backdrop of limestone and river. The stone circles of Lough Gur, the Norman strongholds of Askeaton and Adare as well as King John's Castle, the Treaty stone, the Georgian quarter of Newtown Pery, Cleeves Factory, and Thomond Park all stand proudly within this landscape today as monumental testimony to the region's character, a place where the peoples of Ireland and Britain have clashed, meshed, and evolved into a distinctive whole. With such a vibrant cultural inheritance, it is hardly surprising that Limerick is also the home of one of the oldest and biggest of Ireland's local history societies, first founded as the Limerick Naturalists Field Club in 1892 and now the Thomond Archaeological and Historical Society (TAHS). This volume of essays on Limerick city and county has been put together in honour of Liam Irwin, retired Head of History in Mary Immaculate College and leading member of the society for forty years, by his many admirers and friends.