A source of outstanding importance for the study of the early Irish church. This edition presents all martyrologies not previously printed, all descendants in some way of the 'Martyrology of Oengus'. Among the positive effects of the English Conquest of Ireland in the late twelfth century was the stimulus it gave to the writing of the records of the Irish saints. All four martyrologies edited in this volume arguably date to the period immediately after the Conquest, when the Irish Church, faced with accusations of backwardness and irregularity, was at pains to demonstrate its modernity and orthodoxy. This was achieved by drawing on such external sources as the Martyrology of Ado, 'wedding' it to such native sources as the Martyrology of aengus. Judging by the text of the Martyrology of Drummond, Armagh played a pivotal role in the liturgical 'revival' reflected by all four texts. Use of the annotated version of the Martyrology of aengus prepared at Armagh about 1170-74 can be detected in three of the four texts.

Edition, with introduction and notes, of important Irish liturgical texts found in Bavaria. The earliest Irish martyrology was compiled in prose and verse at Tallaght, near Dublin, about the year 830. Little has hitherto been known of its circulation before the period 1150-60, when the surviving copy of the prose versionwas made. Now, through the martyrology of the Regensburg Schottenkloster, we know that a copy of the metrical version had reached Bavaria in the southern part of Germany by the late tenth century, where it was used, firstby the Irish monks of the Regensburg Schottenkloster, then as a source of entries in other local German martyrologies. The martyrology, edited here for the first time, bears witness, therefore, to the circulation in Bavariaof this originally Irish compilation and, together with other documents, shows how the Scottish Benedictine monks, who succeeded the Irish in several monasteries in southern Germany and Austria, adapted to their own use a numberof essentially Irish liturgical documents. Emeritus Professor Padraig O Riain is a member of the Placenames Commission of Ireland and one of the editors of the Locus project.