Bloodshed and Retribution theme at this year's Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Summer School

Preparations for the 8th Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Summer School which takes place on the weekend May 6-8 are well underway.

The theme of this year's event, which will be held in the seaside resort of Rossnowlagh, is Bloodshed and Retribution/Doirteadh Fola agus Díoltas.

The school was cancelled in 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions. It took on a different format last year and went digital. Organisers are looking forward to meeting up with regular and new attendees now that rules on meetings have been eased.

This year the gathering will include talks that explore the transition from Gaelic society with the loss of the Brehon laws to the new system of English Common law that for the first time was enforced throughout the Kingdom of Ireland.

These will cover this topic from the 1530s to the Williamite War in the 1690s.

From the 1530s to the War of the Three Kings( James II, Louis XIV, and William III) in the 1690s, Ireland experienced intense levels of violence.

The life of Ó Cléirigh and his contemporaries was deeply marked by aggression at every level from confiscation of land, to crime, to martial law, and to wars of conquest and colonisation.

This year’s theme will look at this world of bloodshed and retribution. It will also consider how changing legal codes, in a time when English Common Law spread out over the whole island, operating in a country whose inhabitants were marked out by ethnic, religious, and linguistic differences.

For the men and women who lived in 16th and 17th century, Ireland aggression and disturbance were everyday events as were attempts to resolve disputes and to punish those believed to be wrongdoers.

Who was Mícheál Ó Cléirigh?

This event remembers a great local man, Mícheál Ó Cléirigh, the main driving force behind Annála Ríoghachta Éireann (the Annals of the Four Masters).

Grandson of Tuathal Ó Cléirigh, chief of the sept of Uí Chléirigh in Donegal, he was born c.1590 in Kilbarron near Creevy, between Rossnowlagh and Ballyshannon on Donegal Bay

In 1626, for 10 years, Mícheál travelled the length and breadth of Ireland gathering the ancient manuscripts and histories wherever he could find them.

Mícheál and his collaborators transcribed their material and left an incomparable record of the history of Ireland using a factual chronological order which was ground-breaking and innovative for the time.

His precise date of death is unknown, but he is generally thought to have died at Louvain in 1643.

Over the course of the school, participants will learn from scholars about his story and his times.

Everyone with a thirst for knowledge is welcome!