The Medieval Irish Adaptation of Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile: Manuscript Tradition and Scholarly Context

This thesis offers a philological study of In Cath Catharda, a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century Irish prose adaptation of Lucan’s Bellum ciuile. It is divided into two parts: Part I (Chapters 1–2) examines the text of In Cath Catharda and its manuscript tradition, while Part II (Chapters 3–4) situates the adaptation within the European scholarly context in which the Latin epic was read, studied and adapted into the vernacular. In Cath Catharda survives in seventeen manuscripts, yet modern scholarship has relied largely on Whitley Stokes’s posthumous edition of 1909, based on only four manuscripts and lacking a transparent editorial method. Part I responds to these limitations by providing the first systematic account of the textual tradition of In Cath Catharda. Chapter 1 offers detailed descriptions of all surviving manuscript witnesses, informed by fresh examination of manuscripts consulted in situ. Chapter 2 reconstructs the relationships among these witnesses. As the manuscripts are largely fragmentary and preserve different sections of the narrative, traditional stemmatic methods cannot be applied mechanically. The chapter therefore adopts a flexible approach based on selective collation of representative passages and proposes a stemma codicum for In Cath Catharda. Together, these chapters establish a secure textual foundation for the study of the adaptation. Part II situates In Cath Catharda within its broader European intellectual milieu. Chapter 3 argues that the adaptation can only be fully understood against the background of the revival of classical scholarship in the long twelfth century (c. 1050–1250). Through comparison with a wide range of medieval manuscripts of Lucan, including recentiores mostly unpublished and neglected by modern scholars, the chapter reconstructs the scholarly environment in which the epic was encountered by the Irish adaptor. It demonstrates his engagement with a modernised text of Lucan, accompanied by accessus, layers of glosses and accumulation of various other paratextual materials. Building on this analysis of the influence of contemporary Lucanian exegesis, Chapter 4 turns to the adaptor’s compositional and stylistic strategies. Focusing on episodic structure and rhetorical comparisons, it analyses how he negotiates between Latin epic and Irish prose narrative, combining techniques derived from contemporary Latin learning of grammar and rhetoric with vernacular artistry to produce a distinctive literary work. In Cath Catharda thus emerges as the product of a scholar-author who engages critically and creatively with Lucan and his commentators, asserting vernacular authority through learned mediation of the classical tradition. By integrating manuscript studies with intellectual history, this thesis advances a new understanding of In Cath Catharda as both a complex textual artefact and a product of learned engagement with classical epic in medieval Ireland. It demonstrates that the Irish antiquity saga bears witness to the circulation of texts, books and scholarly ideas and practices between Ireland and the Latin West in the High Middle Ages, and thereby contributes to broader discussions of medieval Irish classicism, classical reception and intellectual transfer across linguistic and cultural boundaries in the long twelfth century.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Nagashima, Maio

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ní Mhaonaigh, Máire

• Medieval Ireland
• Classical Reception

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/7de6da88-5af5-487a-a421-bb4600ea24fc/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.132054

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/405927