Page 39 - O Mahony Journal 2025

The Amra Project

Singing the Praises of the Saints and Scholars

of Medieval Ireland: Part 2

Dr. Ann O’Mahony Buckley
O Mahony Society Member
Visiting Research Fellow - Trinity College, Dublin

In an article in the November 2024 O Mahony Society Newsletter, I
introduced my project on liturgies (known as “Offices”) for Irish saints in
medieval Europe. Its aim is to assemble the surviving repertoire of specially
composed chants, hymns, and prayers which were used in monastic and
cathedral churches to celebrate their feastdays in the Middle Ages and to
make them available online to the wider public.

At the present state of knowledge, chants in celebration of Irish saints survive in over three hundred manuscripts
representing some forty Irish (or Irish-related) saints in research libraries in Belgium, France, Germany,
Luxembourg, Italy, Switzerland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland, spanning one thousand years, from the
seventh to the seventeenth centuries.

The Office formed part of the daily round of prayer and singing in the monasteries and cathedrals of medieval
Europe. It consisted of eight separate “Hours” of chanting and prayer: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None,
Vespers, and Compline. So-called “Proper,” or specially composed offices, contained more elaborate chant for
major Church feasts (e.g., Christmas, Easter, Pentecost) and saints’ days. Over time, regional and local saints
were added.

In the case of some saints, the localities and regions were not confined to Ireland because of the impact of
the peregrini, or Irish pilgrim monks, who travelled to preach, teach, and found new monasteries across the
Continent. Thus, many of them were commemorated far from the land of their birth.

Following the initial missionary activity of the sixth to eighth centuries, these international networks were
consolidated through clerical and educational channels in the Carolingian schools of the ninth century, continuing
up to the time of the development of the new monastic orders and the building of the great cathedrals. With
the establishment and expansion of these foundations, the growth
of pilgrimages, and the promotion of the veneration of relics, new
offices were composed and many manuscripts produced.

In the Newsletter article, I introduced some of the saints and the
places and manuscripts associated with them. For this article, I will
focus on a selection of items from the repertoire. Some of them have
been published in my CD recording, Medieval Chant for Irish Saints
from Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College Dublin (Fig. 1) which
may be accessed via the following link:
https://soundcloud.com/ann-171/sets/amra-medieval-chant-for-
irish-saints

Fig. 1 Image of CD produced by Ann
Buckley for the Amra project
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