Reassessing the Irish ‘monastic town’

Abstract

D. A. Binchy stated that ‘the idea of a town, with a corporate personality distinct from that of the ruler, was quite foreign to the Gaelic mind until the Scandinavians set up their “cities” in Dublin, Limerick, Waterford and elsewhere’. Numerous scholars have disagreed with Binchy’s assessment and have claimed instead that Irish monasteries were evolving, whether before Viking settlement in Ireland or somehow as a response to that presence, into what have been variously called ‘protourban’ sites, ‘pre-urban nuclei’, ‘centres of … industrial activity and local trade’, or simply ‘monastic towns’. The term ‘monastic town’ has been in use for many years, and is now part of the standard vocabulary in discussions of early medieval Ireland. From scholarly works to popular publications for tourist consumption, the Irish monastic town has been a known and accepted entity. Armagh, Downpatrick, Kildare and Clonmacnoise are the most commonly cited examples, and Charles Doherty has argued that these monasteries were beginning to function as urban centres by the ninth century. Many scholars would agree that by the tenth and eleventh centuries, possibly in response to Scandinavian urban settlement in Ireland, certain Irish monasteries were urban centres themselves. Brian Graham has raised a number of objections to the concept of the monastic town in Ireland, but his work has remained unacknowledged; others have recently called for a critical reassessment of the theory, but none has as yet been forthcoming.

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