4 Latin letters and Renaissance civility in sixteenth-century Ireland
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Jason Harris
Abstract
Not all records of the Irish court were produced in Irish or English. This chapter opens a window onto Latin learning in Ireland at a time when English commentators were denigrating the barbarousness of Irish society. Specifically, it reveals Ireland as a previously unrecognised node in the growing republic of letters linking the great and the learned through a culture of letter writing based on humanist precepts and fashions. Schools in Ireland trained students in the new Latinity; aristocrats hired secretaries skilled in in the latest linguistic styles. This chapter, then, is attentive to both the intellectual and the sociological aspects of the new learning, and to the political pressures of English state centralisation that threatened those developments.
Abstract
Not all records of the Irish court were produced in Irish or English. This chapter opens a window onto Latin learning in Ireland at a time when English commentators were denigrating the barbarousness of Irish society. Specifically, it reveals Ireland as a previously unrecognised node in the growing republic of letters linking the great and the learned through a culture of letter writing based on humanist precepts and fashions. Schools in Ireland trained students in the new Latinity; aristocrats hired secretaries skilled in in the latest linguistic styles. This chapter, then, is attentive to both the intellectual and the sociological aspects of the new learning, and to the political pressures of English state centralisation that threatened those developments.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Series editors’ preface x
- Acknowledgements xi
- Abbreviations xiii
- Introduction – Contiguous court societies 1
- I Indigenous court society in Ireland 27
- 1 Bouncers, stewards and gatecrashers 29
- 2 Court society in the south of Ireland, c.1430–c.1620 45
- 3 The Gaelic court and Irish country-house poetry 65
- 4 Latin letters and Renaissance civility in sixteenth-century Ireland 86
- II Made in Whitehall 103
- 5 Debating Irish policy at the court of Elizabeth I, c.1558–80 105
- 6 How to govern Ireland without leaving your armchair 123
- 7 Court discourse, the mid-Elizabethan polity and Ireland, 1571–75 142
- 8 Magnificence and massacre 166
- 9 Counsel in extremis 195
- III Positioning Ireland in the Renaissance court world 213
- 10 Our men in Scotland 215
- 11 Ireland’s militarised itinerant court and the Tudor state 238
- 12 ‘Winning hearts and minds’ 261
- 13 From court to courtliness 278
- Index 297
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Series editors’ preface x
- Acknowledgements xi
- Abbreviations xiii
- Introduction – Contiguous court societies 1
- I Indigenous court society in Ireland 27
- 1 Bouncers, stewards and gatecrashers 29
- 2 Court society in the south of Ireland, c.1430–c.1620 45
- 3 The Gaelic court and Irish country-house poetry 65
- 4 Latin letters and Renaissance civility in sixteenth-century Ireland 86
- II Made in Whitehall 103
- 5 Debating Irish policy at the court of Elizabeth I, c.1558–80 105
- 6 How to govern Ireland without leaving your armchair 123
- 7 Court discourse, the mid-Elizabethan polity and Ireland, 1571–75 142
- 8 Magnificence and massacre 166
- 9 Counsel in extremis 195
- III Positioning Ireland in the Renaissance court world 213
- 10 Our men in Scotland 215
- 11 Ireland’s militarised itinerant court and the Tudor state 238
- 12 ‘Winning hearts and minds’ 261
- 13 From court to courtliness 278
- Index 297
