St Mary’s of the Isle: The Dominican Friars in Medieval Cork/Introduction

Student Exhibition, MA in Medieval History

Since 2016 Special Collections has welcomed MA students from the School of History to engage with our collections through a series of online exhibitions. This online exhibition uses various reference works for the study of Dominican friars in Ireland. UCC Library’s Special Collections holds valuable resources that contributed to the creation of the following exhibitions: 

• The Book of Kells (2017)
• Viking Cork (2018)
• The Luttrell Psalter (2019)
• Mapping Cork: Trade, Culture and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ireland (2020)
• Beggars and Artisans: A Cultural History of Cork’s Franciscan Friary (2021)
• Franciscans in Medieval Ireland (2023)

Over the years each exhibition has focused on different aspects of Special Collections’ collections:

• Facsimiles: Book of Kells and Luttrell Psalter exhibitions
• Early modern books: Mapping Cork exhibition
• Focusing on a specific collection – Munster Printing: Cork’s Franciscan Friary exhibition
• Reference works: Viking Cork and Franciscans in Medieval Ireland exhibitions

Impact & Reach

The exhibition celebrates the ongoing collaboration between UCC Library’s Special Collections and the School of History’s MA in Medieval History and is the final online exhibition deriving from HI60191: Skills for Medieval Historians module. Since 2016 15 students at postgraduate level contributed to the online exhibition series. From the beginning we noted that by publishing this exhibition series Special Collections supported UCC Graduate Attributes in particular the strands for Creators, Evaluators, Communicators of Knowledge and Digitally Fluent, and in turn Special Collections supported the University’s Academic Strategy goals.

This exhibition series has been very successful in various ways. Natasha Dukelow from the 2017 cohort used the skills she learned to curate a history display from the Noel O’Connell and Irish Literary Society collections. Posts from the Book of Kells exhibition were for many years the most successful blog posts on The River-side platform. However during the COVID-19 pandemic the response received from the Mapping Cork exhibition superseded that of the Book of Kells exhibition. Links to the Mapping Cork exhibition were shared on Shakespeare in Ireland website, UCC’s CACSSS’ Research page, as part of Cork Harbour Festival 2020 and within the ‘Introduction to Special Collections & Archives’ Canvas module.

Beyond the Walls

Throughout the exhibition series we’ve harnessed expertise outside the library such as Blackstone LaunchPad (2017-2020) for learning about marketing and promotion, and been the beneficiaries of digitised content primarily via open access from many repositories:

• Cork Public Museum: “Viking Cork: A Case Study in Objects and Text”
• Library of Trinity College Dublin:
  • each post in The Book of Kells: Image and Text
  • “From Rivers to Roads” in Mapping Cork: Trade, Culture and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ireland;
  • “Styles and Stained Glass in St Francis Church” in Beggars and Artisans: A Cultural History of Cork’s Franciscan Friary
• National Library of Ireland: “Representing Ireland in Maps Before the Civitates Orbis Terrarum,” and “Fashion and Rags” and “A Safe Harbour for Ships” in Mapping Cork: Trade, Culture and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ireland
• British Library:
  • “Introduction to the Luttrell Psalter,” “Geoffrey’s Feast” and “The Office of the Dead” in The Luttrell Psalter: Knighthood, Hospitality and Piety;
  • “Representing Ireland in Maps Before the Civitates Orbis Terrarum” in Mapping Cork: Trade, Culture and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ireland
• Cambridge University Library: “Representing Ireland in Maps Before the Civitates Orbis Terrarum” in Mapping Cork: Trade, Culture and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ireland
• V&A, London: “The Virgin Mary” and “The Carpet Page” in The Book of Kells: Image and Text
• Utrecht University Library: “Fashion and Rags” in Mapping Cork: Trade, Culture and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ireland
• University of Ghent: “Fashion and Rags” in Mapping Cork: Trade, Culture and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ireland
• National Gallery, London: “Images as Narratives: Mosaics in St Francis Church, Cork” in Beggars and Artisans: A Cultural History of Cork’s Franciscan Friary
• Library of Congress, US: “Representing Ireland in Maps Before the Civitates Orbis Terrarum” in Mapping Cork: Trade, Culture and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Ireland
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
  • “The Virgin Mary” in The Book of Kells: Image and Text
  • “Viking Cork: A Case Study in Objects and Text”
  • “Styles and Stained Glass in St Francis Church” in Beggars and Artisans: A Cultural History of Cork’s Franciscan Friary

In addition, through existing partnerships and collaborations permission was granted to use photographs from UCD-OFM Partnership, UCD Digital Library for the following posts:

• “Meelick Franciscan Friary, County Galway” in The Franciscans in Medieval Ireland: Sources
• “Franciscan Friars in Cork: From Their Arrival to the Dissolution” in Beggars and Artisans: A Cultural History of Cork’s Franciscan Friary

St Mary’s of the Isle: The Dominican friars in medieval Cork

This online exhibition coincides with the 800^th anniversary of the arrival of the Dominicans in Ireland in 1224 and focuses on the books in Special Collections that shed the light on the history of the Cork Dominican friary. The exhibition titled ‘St Mary’s of the Isle: The Dominican friars in medieval Cork’ is presented as a longer form blog post, using primary textual, visual and cartographic evidence from UCC Library’s Special Collections.

Student

Thomas Jack McMullan completed his undergraduate studies in History and English at University College Cork. His research interests cover medieval and early modern periods. For his undergraduate seminar dissertation Jack studied the life of an Italian sculptor Properzia de Rossi and her career as a Renaissance woman in a male dominated profession. His MA dissertation topic focused on the witch trials of the early modern period.

The project has been overseen by Elaine Harrington and Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton.

During the development of the exhibition Elaine Harrington was UCC Library’s Special Collections Assistant Librarian but as of May 2024 has assumed the role of Client Services Team Lead where she is responsible for operational spaces and services across UCC Library. Elaine continues her association with Special Collections as Treasurer of the Library Association of Ireland Rare Books Group.

Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton is Senior Lecturer at UCC’s School of History. She has published on the Irish mendicant orders, Irish and Polish illuminated manuscripts, and on liturgical silver. She co-edited Monastic Europe: Community, Landscape and Settlement (Brepols, 2020) and Mendicants on the Margins. Geographical, Social and Historiographical Margins in the Study of Medieval and Early Modern Mendicant Orders (Cork University Press, 2024). She is interested in the intersections between History and other disciplines, History and the arts, and History and students’ skills and employability. Her professional experience includes work on the Franciscan Faith: Sacred Art in Ireland 1600-1750 exhibition as well as the Medieval Ireland exhibition, both at the National Museum of Ireland. She collaborates on the Monastic Ireland Project that provides a platform for academic studies on monasticism, combined with heritage and education outputs. She has contributed to programmes on RTÉ’s Lyric FM titled ‘Friars Walk’ (December 2016),  ‘Jerusalem Passion’ (April 2017, finalist at the New York Festivals: World’s Best Radio Programs, June 2018) and ‘Christmas Postcards’ (December 2017, December 2022). 

The student of the MA in Medieval History programme wishes to convey his gratitude to Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton, coordinator of the HI6091 Skills for Medieval Historians module, and Elaine Harrington, the then Special Collections Librarian, for their support throughout the editing process of this blog.