In order to understand the nature as well as the impact of St. Columba’s monasteries and familia in the context of a social reality of clans and tuaths (looking at book production at every level of the enterprise as well as at the importance of croziers, bells, and book shrines, and many other things), it is useful to better understand the role of Irish medieval ecclesiastical familes and learned kindreds and also to consider the transition, in terms of the place and management of knowledge in Irish society, from druid ollaves to saintly éarlamhs in the early years of the Church. This is also the period of Irish writing using Latin-based script to produce texts written in Old and Middle Irish.  In looking at the history of learned kindreds and ecclesiastical families in Ireland during the Middle Ages, I begin with two fixed starting points: first, I share a last name with the great Irish scholar, James Carney, and was fascinated by the 1989 festschrift Sages, Saints and Storytellers: Celtic Studies in Honour of James Carney (Maynooth: An Sagart, edited by Ó Corráin, Breatnach and McCone), both for itself and for the enlightening information on the Carneys found in the included paper, Nollaig Ó Muraíle’s “The Carneys of Connacht.” The Carneys (Irish Ó Cearnaigh) of Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim and Derry are discussed, as well as some other Carney groups,  and these are very interesting to read about. But also, their story is both illustrative of and defining towards the “tribes and customs” of the times and places where they lived. The Sligo, or Sligo-Leitrim, Ó Cearnaigh group formed a learned kindred and were an ecclesiastical family for many years. Together with this study by Ó Muraíle, I am looking at a location near Drumcliffe, Sligo, the site of an ecclesiastical round tower from the Viking period, and find nearby what are probably termon lands, perhaps the original homestead of this ecclesiastical group of families: Fearann Uí Chearnaigh (”territory of Ó Cearnaigh”).  It is a village about a mile away to the west from the Columban foundation, Drumcliffe Abbey.

At the same time, I am trying to understand the experience of Gaelic learned families generally and the specific experience of certain kindreds in particular parts of Ireland beginning with the conversion period and leading up to the seventeenth century. Answers to research questions can perhaps be found at the intersection of Gaelic genealogies and other Irish texts, Irish history, linguistic analysis and archeology. Concerning any written history of early Irish monasticism, I am interested in the presence or absence of the terms "termon" (an tearmann), "coarb" (comarbae, comharba), "erenach" (airchinnech, airchinneach) and érlamh. And also of the Latin concepts familia and paruchia.    

The papers included here (see contents)  follow on from my book, Clans and Familes of Ireland and Scotland, an Ethnography of the Gael, 500-1750 (Heritage Books 2006, originally McFarland 1989).

Chris Cairney

But first, what is a “Columban” monastery?