Late Medieval Irish Law Manuscripts

<p><em>Late Medieval Irish Law Manuscripts: A Reappraisal of Methodology and Context</em> challenges the long-held view that Irish law manuscripts produced in the secular law schools of the late medieval period are only the work of antiquarians.</p><p>This book examines the texts in their political, social and cultural contexts, particularly in relation to the Irish revival of the fourteenth century onwards. Finnane’s examination of the manuscripts includes:</p><ul> <li>legal interpretation and the role of glossing and commenting on older ‘canonical texts’ in establishing the authority of those texts in the present</li> <li>the use of the manuscripts in legal education</li> <li>the use of the past in providing legitimacy and authority, particularly in a legal context.</li> </ul><p>Finnane argues that the manuscripts are the work of jurists authorising a revived legal system connected to a re-emergent Irish political elite, after more than a century of Anglo Norman invasion and rule.</p>