Translating the Crusades in Late Medieval Ireland

Abstract

The impact of crusading ideology in Ireland, particularly in the later Middle Ages, has received relatively little study; however, the relative health of orders like the Templars and the Hospitallers in the country suggest the ground was fertile for the dissemination of texts relating to the Crusades. On a literary level, we find the most obvious impact at the end of the Middle Ages, particularly in the fifteenth century. It is in this period that texts depicting the Crusades first appear in Irish in a series of translations of English, French and Latin romances and chronicles. In European terms, this late-medieval flurry represents a rather belated engagement with crusading literature. In another sense, it is chronologically apposite: Irish translators appear to be participating in a revived sense of crusading fervour that gripped Europe in this period.