Irish Identities and Political Thought in Early Modern Historical Writing: Greek and Roman Sources

Project Information

Irish identities

Grant agreement ID: 101105224

DOI

10.3030/101105224

Project closed

EC signature date 13 April 2023

Start date 1 September 2023

End date 31 August 2025

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 230 774,40

Coordinated by

AARHUS UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Irish identities (Irish Identities and Political Thought in Early Modern Historical Writing: Greek and Roman Sources)

Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Post-Brexit debates about union, sovereignty, autonomy, and national identities relating to the Northern Ireland Protocol in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland can be traced back to seventeenth-century reflections on conquest, dynastic monarchy, empire-building, the Reformation, and colonial plantations in Ireland. In this period, historical writing played a pivotal role in expressing political, national, and religious divisions in early modern Irish society. The project investigates two foundational pieces of seventeenth-century Irish historical writing: the Irish-language Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (Foundation of Knowledge on Ireland) by Geoffrey Keating (1580-1644) and the Neo-Latin Cambrensis Eversus (Refutation of Cambrensis) by John Lynch (1599-1677). These narratives defended the history of Ireland from negative claims made by the medieval historian Gerald of Wales, whose writings were used to justify English conquest. Although it is now acknowledged that Irish lay and clerical elites were well educated in the Classics, the exploitation of Greek and Roman models by influential figures, such as Keating and Lynch, has only been partially addressed. “Irish identities” contextualises the influence of Greek and Roman models on the emergence of Irish protonational discourse and on the vindication of the Irish past. The project asks how and why early modern Irish authors exploited the cultural capital of classical rhetoric, history, and political thought through both Irish and Latin in order to fashion a distinct representation of Irish history and identity.

The project aims to reconstruct the knowledge base of Classical sources of Geoffrey Keating and John Lynch (WP1) and to examine the impact of Greek and Roman models, including rhetorical patterns (WP2), Classical political thought (WP3), Classical references and allusions (WP4), on the presentation of Irish history and identity in Foras Feasa ar Éirinn and Cambrensis Eversus, as well as on political discourses reflected in these narratives.

The project impacts our understanding of the various trajectories of Irish identity in the early modern period. It sheds light on wider, archipelagic and European, dimensions of Irish identity and representations of the Irish past in the seventeenth century. The results of this project may be useful to the scholars of contemporary Irish identity who tend to consider the Europeanisation of Irish identity a phenomenon of the 20th century. “Irish identities” also reveals alternative perspectives on British monarchy and Ireland’s position within it. The project may therefore encourage further comparative studies into visions of dynastic monarchy in non-Anglophone regions of the early modern British monarchy (i.e Scotland and Wales), which are underexamined in comparison with its Anglocentric counterparts.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The research reconstructed the classical sources available to both authors and traced how they shaped ideas about power, monarchy, and identity (WP1). Keating and Lynch not only cited ancient authors directly but also drew Greek and Roman references from contemporary British and European texts, as well as from collections of quotations and commonplace books. The analysis of the impact of Greek and Roman paradigms on Keating’s and Lynch’s ideas about the role of conquest and usurpation in Irish history, and on their perspectives on Stuart monarchy (WP3-5) has demonstrated that both authors normalised forceful acquisition of power and delegitimised tyrannical governments in Irish history blending perceptions from Gaelic Irish, Classical, and contemporary mainland European sources. In doing so, both Keating and Lynch refuted colonial discourse about Ireland and criticised contemporaneous English rule while simultaneously enlisting support for the Stuart dynasty. I have also argued that not only England, but a wider dynastic polity loomed large in their writings. Keating and Lynch insisted on equality of Ireland with other parts of the Stuart monarchy which they imagined as a union of three equal kingdoms or as an empire. Lynch used the precedents from Graeco-Roman antiquity to bolster critique of English oppressive policies and to suggest alternative models of benevolent imperial governance to be emulated by the British monarchy. The examination of Classical rhetorical patterns (WP2) has revealed that both authors actively employed a Ciceronian style of forensic rhetoric defending Ireland from foreign criticism. The study of Irish protonational discourse and representation of the Irish past in Keating’s and Lynch’s writings (WP4-5) has highlighted their outward-looking character, with both authors actively using Classical references to place Ireland in the heart of the archipelago and Catholic Europe. Keating grounded Irish inclusive identity, encompassing both Gaelic Irish (native population) and Old English Catholics (colonists), in native myths of migration, while Lynch framed it through precedents from ancient history and Roman concepts of citizenship.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

“Irish identities” has advanced understanding of the influence of Graeco-Roman history and classical political thought on political discourse in early modern Ireland and has contributed to the studies of Classical reception in Ireland. The project’s results include a peer-reviewed chapter “For Others Pergamum Has Been Overthrown; for Me Alone it Still Stands’: Reflections on Conquest and Migration in Neo-Latin Histories of Ireland’ (in I. Torrance (ed.) Irish Migrations and Classical Antiquity, Bloomsbury, 2026: 83-104) and an article ‘(De)legitimizing Conquest and Usurpation in Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa ar Éirinn and John Lynch’s Cambrensis Eversus: Classical, Irish and European Contexts’ (Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 2026). Both publications demonstrate the value of historical writing for examining Classical reception in Ireland and the importance of classical sources for understanding early modern Irish political thought.
The project has revised our understanding of Irish protonational discourse in the 17th century by pinpointing how Greek and Roman models contributed to articulating Irish Catholic identity and by revealing wider, archipelagic and European, dimensions of representations of Irish history. Apart from the aforementioned publications, a further article on Irish identities (in preparation to be submitted to the peer-reviewed journal Irish Historical Studies) will expand these insights. These findings are relevant not only to scholars of early modern Ireland but also to those exploring contemporary Irish identity, which is often framed as the product of the twentieth-century Europeanisation but in fact has its roots in the early modern period.
In April 2025 I organised the workshop 'Sources from the margins: reflections on the empire in Ireland, Scotland and Wales (1530s–1790s)' at Aarhus University, which brought together 9 leading experts in early modern British, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh studies. It highlighted the importance of further research into non-Anglocentric responses to dynastic monarchy and empire in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the 16th-18th centuries. A co-edited volume, entitled 'Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the Empire (1530s–1790s): New Sources and Perspectives' (in preparation for Uppsala University Press), arising from the workshop, will bridge the gap between state formation and empire building while highlighting underexamined sources on Irish, Scottish, and Welsh imperial history.
Experts on Ireland who participated in the workshop were also interviewed for the international podcast Reimagining Ireland 2.0 (released in autumn 2025), in collaboration with the ERC project ‘Classical Influences and Irish Culture’, hosted at the Centre for Irish Studies at Aarhus University. My own two podcast episodes, ‘Counter-Histories of the 1600s’ and ‘Ireland as Troy’, share the results of my project in a public forum and raise awareness of deep-rooted non-Anglocentric visions of sovereignty. In addition, the forthcoming publication of my English translation of Geoffrey Keating’s devotional treatise Eochair-sgiath an Aifrinn (The Key-Shield of the Mass) on the Léamh project website will make this key text accessible to students, teachers, and the general public interested in Irish history and culture.