Dublin, Trinity College MS 1315 (H 2. 13): ‘Leabhar Riocaird Uí Challannáin’
Siobhán Barrett
Figure 1: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1315 (H 2. 13), p. 14: an Arbor philosophiae, or coloured diagram of the branches and subdivisions of philosophy (image courtesy of Irish Script on Screen)
This late-fifteenth-century vellum manuscript of 232 pages gets its alternative name from a note claiming ownership in the upper margin of p. 15: iste est liber Ricardi I Challannáin .i. is ē so leabar Riocaird I Challannáin. The scribe’s name is unknown but there is an faint outline of what appears to be an erased signature at the bottom of p. 121, where the scribe has written:
Anno domini 1496 agus tabradh gach aon lefes an leabur so bennacht ar anmain an tí ro sgribh .i. —-
‘Year of our Lord 1496 and may everyone who reads this book bless the soul of he who wrote it .i.e. —-’
Figure 2: Dublin, Trinity College MS 1315 (H 2. 13), p. 121: a scribal note recording the year of writing
The contents of the manuscript are mostly medical but it also contains philosphical, astrological and grammatical texts. An interesting inclusion is an ode addressed to the O’Neills with the title Cert cech ríg co réil, listing the rights and duties of the king. One verse of this text advises: Nā bí bliaghain meith – cen chreich nō cen chath ‘Be not for a feeble year without a foray or a battle’ (O’Donoghue 1912: 264-5).
One of the longer texts in this manuscript is the Regimen Sanitatis of the fourteenth-century Italian physician and astrologer, Magninus Mediolanensis (d. 1368). The manuscript also contains the Irish version of a commentary on the Isagoge of Johannitius by the thirteenth-century Italian physician Taddeo Alderotti, and of a commentary on the Colliget of Averroes by the Irish physician Tadgh Ó Cuinn (fl. 1400–1415). Another long text is a pathological treatise ascribed in its prologue to Geraldus de Solo, a teacher of medicine in Montpellier in the first half of the fourteenth century. Sections of this text are also found in King’s Inns Library MS 15 (on which, see our previous Manuscript of the Month entry here), where it is described by its scribe, Máel Eachlainn Mac an Leagha, as a brief, useful tract without theory. Short excerpts in the TCD MS 1315 manuscript include definitions of laughter, sight, taste, yawning and sneezing as well as some Latin verses on the zodiac.
Further reading:
- Ó Ceithearnaigh, Séamus, ed. (1942–1944), Regimen Na Sláinte, 3 vols, Leabhair ó Láimhsgríbhnibh 9, 11, 13 (Baile Átha Cliath: Oifig an tSoláthair): Volume 1; Volume 2; Volume 3
- OʼDonoghue, Tadhg (1912) ‘Cert cech rīg co réil’, in Miscellany Presented to Kuno Meyer, ed. by Osborn Bergin and Carl Marstrander (Halle: Max Niemeyer), pp. 258–77
- Shaw, Francis (1940), ‘Medieval Medico-philosophical Treatises in the Irish Language’, in Féil-sgríbhinn Eóin Mhic Néill: Essays and Studies Presented to Professor Eoin MacNeill on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, May 15th 1938, ed. by John Ryan (Dublin: Three Candles), pp. 144–57
- Siraisi, Nancy G. (1981), Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils: Two Generations of Italian Medical Learning, ca. 1265-1325. (Princeton: Princeton University Press)
- Stokes, Whitley (1860), Irish Glosses. A Mediaeval Tract on Latin Declension with Examples Explained in Irish. To Which are Added the Lorica of Gildas, with the Gloss Thereon, and a Selection of Glosses from the Book of Armagh (Dublin: Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society)