Conor McDonough

PhD research: Conor McDonough

The Letters of St Paul in Early Irish Christianity

Among the many ways in which Irish scholars engaged with the biblical text in the second half of the first millennium, the careful study of the letters of St Paul is particularly prominent. One of the most significant sources written in Old Irish, for example, is a collection of glosses on the Pauline Corpus, known as the Würzburg Glosses. There are also glosses and commentaries written in Latin and identifiable as Irish or Irish-influenced, including a number of unedited texts. Apart from this interpretative tradition, engagement with Paul's letters has left traces in early Irish law, hagiography, liturgy, and even secular literature. In short, the influence of the Pauline Corpus is omnipresent in the textual output of early medieval Ireland.

My research aims to offer a comprehensive treatment of the Irish tradition of Pauline exegesis, including an edition of an important commentary: the Pauline section of the commentary on the whole Bible known as 'Pauca Problesmata' or the 'Irish Reference Bible'.

E-mail: c.mcdonough2@universityofgalway.ie
Supervisor: Dr Jacopo Bisagni

Funding: Hardiman Research Scholarship (2024-2028)

Research area: The Latin Tradition