Ballineaspigmore and Bishopstown House

Ballineaspig, anglicised Bishopstown, consists of two townlands which are Ballineaspigmore and Ballineaspigbeg. Taken together, both townlands oc­cupy an area identifiable in modern day terms as lying approximately be­tween the old Glasheen National School on the east side and what was, until recently, the University Farm Curraheen Road on the west. A townland is the smallest administrative land division in Ireland. Historians and other scholars are as yet inconclusive about the origins of these divisions. They are certainly as old as the seventeenth century. The townland with which this booklet is concerned is known as Ballineaspigmore. It extends west from the new Regional Hospital at Wilton and includes modern housing estates such as Uam-Var, Benvoirlich and Firgrove. The simplest translation of the townland name is the large land division of the bishop. To clarify a popular misconception, Bishopstown does not derive its name from the fact that in the early eighteenth century a bishop of Cork built his country residence there. The name is much older and can be found in sources dating back to the sixteenth century.

The Whitby life of Gregory the Great: exegesis and hagiography

The eight-century Whitby Vita Gregorii is one of the earliest examples of Anglo-Saxon hagiography, and is the earliest surviving life of Gregory the Great (590-604). The work has proved itself an anomaly in subject matter, style and approach, not least because of the writer’s apparently arbitrary insertion of an account of the retrieval of the relics of the Anglo-Saxon King Edwin (d.633). There has, however, been relatively little research on the document to date, the most recent concentrating on elements in the Gregorian material in the work. The present thesis adapts a methodology which identifies patristic exegetical themes and techniques in the Vita. That is not only in material originating from the pen of Gregory himself, which is freely quoted and cited by the writer, but also in the narrative episodes concerning the Pope. It also identifies related exegetical themes underlying the narrative of the Anglo-Saxon material in the document, and this suggests that the work is of much greater coherence then has previously been thought. In the course of the thesis some of the Vita Gregorii’s major patristic themes are compared with Bede and other insular writers in the presentation of topics that have been of considerable interest to insular historians in recent years. That is themes including: the conversion and salvation of the English people; the ideal pastor; monastic influence on formation of Episcopal spiritual authority; relations between king and bishop. The thesis also includes a re-evaluation of the possible historical context and purpose of the work, and demonstrates the value of a proper understanding of the Vita’s spiritual nature in order to achieve this. Finally the research is supported by a new structural analysis of the entire Vita Gregorii as an artefact formed within literary traditions.