Making Latin histories of Ireland accessible to scholars and the public is the aim of a project under way at the Centre for Neo-Latin Studies in the Classics department at UCC. This is part of the college's contribution to the commemoration of the Battle of Kinsale 400 years ago.
Later this month the Defence Forces will re-create O'Donnell's epic march from the North, and in September a flotilla of ships will gather in Kinsale to mark the anniversary. The President, Mrs McAleese, will be present, and representatives of the British and Spanish royal families are also expected to attend.
Yesterday An Post issued four commemorative stamps at a function in Kinsale.
Mr John Barry, a classicist, is one of the UCC team involved in the translations. Together with colleagues he is working on Philip O'Sullivan Beare's Compendium Historiae Catolicae Hiberniae, first published in Lisbon in 1621.
O'Sullivan Beare (1590-1660) set out in his Compendium to put the record straight and give a native Irish view of the Catholic Ireland of his day. He also wrote Tenebriomastix to counter English and Scottish views on Ireland, and Zoilomastix as a refutation of Richard Stainihurst's De Rebus In Hibernia Gestis, published in Antwerp in 1584, which had drawn on an earlier history of Ireland by Geraldus Cambrensis.
Another text which the UCC team is working on is De Rebus Hiberniae Sancto-rum Insulae Commentarius (Louvain, 1632) by Peter Lombard, who was Primate of Ireland in 1601, the year of the battle. To Lombard is attributed the phrase "island of saints and scholars", and his history of the church in Ireland at the time sheds light on the wars and rebellion that led to the Battle of Kinsale.
According to Mr Barry, no complete translation of these volumes or commentary on them exists, and the work being undertaken will provide historians with valuable archival material and insights into the political, religious and social realities in Ireland before and after the battle, which was the last stand of the Gaelic chieftains.
Defeat at Kinsale was to signal the end of the Gaelic way of life, including clanbased rule and the Brehon Laws. While information technology is being employed to aid the work, it is expected that the Stainihurst translation will not be available until the new year. The other translations will follow.
This evening the UCC president, Prof Gerry Wrixon, will host a reception celebrating the university's participation in the 1601 commemoration, which has been a year-long event, including lectures and initiatives in the local schools. Next January a new monument will be unveiled at the battle site and a winter school will open. It will be attended by UCC academics and other scholars.