Exhibition Talk

“An Irish Scholar in Medieval Europe: Nature and Learning in the Reichenau Primer” with Elizabeth Boyle.

Join us for some fascinating insights related to our current temporary exhibition “Ireland and the Birth of Europe”.

The Reichenau Primer (sometimes known as the St Paul Codex) is a notebook that belonged to an Irish scholar studying in Germany in the early ninth century. It is most famous for containing the poem Pangur Bán, which describes an anonymous scholar and a cat named Pangur, engaged in their “respective arts”, i.e. acquiring knowledge and catching mice.

But the manuscript also contains other important Old Irish poems which give us clues to the origins and identity of its owner, as well as scholarly notes and texts which allow us to build a picture of the learning and interests of an educated Irishman in medieval Europe. This lecture will explore the contents of this fascinating book, with particular attention to its depiction of the natural world.