annals-chron (original) (raw)

Irish chronicles and their chronology
Welcome to this website which is dedicated to the synchronisation of the chronology and the entries of the Irish Annals. This has been done by tabulating the chronological elements and the entries of the principal annals in parallel as was initially proposed in my paper 'The Chronology of the Irish annals' published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 98C(1998) pp. 203-255. This paper remains the best published introduction to the ideas behind this synchronisation, and a copy of the paper is available online at the URL: www.ria.ie/publications/journals/ProcCI/1998/PC98/PC98.html However in the intervening seven years these ideas have been very considerably developed and these developments are described in the two ancillary articles attached to this web page below.
Kalend and regnal canon chronological traditions Comprehensive examination of Irish chronicles reveals the existence of two distinct and contrasting chronological traditions. The earlier of these used a 'Kł' or 'K' standing for the kalends of January, i.e. 1 January, to mark the commencement of each chronicle year, and hence I term this the 'kalend tradition'. This kalend tradition is known to have been used for a Paschal table compiled in the Eastern Mediterranean in the third century, so it long predates the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. A Christian annalistic chronicle employing this tradition was introduced into Ireland in the fifth century and these annals were maintained and continued in Ireland up until AD 1590. This is the important chronological tradition for Irish historical chronology, that is for the accurate dating by AD year of historical events. Annals belonging to the kalend tradition include Chronicum Scottorum and the Annals of Tigernach, Roscrea, Ulster,Inishfallen, Boyle, Loch C� and Connacht. The second tradition used a standardised list of the reigns of supposed 'kings of Ireland' as its chronological basis, and hence I term this the 'regnal canon tradition'. This tradition was initiated circa AD 1014 and continued in use up until AD 1685, and it is found in a remarkably wide range of literary forms, e.g. synchronisms, chronological poems, Lebor Gab�la, prose histories and two annals. As will be shown in the ancillary articles this tradition was deeply flawed chronologically from its very inception and always remained so, consequently it cannot be used for historical chronology. However, because two annalistic compilations employed this regnal canon, in order to comprehensively examine annalistic chronology it is necessary to establish the salient features of this regnal canon tradition.
Presentation of the tables and ancillary articles For these two chronological traditions separate sets of tables have been constructed which tabulate in parallel the key chronological and entry data from their most important representatives. For each tradition these tables are accompanied by an ancillary article explaining the methods of construction, the conventions employed, and a summary of the conclusions. Online editions of all of the annals and some of the chronicles discussed in these articles may be accessed via this Edition_directory. These tables and ancillary articles have been made available in two formats, one for reading online and the other for downloading and printing. The tables have been divided into sub-tables of approximately 70 Kbytes in order to give efficient access across the Internet, and also to facilitate their ongoing maintenance. The online version employs conservative HTML and so it should be accessible to all popular Web browsers. The version for downloading has been made available in Word 6.0 since this file format is readily accessible and known to most readers. Should it happen that you do not currently have access to Word then this page Word access lists possible alternatives and sources for you. These Word 6.0 tables have all been set up to print double-sided on A4 paper in landscape orientation in order to provide the maximum page width for parallel tabulation, and together with their ancillary article they may then be conveniently filed and read in an A4 ring binder.
ONLINE ACCESS Kalend tradition article and tables - online Ancillary article: 'Chronological synchronisation of the Irish annals'. This article provides a detailed account of the construction and use of the following tables synchronising the annals of the kalend tradition which are accessed by their AD ranges: