Talk:Cathach of St. Columba

"Old Irish" rubrics
What is meant by "Gaelic rubrics"? Rubrics written in Old Irish? Rubrics written in uncial script? I can't even tell if the text of the manuscript is in Old Irish or Latin. Please elucidate! --Angr/undefined 06:40, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clearing that up! --Angr/undefined 10:52, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

But now I have another question. I'm trying to jibe what the article says with what Rudolf Thurneysen's Old Irish Grammar says about early manuscripts with Old Irish written in them. He mentions (p. 9) Irish names "in the Vita Columbae compiled by Adamnan (Adomnán) between 688 and 704 and preserved in a manuscript written before A.D. 713." Is the Cathach the manuscript he means? --Angr/undefined 11:02, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I think not. The Cathach is a Psalter. A Psalter is the the Book of Psalms, plus some extra hymns and canticles. (The Cathach, however is incomplete and only contans a portion of the Book of Psalms). I don't know in which manuscript(s) Adamnan's Vita Columbae is preserved. It is of course possible that oldest extant copy of Adamnan's text is several centuries younger than the text itself.  Dsmdgold 02:57, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, what it comes down is the fact that I can't find any reference to the Cathach in Thuneysen at all, which is surprising if it's really the oldest manuscript containing Irish. Is the text of the Cathach available online anywhere? Has it been published? --Angr/undefined 07:50, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, there is not a transcription of the Cathach online. The text of the Vulgate is available several places, which would include the Latin text of the Psalms. It would not include the rubrics, however. The Royal Irish Academy published a CD-rom of the Cathach in 2002. My source for the claim that it contains Irish rubrics is from the RIA website (here). There is a a black and white image of a page of the Cathach in which one can see the rubrics, but not, alas, read them, here.  When was Thuneysen published? The Cathach was not rediscovered until 1842, and, so far as I know, did not have a facsimile of it until the 2002 CD-rom. Dsmdgold 10:40, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Thurneysen was originally published in German in 1909; the English translation (which certainly would have included notes of new discoveries since then) in 1946, so he certainly ought to have known about it. Maybe it's just an omission on Thurneyesen's part. Or maybe if the rubrics don't even include whole sentences but just isolated words, he didn't consider it worth mentioning as it reveals nothing about Old Irish grammar. --Angr/undefined 12:03, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Just to chime in. I am a scholar of Old Irish, so I was immensely excited by this "reference" about "the oldest Goidelic (sic!)" inscriptions bar Ogham. As someone said before, especially considering that nothing is mentioned in the Grammar of Old Irish, which has a complete catalogue of all archaic sources. Angr, even if those were single words - they still would merit a mention as our oldest sources for Irish (bar Ogham) are from the late 7th century (Cambrai Homily and people's names (sic!) in the Book of Armagh). Imagine how exciting it were if we had even crumbs preceding this by the whole 100 years! Even if Thurneysen's Handbuch was written in 1909, Cathach was a well known artefact by that time, so I have found it incredible he was not aware of "the oldest Gaelic" inscriptions at that stage. What a pile of rubbish! Today I took the trouble to download the whole thing - a critical edition of Cathach which was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 33 (1916) and to my disappointment I have discovered that all rubrics are in plain Latin, nothing really miraculous about them, not a word in Irish. The only thing which was in Irish - it was an inscription at the bottom of reliquary, which was prepared for the book in the 11-12th century, but it has nothing to do with the book itself! So I have deleted the whole shameful passage. The worst thing is that now I realize from this talk above that this non-sense was allowed to stand for 10 years and nobody bothered to correct it. This is a disgrace and tragedy which compromises the whole idea of Wikipedia.

Size of folios
This has had a disputed tag. I wonder if the larger size is that of the modern vellum mounts (see RIA website full description). Johnbod 03:55, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't think that the RIA would specify the size of the mounts rather than the original folios. That would be rather misleading. Someone could always contact the RIA librarian to verify, though. Where did the 200 by 130 mm come from? ColmCille 06:27, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Controversy clarification
Hi. Just passing by. The controversy that leads the article sounds interesting but it is not very clear to me, a layman reader. Can it be expanded? Canuckle 00:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Copyright infringement
This cathach is being used as an uncited sample image on the Copyright Infringement page, if there was contreversy over the document it should appear here as well. As such, I have found no such claim in my limited search, so if anyone has references to this event please add them to both this page and a citation to the copyright infringement page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nazlfrag (talk • contribs) 10:20, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


 * http://www.ria.ie/library+catalogue/cathach.html perhaps? Angus McLellan (Talk) 16:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Here's the story. St. Columba copied a psalter without permission from St. Finnian. When the local king ruled that the copy belonged to Finnian. Columba gathered together his relatives and a battle ensued. Columba in penance for the battle founded Iona. The Cathach was traditionally identified as Columba'a copy, but current scholarly consensus is that it was made a century or so later. This is all mentioned in the article: "It is traditionally associated with St. Columba (d. 597), and was identified as the copy made by him of a book loaned to him by St. Finnian, and which led to the Battle of Cul Dremne in 561. " Dsmdgold (talk) 17:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Second oldest copy of Psalms in the world
The article made the claim that this is the second oldest copy of Psalms in the world. Since I know that there are at least four older (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, and the DSS), I removed that portion of text. I did want to drop a note here however and suggest that perhaps the intent was to say something else, such as "second oldest copy of the Psalms in Latin" or "second oldest Psalter" (as opposed to simply copy of Psalms). I am fairly certain that the author didn't mean "second oldest complete copy" since this copy is not complete, and they couldn't have meant "second oldest copy in Ireland" since they state in the same sentence that this is the single oldest manuscript in Ireland. In any event, the statement as it stood was obviously false. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.223.32.114 (talk) 13:08, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've added a reference to a source (Martin McNamara' The Psalms in the Early Irish Church), that states that "it is the second oldest Latin Psalter text we know". BabelStone (talk) 15:53, 27 December 2011 (UTC)