In facing Latin and English texts,
Great Deeds in Ireland
is the first full translation of the controversial Latin history of Ireland by the famous Dublin intellectual, Richard Stanihurst.
provides a contemporary account of Ireland's geography and people and what the author considered to be the greatest event in Irish history – the Anglo-Norman conquest. Stanihurst celebrated the origins of the English colony in Ireland while simultaneously allegorizing the dilemma facing his own community from a new wave of Protestant English conquerors.
The Anglo-Irishman's attempt to introduce Ireland to Europe's Renaissance elite in a literary
tour-de-force
went awry after many Gaelic Irish, also exiled on the continent, objected to the book's satirical portrayal of Ireland's clergy and its representation of the country's customs, history and learned classes. The book was burned on the orders of the Inquisition in Portugal, marked
prohibido
in libraries in Spain and provoked a number of angry responses from readers and other writers over the following eighty years. Because of its centrality to debates about Ireland, Stanihurst's
De Rebus
was the first book translation undertaken by the Centre for Neo-Latin Studies established at University College Cork.