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ISBN: 978-1-873821-07-7
18.5 x 23.5 cm,  120 pp.        94 b&w photographs    

A record, in image and word, of a coastal community's social and economic life, its traditions and the changes it has experienced since the late 19th century. The volume includes photographs taken between the 1890s and the 1960s which offer glimpses into an era when Kinvara was a busy port and market town, yet working and living at a slower pace – that of horse carts, sailing boats and manual labour. The explanatory captions which accompany the photographs contain details on folklore, traditions and local history. Quotes and anecdotes capture the wit and humour of the Kinvara people. The book's introduction places the town's development in a wider historical context.

'This book is first rate and recommended to all, even those who have never heard of Kinvara. A unique selection of historical photographs and a splendid compilation of locally sourced information. The photographs, spanning the period 1880 to 1960, reflect the lives of Kinvara's people before huge social and economic changes produced different moulds, imported patterns, new shadows for the same substance. This is a moving book.'  Connacht Tribune

This book is full of information covered by the Kinvara Guide & Map.  To go directly for information on the Kinvara Map Click Here

 

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21.6 x 13.8 cm.   l, 455 pp.      2006   Irish Literary Studies series (ISSN 0140-895X) volume 53

The William Carleton Summer School is one of the most important literary festivals on the island in that there are very few that make a point of studying an aspect of Ireland before the Great Famine. William Carleton (1794-1869) is the greatest author to have written about the Irish peasant and the Ireland of the period immediately preceding it: he enables the reader to think back past the Famine into the culture – particularly the peasant culture – of that time, confused, rich, tortured, bilingual, that made him as a writer.

Enjoying immense popularity during his lifetime, his popularity dwindled but a century after his death it began to revive, not least because of the influence of the Summer School. The lectures given at the School and revised for publication in William Carleton, The Authentic Voice provide ample evidence that he was one of the greatest entertainers of Irish literature in English.

This volume also contains contemporary portraits of Carleton, reproduces previously unpublished letters and documents, a chronology, publication history of his writings, provides fine line illustrations by Sam Craig and detailed maps of the countryside he loved and wrote about, so this is an indispensable book for everyone interested in Carleton and pre-Famine Ireland.

Edited by Gordon Brand, the collection contains contributions by Gordon Brand, Terence Brown, Brian Earls, Peter Denman, Owen Dudley Edwards, Marianne Elliott, Thomas Flanagan, Roy Foster, Maurice Harmon, Seamus Heaney, Eamonn Hughes, Jack Johnston, John Kelly, Declan Kiberd, David Krause, Robin Marsh, John Montague, Pat John Rafferty, Sean Skeffington, Barry Sloan, Norman Vance, and Robert Welch.

 

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ISBN: 978-0-944318-05-8

Walter Pater (1839-1894) was one of the Transition Era's most influential figures. In this collection of essays, distinguished scholars continue research into his life. Subjects are included for the apprentice as well as the expert: from a scandal during Pater's Oxford days, to the influences upon him by Wordsworth and Arnold, and in turn to his influence upon Hopkins and Joyce. Contributors include: Billie A. Inman, Gerald Monsman, J.P. Ward, Lesley Higgins, F.C. McGrath, Paul Tucker, Richard Dellamora, Hayden Ward, J.B. Bullen, M.F. Moran, Bernard Richards, Anne Varty, Jane Spirit.

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ISBN: 978-0-86140-266-3
21.6 x 13.8 cm.   xii, 296 pp. + 16pp. with 33 illus. 

Founded in 1907, the history of the Club reflects the creative life of the city and nation, with a membership of many of the leading literary and artistic figures of the last eighty years. Patricia Boylan chronicles the ups and downs it suffered, how it was affected by historical events, and describes the often colourful lives of its more famous members.

Contents: Genesis – The People and the Place – Celebrated Names – Limited Company – An Auspicious Year – Minute by Minute – A Shameful Year: 1913 – Sad Goodbyes – The Club in Wartime: 1914-1915 – Rebellions: 1916 – The Real Irish? 1916-1918 – Business as Usual: 1919-1920 – A Neutral Zone: 1921-1922 – Carrying On: 1923-1924 – Coming and Going: 1925-1929 – Betty Bolts – A Cold Eye: 1933-1939 – The End of an Era – Changing Times – Doldrums – The Latest Chapter

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Chosen and Introduced by Andrew Parkin

The fourth volume of the Irish Drama Selections series (ISSN 0260-7962), General Editors: Joseph Ronsley and Ann Saddlemyer.

21.6 x 13.8 cm.  416 pp. 2009     2nd, enlarged edition

Contains: London Assurance, The Corsican Brothers, The Octoroon, The Colleen Bawn, The Shaughraun, Robert Emmet, bibliographical checklist. plus  Boucicault's "'Canterin' Jack' - A Sketch from Life. How The Shaughraun was originated'.

Dion Boucicault was a prominent playwright and prolific adapter of foreign plays and novels.  He is known and loved especially for his high melodrama.  Extremely popular on the Victorian commercial theatre for over forty years, his plays today still provide enjoyment to all audiences Born in Dublin, he achieved his first West End success with London Assurance in 1841. His work frankly catered to contemporary taste and fell rapidly into neglect after his death in 1890, but his lively observation of humanity in many moods, and his unerring sense of what works on the stage, have led his plays in recent years to successful revivals in Dublin, Belfast, Chichester and London, perhaps the most notable being the National Theatre's production of The Shaughraun starring Stephen Rea in the title role.

The works chosen for this volume illuminate Boucicault's consummate craft as a writer for the theatre in the age of actor-managers and melodrama. They also remind us of that Irish verve, charm and adroitness which made him the most popular playwright of his generation  on both sides of the Atlantic. Arguably the father of both the Irish and American drama, his characteristic plotting and taste for sensation suggest that another of his heirs was the early movie industry.

This volume includes the great success of Boucicault's youth, London Assurance, together with his preface to the first edition; his durable version of the melodrama The Corsican Brothers; the exciting American plantation play The Octoroon, with both its endings; and three of his Irish plays, The Colleen Bawn, Robert Emmet, and The Shaughraun, to which has now been added his article on Cantherin' Jack, his inspiration for that play's title role. A selected bibliographical checklist, dates of first performances and cast lists are given, as are the songs, music and a glossary for the Irish plays.

The present selection from Boucicault's vast opus is chosen and introduced by Andrew Parkin. Andrew Parkin is Professor Emeritus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Honorary Senior Tutor of Shaw College. An Honorary Life Member of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies and Adviser to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, he belongs to a number of other international scholarly organisations. A member of the Canadian Writers’ Union, he is also adviser to the Canadian Chinese Writers’ Association. Residing now in France, he is President of the Paris Decorative and Fine Arts Society. He publishes scholarly books, mainly on drama, as well as original poetry, and short fiction.

 

 

 

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ISBN: 978-0-86140-066-9

21.6 x 13.8 cm.   112 pp.   1980

Vernon Scannell, in Times Literary Supplement, wrote of Martin Booth's previous collection, Calling with Owls, that 'the poems carry a strong sense of real experience observed with clarity and expressed with force and unwavering truthfulness.' In this, his sixth collection, Booth revised all that he felt worth retaining  from his earlier books and to these has added new poems which continue to affirm that he was, as Robin Skelton, in Malahat Review, stated, 'the most interesting and challenging poet of his generation.'

Martin Booth (1944-2004) was poet, publisher (The Sceptre Press was well-known for its single poem volumes), novelist, and biographer.

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21.6 x 13.8 cm      xiv, 211 pp.  2009    Ulster Editions & Monographs series (ISSN 0954-3392)  volume 15

The essays in this collection seek to refine our understanding of the often polyvalent and conflicted engagement that Irish dramatists have entered into with nationalism, a cultural and political movement that they have often attempted to simultaneously resist and renegotiate.

These nine essays construct a genealogy of dissent, of loyal opposition, revealing the apprehension and dissatisfaction with which the twentieth century’s most influential playwrights have sometimes viewed the Irish state, from its emergence in the early 1900s to its maturity at the century’s end. The articles on W.B. Yeats, Augusta Gregory, J.M. Synge, and Sean O’Casey reveal the early Abbey Theatre’s struggle to critique the failures of and influence the development of the early state and its proscriptive brand of nationalist Irishness. The essays exploring the later plays of Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Anne Devlin, Christina Reid, Marie Jones, and Marina Carr expose both the conceptual and political failures of mainstream Irishness in the second half of the twentieth century to satisfy the material or political aspirations of people on either side of the Irish border. While many of this collection’s essays share a common postcolonial interpretive strategy, individual articles also employ the strategies of ecocriticism, social anthropology, structuralism, feminism, and nationalist theory. The fifteenth volume in the Ulster Editions and Monographs series

CONTENTS

Scott Boltwood. Introduction

Colonialism and the Free State:
Hyangsoon Yi. The Traveller in Irish Drama and the Works of J.M.Synge and Seamus O’Kelly
Barbara Suess. Individualism and the Acceptance of Other: Yeats and Where There is Nothing
Scott Boltwood. ‘I keep silence for good or evil’: Lady Gregory’s Cloon plays and Home Rule
Paul Cantor. O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and the Problematic Freedom of the Irish Free State

The Republic and the North
Paul Davies. Earthing the Void: Beckett, Bio-regionalism, and Eco-poetics
Shaun Richards. Brian Friel: Seizing the Moment of Flux – Ros Dixon. Chekhov Bogged Down? Tom Kilroy’s version of The Seagull
Susan Cannon Harris. Her Blood and Her Brother: Gender and Sacrifice in Frank McGuinness’s Carthaginians
Rebecca Pelan. Two’s Company, Three’s a Community: Women’s Drama from Northern Ireland
Maria-Elena Doyle. ‘What Sort of Monsters Must We Have Been’: Irishness and the Gothic in McDonagh, Carr and McPherson

Notes – Bibliography – Contributors – Index

Front cover illustration. The Irish Academy of Letters' Gregory Medal, designed by Maurice Lambert (1901-1964) who called it 'Aengus and the Birds', although Yeats preferred the title 'Inspiration'. About seventeen copies were cast in bronze in 1934, and the mould destroyed.  As originator of the project, W. B. Yeats was given one copy by Lambert. Yeats later presented one to Patrick McCartan, the major contributor to its cost, one was bought by the Royal Mint, and fifteen were for presentation by the Academy. These were lodged in a box in the Bank of Ireland, College Green. The actual recipients of the Medal were W. B. Yeats, George W. Russell ('AE'), and Bernard Shaw (all of whom were awarded it in 1935), Douglas Hyde (1937), E. Å’. Somerville (1941), Eoin MacNeill (1944), Stephen Gwynn (1949), Padraic Colum (1953), Seumas O'Sullivan (1957), Micheál mac Liammóir(1960), Austin Clarke (1968), Mary Lavin (1974), Arland Ussher (1975), and John Hewitt (1984). Yeats's intention was that once the medals had all been used, the Academy would commission a new design for future presentations of the Medal. The Academy unanimously agreed on 11 July 1974 that Peadar O'Donnell and Mary Lavin should both be awarded the Medal, but there is no record that O'Donnell ever received it. It is possible that he refused the honour. After Sean J. White removed the medal for Hewitt from the Academy's box at the Bank in 1984, he noted that only one remained. The Academy's archives are now in the National Library of Ireland (MSS 33,745-33,746).

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21.6 x 13.8 cm.       164 pp.    1986
ISBN: 978-0-85105-456-8

The Irish are traditionally tale-tellers arid Irish writers are acknowledged masters of the short story, whose work is never more entertaining than when their short fictions are woven around special events and occasions. Christmas is such an occasion and has brought out the best from the writers selected by Dermot Bolger for inclusion in this anthology.

The Dolmen Book of Christmas Stories collects writings by:

Anne Devlin
Brian Lynch
Pat McCabe
John McGahern
Bernard MacLaverty
Michael McLaverty
Aisling Maguire
Frank O'Connor
Sean O'Faolain
James Plunkett
William Trevor
Anthony C. West

The book is entertaining, sometimes surprising in the approach to its theme, and is a splendid gift book.

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ISBN: 978-0-86140-320-2

21.0 x 14.8 cm.      34pp.    1989    Princess Grace Irish Library Lectures series (ISSN 0269-2619) volume 6

James Joyce's world is filled with characters who have artistic ambitions or temperaments – or pretensions. The 'artist' is a central figure in that world – yet it is peopled with characters who, individually and collectively, present us with Joyce's 'poor trait of the artless', his portrait of the artist manqué.

In the first, encompassing essay in this volume Morris Beja argues that in all Joyce's work there may be only one or two genuinely fulfilled artists – and that we cannot be certain even about them. A major question is how we regard Stephen Dedalus in this light: for he seems to be an unfulfilled artist on Bloomsday, yet perhaps one with the promise of future accomplishment.

Stephen is examined here in the context of the many other artists manqué in Joyce's works: in Dubliners (notably Little Chandler, James Duffy, and Gabriel Conroy), Ulysses (Leopold Bloom, and Molly as well), and Finnegans Wake (Shem and Shaun, notoriously, but also ALP) – and numerous minor figures in all those works and others.

The second essay returns Beja (the author of Epiphany in the Modern Novel) to the concept of epiphany, with new perspectives informed by recent critical theory, as he explores the role of uncertainty – indeterminacy – in the world of James Joyce.

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Arthur Symons (1865-1945), now widely regarded as the most important critic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is best known for his seminal work, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1900). Shortly after Symons's mental breakdown in 1908, his close friend W. B. Yeats called him ‘the best critic of his generation’ and in 1957, Frank Kermode, in Romantic Image, referred to Symons as a ‘crucial’ figure in the development of Modernism, ‘always at the centre of his period and herald of its successor’.

One of the most prolific writers of his time, Symons produced some 60 volumes and pamphlets of poetry and prose; edited, introduced, or contributed poetry and prose to scores of volumes; wrote over 1300 articles and reviews for periodicals and newspapers; and translated works by such noted writers as Zola, Baudelaire, Verhaeren, Verlaine, Villiers de 1'Isle-Adam, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Casanova, Alexandre Dumas fils, and d’Annunzio.

Until now, such vast productivity has never been fully accounted for and bibliographically described. Karl Beckson, Ian Fletcher, Lawrence W. Markert, and John Stokes – all specialists in the 1880-1920 period and all having previously published on Arthur Symons – have collaborated on this comprehensive bibliography to produce a scholarly and reliable reference work that will provide little known details of Symons's immense oeuvre. This book will remain an indispensable source of research for decades to come.
ISBN: 978-0-944318-04-1

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ISBN: 978-0-86140-317-2

21.6 x 13.8 cm.   xvi, 156 pp.  1991

These ten original tales, some dating from the 11th century, have been painstakingly unearthed and written up by Ronald Barnes. Several of these stories surfaced in Yorkshire, whence Welsh monks had fled during religious purges, and are published for the first time. These have been relatively unaltered by retelling over the centuries while others are attributed to bards who changed the story lines almost beyond recognition.

There was an abundance of other legends, too, many attributed to resourceful bards who, over the centuries, changed the story lines almost beyond recognition.

Some of the greatest legends, particularly those based upon proven historical facts, owe their survival to monks and others who fled to Yorkshire during religious purges. There they lay dormant and thus escaped the ravages of repetition.

Several of these wonder tales, dating from the 11th to 13th centuries, resurfaced in 1794 when they were recounted to a Yorkshire scholar in what is almost certainly their original form. Now they are retold once more, in print now for the first time. Included are:
The Legend of the Triple Sacrifice,
The Three Sisters of Ardudwy,
The Maidens of the Sea Marsh,
Roderick of Anglesea,
Mhaira and Madoc,
Owain Gwynedd's Silver Dagger,
The Lake of the Fair Ones,
The Dyn Hysbys,
The Legend of Beddgelert and
The Black Bull of Gwynedd.

During the second World War, while the author was seconded to the Indian Army, he became a regular contributor to The Illustrated Weekly, The Statesman, The Onlooker and The Times of India, winning the Literary Grand Prix in the Arts in Industry Exhibition. Throughout the campaign in Burma he commanded the Air Support Signals prior to serving in the 14th Army Staff, where he became interested in Indo-Celtic mythology.

After the war he returned to England to take up an Intelligence appointment on the Imperial General Staff. Later, in civilian life, he set up his own business which left little time for writing, until his retirement.  He is adamant that he will never undertake another challenge like Great Legends of Wales, which took five years to research.

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21.6 x 13.8 cm.     xvi, 131 pp.  + 16 pp illus.       1991
  Ulster Editions & Monographs series (ISSN 0954-3392)  volume 3

These essays comprise the first extensive re-appraisal of Charles Lever for over fifty years. Once regarded as the equal of Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope, Lever’s public turned their backs upon him when he changed style and genre after making his name with comic military tales. He never recaptured his early popularity, but his later novels in fact manifest a much more serious and crafted approach to fiction, and richly deserve revival.

Lever’s own turbulent and often unhappy life of social and cultural exile in Europe provides the hidden theme of many of his better novels. Continental and Irish settings and preoccupations are juxtaposed, making his contribution to the Anglo-Irish novel per se an unusual and challenging one.

Lever is a shrewd observer of character – particularly of female character; few of his better-remembered contemporaries write with more insight about women; old, young, rich, poor; loving, hating, dominating, subjected. His eye for place is acute; Scott is his model, but Lever’s ability to correlate character with environment is finely developed. His political observations, always well-integrated into the fabric of his plot, are shrewd and balanced.

The current neglect of this accomplished and cosmopolitan Irishman is entirely unwarranted. Though he wrote too much, too hastily, and under pressures sometimes too much dominated by the intransigent necessities of serial publication, the contri­butors to this volume seek to show that Lever deserves a re-appraisal, and a revival of attention to his extensive and often original output. Thus, hopefully, the revival of interest in Charles Lever, commencing with this volume, should attract readers of the novel well beyond the specialist range of Anglo-Irish scholars.

Contents
Introduction: 'The Famous Irish Lever'. Tony Bareham
'Reading Lever'. A. Norman Jeffares
'A Tale of Love and War: Charles O'Malley'. Lorna Reynolds
'Dr Lever at Portstewart'. Bill Rodgers
'Transitional States in Lever'. Richard Haslam
'Lever's Post-Famine Landscape'. Chris Morash
'Charles Lever and the Outsider'. Tony Bareham
Notes
Index
 

 

 

 

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The Pontifical, Religious and Secularised Catholic-founded Orders and their relationship to the Apostolic See
Hardcover ISBN: 0-86140-371-1 / 978-0-86140-371-4 £70.00
Limited signed edition, three-quarter morocco, vellum panels, marbled end-papers, in slip-case ISBN: 0-86140-380-0 / 978-0-86140-380-6 £450.00

23.4 x 15.5 cm.    xvi, 714 pp. + 48pp colour illustrations and  with c.400  b/w illustrations within the text

Since the publication in 1983 of Archbishop Cardinale’s Orders of Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See, and the two later editions (1984 and 1985) edited and revised by Peter Bander van Duren, whose own work The Cross on the Sword appeared in 1987, there have been major changes in the Holy See’s attitude towards Orders of Knighthood. These changes have meant that large sections of both books are now out of date, so it has been necessary for Peter Bander van Duren to completely rewrite and update the work Archbishop Cardinale began, and without which this book could not have been written.

Orders of Knighthood and of Merit presents the many Catholic-founded Orders of Knighthood in a new perspective, and deals not only with the Pontifical Equestrian Orders and the two surviving religious Orders of Knighthood, but with the many Catholic-founded but secularised Orders – dynastic, state and crown – that exist today. He examines their relationship, where one exists, to the Apostolic See and the Papacy in the light of the changes that have taken place, as well as the dichotomy between the different rôles and functions of the Holy See and the Apostolic See, the Mater et Magistra of all Catholic-founded Orders of Knighthood. Having been able to study various source materials hitherto and not since available to others, he exposes the misunderstandings and misinformation that exist in this field, and highlights errors that have been perpetuated, sometimes for centuries, through genuine lack of information, as well as those that, for political expediency, have been deliberately concealed.

The chapter and appendices on the Pontifical Orders of Knighthood are designed to assist papal knights in their rôle and functions that their appointments have given them.

The author places the Catholic-founded Orders of Knighthood in perspective, and shows that the continued existence of many of them is based not only on authoritative ecclesiastical and temporal documents of foundation, Papal Briefs and Bulls, but also on their lay apostolate which has continued without interruption.

Neither the Codex Iuris Canonici in force from 1917 to 1983, nor that governing the Catholic-founded Orders during the pontificate of St. Pius X (who more than any other pope laid the foundations for the Pontifical Orders as we know them today), created the present situation where necessity dictates that one has to distinguish between the rôle and functions of the Apostolic See and the Holy See: this dichotomy was created by the 1983 Codex Iuris Canonici. The author shows the paradox that would arise if those who wish to equate them according to the latter’s rather vague Canons are not challenged to clarify their positions: their rulings would nullify the present enormous value of many of the Catholic-founded Orders to the Apostolic See and, indeed, to the whole Church. The author goes so far as to suggest that if the authority and the supremacy of the Apostolic See were to be further diminished, those mighty armies that once protected our Christian civilisation will have lost their raison d’être.

Special attention is paid to dynastic Orders of Knighthood, especially those that although secularised, in some cases for centuries, still fulfil a lay apostolate. Many state and dynastic Orders were secularised during the Reformation, and while they no longer have any link with the Apostolic See, they retain the character and insignia of their former existence, and now have a reciprocal relationship with the Holy See in its capacity as a sovereign power. Extinct Catholic-founded Orders, as well as those organisations that without justification claim chivalric status, are dealt with in detail. One of the most important matters dealt with by the author, and not hitherto considered elsewhere, is the raison d’être of several Orders, and some aspects of Hospitaller as well as Military Orders are also examined.

For over half the last millennium, from the time of the first Crusade to the latter half of the seventeenth century, members of Catholic-founded Orders of Knighthood were at the forefront of the defence of West European civilization, and the author suggests that they may once again find a rôle. There are also many appendices that give a wealth of information not readily available to those interested in phaleristics – the study of Orders, decorations and honours bestowed on meritorious individuals. Orders of Knighthood and of Merit is therefore one of the most important contributions to the study of phaleristics that has been published in the past decades.

CONTENTS

I. The involvement of the Apostolic See and the Holy See in the field of chivalry – The origin and evolution of Orders of Knighthood.

II. THE PONTIFICAL ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD. The origin and evolution of Pontifical Orders of Knighthood and the attitude of individual pontiffs to the Orders – The Supreme Order of Christ – The Order of the Golden Spur, or The Golden Militia – The Golden Collar of the Pian Order – The Order of Pius IX – The Order of St. Gregory the Great – The Order of Pope St. Sylvester – Corollary on non-Catholic Knights of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.

III. PAPAL KNIGHTS. The rôle and function of the Pontifical Equestrian Orders – The procedure for admission – The implications of the Supreme Pontiff being the fons honorum of Pontifical Knighthoods.

IV. PONTIFICAL RELIGIOUS AWARDS OF MERIT. The Golden Rose – The Cross ‘Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice’ – The Medal ‘Benemerenti’.

V. RELIGIOUS BUT NON-PONTIFICAL ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD. The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta – The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem – The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

VI: A TRANSFORMED RELIGIOUS ORDER OF KNIGHTHOOD: The Teutonic Order.

VII. CATHOLIC-FOUNDED DYNASTIC ORDERS. Their nature, rôle and function, and their relationship with the Apostolic See
The Noble Order of the Golden Fleece of Burgundy
The Imperial and Royal House of Habsburg-Lorraine – The Noble Order of the Golden Fleece of Austria – The Order of the Dames of the Starry Cross
The Royal House of Bragança of Portugal – The Order of Our Lady of the Conception of Vila Viçosa – The Royal Order of Saint Isabel
The Royal House of Bourbon of the Two Sicilies – The Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George – The Royal Order of St. Januarius
The Royal House of Savoy-Italy – The Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunziata – The Order of SS. Maurice and Lazarus
The Royal House of Bavaria Wittelsbach – The Order of St. George – The Order of St. Hubert – The Order of St. Michael
The Royal House of Bourbon of France – The Royal House of Bourbon Orléans – The Order of the Holy Ghost – The Royal and Military Order of St. Louis – The Order of St. Michael of France
The Ducal House of Habsburg-Tuscany: The Grand Duchy of Tuscany – The Order of St. Stephen – The Order of St. Joseph.

VIII. SECULARISED CATHOLIC-FOUNDED ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD STILL BESTOWED AS CROWN OR STATE ORDERS
Denmark: The Order of the Elephant; The Order of the Dannebrog
Great Britain and Northern Ireland: The Most Noble Order of the Garter; The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle; The Most Honourable Order of the Bath; Knights Bachelor
Monaco: The Order of St. Charles
The Republic of Poland: The Order of the White Eagle; The Order of ‘Polonia Restituta’
The Republic of Portugal: The Riband of the Three Orders; The Military Order of the Tower and the Sword, of Valour, Loyalty and Merit (although not a Catholic-founded Order); The Military Order of Christ; The Military Order of Avis; The Military Order of St. James of the Sword
San Marino: The Equestrian Order of St. Marino; The Equestrian Order of St. Agatha
Spain: The Noble Order of the Golden Fleece (Spanish branch); The Monastic Military Orders of Alcantara, of Calatrava, of Montesa & of Santiago; The Most Distinguished Order of Carlos III; The Order of Isabella the Catholic; The Military Order of St. Ferdinand; The Royal & Military Order of St. Hermenegildus; The Orders of Cisneros, & of St. Raymond of Peñafort
Sweden: The Royal Order of the Sword (The Order of the Yellow Ribbon); The Royal Order of the Seraphim

IX. EXTINCT CATHOLIC-FOUNDED ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD

X. THE MILITARY AND HOSPITALLER ORDER OF ST. LAZARUS OF JERUSALEM

XI. RECOGNIZED KNIGHTLY ORGANISATIONS. The Association of the Knights of Columbus -
The Knights and Dames of St. Michael of the Wing

XII. THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY TODAY

XIII. UNRECOGNISED ORGANISATIONS STYLING THEMSELVES ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD

APPENDICES
1. Pontifical Equestrian Orders: Papal Letters of Foundation and Decrees
2. Additional Guidelines for Papal Knights and Investitures
3. Conferment of Pontifical Religious Awards
4. The Pontifical Medal
5. The Pontifical Corps of Guards: the Pontifical Noble Guard – The Pontifical Swiss Guard – The Palatine Guard of Honour – The Pontifical Gendarmerie
6. Perrot’s List of Extinct Orders
7. On Chronological Lists of Orders of Knighthood
8. The Prerogatives of the Dukes of Bragança
9. Bull of Foundation of the Portuguese Order of Christ and Royal Brief of Acceptance by King Dom Dinis I
10. Insignia as objets d’art
11. Orders and Decorations of the Republic of Poland
12. Appointment of S.A.R. Don Carlos de Borbón-Dos Sicilias y Borbón-Parma as Infante of Spain

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Index

 

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A Supplement to 'Orders of Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See'

ISBN: 978-0-905715-32-2

23.5 x 15.5 cm.        196 pp.    illus.  Van Duren 1987

With an Introduction by Archbishop, later Cardinal, Jacques Martin

This book attests to the fact that there is nothing more ancient, more venerable, more diversified than the Orders of Chivalry that have existed or still exist, and more desired, more sought after by certain people, than a papal decoration. It is always necessary to underline the essential differences between temporal decorations and those that are conferred by the sovereign Pontiff. A papal knighthood is not to be viewed solely as an honour, as a reward: it also incorporates a duty and a mission, that of serving and protecting the person of the Vicar of Christ. Papal Knights form a sort of army, on the devotion of which the Pope must be able to rely. To the Knight it is not the honour that matters but his obligations and services.    + Jacques Cardinal Martin

Peter Bander van Duren's The Cross on the Sword is a supplement to his edition of the late Archbishop H.E. Cardinale's Orders of Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See (1985), and consolidates his revisions and additions that appeared in that work.

The first part deals with the statutes and regulations concerning the Pontifical Equestrian Orders of Pius IX, St. Gregory the Great and Pope St. Sylvester, the privileges granted to Papal Knights and their juridical position. As His Excellency Archbishop Jacques Martin writes in his introduction the author had to rely, for the information in this section, on ‘the Papal Briefs of the Orders' founders and the provisions made for the Papal Knights by Pope St. Pius X, many of which were contained in personal directives. It was left to Peter Bander van Duren to interpret them in the light of today's need as the Holy Father wrote them over eighty years ago.’

For the first time in the history of the Papal Knights, guidelines have been devised for an investiture ceremony, and the question of precedence has been examined in the light of the privileges granted to Papal Knights by Pope St. Pius X.

Part II deals with general juridical questions arising from Archbishop Cardinale's work, particularly the position of Catholic Orders of Knighthood that he stated were ‘extinct’, ‘abolished’, ‘suppressed’ or ‘in abeyance’. The author also examines the degree of importance that should be attached to the Bullarium Romanum when establishing the status of an Order.

Part III contains addenda to the 1985 edition of Orders of Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See concerning Catholic and Catholic-founded Orders of Knighthood, and Part IV introduces two Christian but not Catholic Orders, each unique in their nature.

The Cross on the Sword is a most useful work, not only for Papal Knights and everyone who may at one time or another be connected with their investiture ceremonies — Parish Priests, Masters of Ceremonies, diocesan and parochial administrations, for example — but also for everyone who is interested in Orders of Chivalry, and their continuing role in the world today. The illustrations not only show insignia — medals and uniforms — of the Orders examined in this book, but also illustrate the ceremonies themselves, adding a further dimension to the help that this work provides for the reader.

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19.5 x 13.6 cm.      6th edition 2005 illustrated with papal coasts of arms from 1198 - Pope Innocent III to Pope Benedict XVI (1st edition 1969)

This has been and still is one of the most popular books with which Peter Bander has been associated. It has gone through six editions and over a dozen printings, has been published in the USA and Europe, and since its first publication in 1969, extracts have appeared in many magazines, newspapers and journals.  The present edition takes the reader up to the election of Pope Benedict XVI, 'gloriae olivae'. in 2005, the last pontiff to be given an epithet by St Malachy before 'Petrus Romanus'.  So who will occupy the papal throne after the present pope and before Peter the Roman?

His Excellency, the late Archbishop H.E. Cardinale, who was Apostolic Nuncio to Belgium, Luxembourg and the Common Market, following his term as Apostolic Delegate to Great Britain, wrote in his foreword to the Malachy Prophecies: "Here is a fascinating study which provides the curious reader with much profit and pleasure", quoting the Italian proverb "Se non è vero, è ben trovato" - If it isn't true, it's well thought out!

Thomas A. Nelson, a leading Catholic writer introduced the American edition with a lengthy preface, in which he wrote : "The overriding value of this volume is twofold: these prophecies are extremely accurate. Mr Bander has compiled here an inestimably valuable tract in the field of prophecy because the prophecies of Malachy fit beautifully into a pattern woven from the various saintly prognostications, the sibylline oracles, quasi-secular and folk predictions, and Biblical prophecies of Malachy, at the same time further develops and enlarges the picture we gain from other sources about the times we live in and the events, it would seem, we are about to witness".  Illustrated with all the papal coats of arms, including Pope Benedict's.

The illustrations on the front cover are taken from Sebastiano Borghi's Cronologia Ecclesiastica la quale contiene le Vita de' Pontefici (Bologna, c. 1670).

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21.6 x 13.8 cm.    xvi, 241 pp.  + 4pp. illus       1990     Irish Literary Studies series (ISSN 0140-895X)  volume 32

Builders of My Soul: Greek and Roman Themes in Yeats, fills a long-felt gap in a neglected area of Yeats studies. It begins with an account of Yeats’s knowledge of the Classics, and then deals with the topics of Philosophy, mainly Platonism; a full, new reading of ‘Under Ben Bulben’; Greek myth, used to validate both personal experience – Maud Gonne as Helen – and a cyclical theory of history; Literature, the two Oedipus plays; Visual art, including an elaborate reading of 'The Statues’, and ‘Byzantium’, the famous passage in A Vision, and the two great poems, in their historical context.

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21.6 x 13.8 cm.          Princess Grace Irish Library series (ISSN 0269-2619) volume 7

Published for the first, and (until now) only, time in 1693, this novel is set in Ireland immediately after the Battle of the Boyne, and describes the courtship of a young lady of Clonmel by a prince, who is on his way to take up a post in Limerick. The story is humorous and engaging. As the editor points out, its interest lies not only in it calling itself `A Novel', but that it may well have been known to Samuel Richardson, and influenced his Pamela (itself subtitled Virtue Rewarded), published fifty years later. This work can lay claim to being the first Irish novel ever published – certainly the earliest that is extant, and as such will be of interest to all students of literature in the English language.

 

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21.6 x 138. cm.      x, 193 pp.  1989 
Irish Literary Studies series (ISSN 0140-895X) volume 29

Critical Approaches to Anglo-Irish Litera­ture contains a selection of the papers given at the fifth triennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature held in Belfast in 1985, chaired by Professor John Cronin. It includes essays on Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, J. S. Le Fanu, J. M. Synge, and W. B. Yeats, as well as papers on more general themes, such as the critical condition of Ulster, English political writers on Ireland, national character and national audience, autobiographical im­agination and Irish literary autobiog­raphies. The contributors to this volume, the twenty-ninth in the Irish Literary Studies Series, are Catherine Belsey, Patricia Coughlan, Seamus Deane, Gerald FitzGibbon, Ruth Fleischmann, Margaret Fogarty, John Wilson Foster, Eamonn Hughes, Michael Kenneally, Tom Paulin, Walter T. Rix, and Nicholas Roe. The editors are Michael Allen and Angela Wilcox.

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21.6 x 13.8 cm    350 pp.    1987
Irish Literary Studies series (ISSN 0140-895X) volume 27

W. B. Yeats and the Tribes of Danu is a study of the Irish fairy faith in its ancient and traditional forms, and of Yeats’s response to that faith.

The first part concerns the ancient beliefs, chiefly as they are expressed in mythology, and describes the origins and characteristics of the Tuatha De Danann. Peter Alderson Smith shows how they are a folk memory of an ancient people who have to some degree acquired divine and ghostly characteristics.

Part two describes the fairies of modern folklore, the various types, their charac­teristics, and differences from ghosts, in being a separate and supernatural race of people, homogeneous but unpredictable and notorious for their capriciousness.

Part three finds in Yeats's work between the writing of The Countess Cathleen (1891-92) and the poems of Responsibilities (1914) a desire to know more about the Otherworld that resulted in a relationship that fluctuated between the poles of frustration and despair on the one hand, and morbid enthusiasm on the other. That the process was ultimately therapeutic is shown by Yeats’s move away from the Celtic Twilight to the poems of his maturity.

 

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