The Cambrai Homily is the earliest known Irish homily, dating to the 7th or early 8th century, and housed in the Médiathèque d'agglomération de Cambrai. It is evidence that a written vernacular encouraged by the Church had already been established alongside Latin by the 7th century in Ireland. The homily is also the oldest single example of an extended prose passage in Old Irish.[1][2] The text is incomplete, and Latin and Irish are mixed. Quotations from the Bible and patristic sources are in Latin, with the explication in Irish. It is a significant document for the study of Celtic linguistics and for understanding sermons as they might have existed in the 7th-century Irish church. The homily also contains the earliest examples in written Irish of triads, a form of expression characteristic of early Irish literature, though the text taken as a whole is not composed in triads.[3]
The homily expounds on Matthew 16:24 with a selection from the Homilia in Evangelia by Pope Gregory I, and an explanation of the three degrees of martyrdom, designated by the colors red, blue (or green, Irish glas), and white.[4]
- ^ Dáibhí Ó Cróinín. Hiberno-Latin Literature to 1169.
- ^ James Carney, ed. (2005). Language and Literature to 1168. Oxford University Press. pp. 379 and 492.
{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help) - ^ Seán Duffy, ed. (2006). Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia'. Routledge. p. 452.
- ^ Follett, Westley (2006). Céli Dé in Ireland: Monastic Writing and Identity in the Early Middle Ages. Boydell Press. pp. 54–56. ISBN 9781843832768.
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