On the Wonders of Ireland: Translation andAdaptation

The Latin poem De mirabilibus Hibernie, ‘On the wonders of Ireland’ (henceforth De mirabilibus) stands firmly within the broad Christian genre of texts on the significance of ‘signs and wonders’, but it also addresses specifically Irish aspects of that literary tradition. The purpose of this chapter is to locate De mirabilibus more precisely within the history of the ‘signs and wonders’ genre, both in terms of the earlier sources upon which its author drew and the intellectual contexts within which it was composed, read and transmitted. As edited by Aubrey Gwynn, the poem consists of introductory verses de signis et prodigiis (lines 1–30), followed by verses de rebus Hibernie admirandis (lines 31–195).1 The ‘signs and wonders’ included in the first part of the text, and in other texts of the same genre, would have been deemed by scholastic theologians to have been natural but inexplicable, rather than supernatural and miraculous. By this I mean that these were not miracula, which are caused by God alone, but mirabilia, which, while they exceed one’s knowledge and expectations of nature, are of nature, rather than above or beyond it.2 Such wonders possess inherent