Monasticon Hibernicum is an on-line database of early Christian ecclesiastical settlement in Ireland from the 5th to the 12th century. The database includes over 5,500 pre-Reform sites with twenty-three data fields including information on site location, associated saints, recorded history, field remains and a bibliography.

Inspired by the monumental Monasticon Hibernicum of eighteenth-century antiquarian and clergyman Mervyn Archdall (to whose scholarship it pays tribute), the project is rather more than a revised version of Archdall’s opus. While Archdall’s encyclopedia of pre-Reformation monasteries and abbies covered some five-hundred and fifty sites in eight-hundred pages, this database of pre-twelfth century ecclesiastical settlement is much wider in scope, recording ten times the number of sites. Indeed, in the twenty-first century we have the benefit of many published sources, a far greater knowledge of physical remains, besides a more developed critical method in the base-disciplines of history and archaeology, than were available to Archdall. These factors together greatly facilitate our interpretation of data. At the most basic level, the approach here is to describe certain foundations as ‘associated with’ e.g. St Brigit or St Finbarr, rather than re-state historically unprovable claims that the sites were founded by the saint in person. Moreover, in listing physical remains, we can nowadays distinguish between structures of medieval (or later) date, and material which can be assigned with reasonable confidence to the Early Christian or pre-Reform period (i.e. pre-twelfth century). A very important further consideration is that this ‘encyclopedia’, taking the form of on-line database, is searchable under a wide range of headings – and so has greater potential as a research tool for scholars in the fields of history, archaeology and related disciplines.

Funded by the IRCHSS and based at NUI Maynooth, the project was launched in July 2009 on the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, School of Celtic Studies website (www.celt.dias.ie).

Monasticon Hibernicum is an on-going project, with information/sites being updated, corrected and added continually.