Search results for ""Author John O'Meara""

This essay in autobiography opens in Eyrecourt, east Galway, and describes an early schooling at Rockwell and the experiences of a Jesuit novice at Emo Court, Co. Laois, and Rathfarnham. John O’Meara read classical studies at University College, Dublin, and after a spell of teaching at Clongowes Wood left in 1942 on a travelling studentship to Oxford, where he gained a doctorate three years later. In 1947 he married Odile de Montfort, whom he met in Dublin. The Singing-Masters is written with singular clarity and leaves an abiding impression of Ireland between the wars – the hothouse atmosphere of a diocesan seminary, the lure of the Irish countryside (Eyrecourt in summer, Tullabeg in winter), a fledgling state increasingly dominated by the Church – drawn into perspective by a visit to Lourdes and by the author’s self-questionings. In wartime Oxford, where he met Lutyens, Waugh and Belloc, Dodds and Father D’Arcy, O’Meara comes of spiritual and intellectual age, linking Ireland once more to the traditions of theological Europe, and finding his singing-masters in Augustine, Eriugena and the Neo-Platonists. With this quiet celebration of selfhood, and in its limpid recall of time gone, John O’Meara has created a classic of its kind

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Gerald of Wales was among the most dynamic and fascinating churchmen of the twelfth century. A member of one of the leading Norman families involved in the invasion of Ireland, he first visited there in 1183 and later returned in the entourage of Henry II. The resulting Topographia Hiberniae is an extraordinary account of his travels. Here he describes landscapes, fish, birds and animals; recounts the history of Ireland's rulers; and tells fantastical stories of magic wells and deadly whirlpools, strange creatures and evil spirits. Written from the point of view of an invader and reformer, this work has been rightly criticized for its portrait of a primitive land, yet it is also one of the most important sources for what is known of Ireland during the Middle Ages.

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City of God is an enduringly significant work in the history of Christian thought, by one of its central figuresWritten as an eloquent defence of the faith at a time when the Roman Empire was on the brink of collapse, this great theological and philosophical work by St Augustine, bishop of Hippo, examines the ancient pagan religions of Rome, the arguments of the Greek philosophers and the revelations of the Bible. Pointing the way forward to a citizenship that transcends worldly politics and will last for eternity, City of God is one of the most influential documents in the development of Christianity.Translated with Notes by Henry Bettenson with an Introduction by G. R. Evans

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