TCD 97. 13th-14th century. Vellum.
The Franciscans were one of the most influential religious, cultural and intellectual forces in medieval and early modern Ireland. The Irish Franciscan province was established in 1230 and by 1350 they had established thirty-two friaries, mainly in ports and towns. Despite the idealism of their founder, racial tension between Irish and Anglo-Norman friars was a constant problem. The oldest surviving Irish copy of the 1223 Rule of St Francis is in this late thirteenth/early fourteenth-century manuscript from St Thomas's Abbey in Dublin, a wealthy house of Victorine Canons. It is a relatively plain working manuscript with occasional rubrication and decoration and contains a number of other monastic rules and liturgical texts.
