The mendicant orders in the west of Ireland: history and architecture
The four great mendicant orders of the middle ages – the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustinian Hermit friars – arrived in Ireland in the 13th century. What distinguished them from other monastic orders of the period was their devotion to preaching and good works. These orders had friaries all over Ireland, and some had quite sumptuous architecture, despite the friars’ insistence on poverty. Western Ireland has some of the most notable friaries not just in Ireland but in western Europe. This lecture explores the circumstances in which friars crossed the Shannon, the roles which they had in the medieval west, and the nature of their surviving architecture.
Prof. Tadhg O’Keeffe is Full Professor of Archaeology in UCD where he has taught since 1996 and has published widely on medieval architecture. Author of numerous publications, his works focus on medieval archaeology. His many books include Romanesque Ireland: archaeology and ideology in the twelfth-century Ireland (2003) and Ireland’s Round Towers: buildings, rituals and landscapes of the early Irish church (2004). Some of his works place Ireland in a European context, works such as Ireland Encastellated, AD 950-1550: insular castle-building in its European context (2021) and Medieval Irish Architecture and the Concept of Romanesque: building traditions in eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe (2024). In addition to his many books, he has produced many articles and a memorial lecture (E.G. Quiggan) on ‘The Gaelic Peoples and their Archaeological Identities, 1000-1650 (2004), and he has contributed to the Amplify Archaeology Podcast series with a talk on Irish Castles. He is currently working on a project on Archaeology and the Global Middle Ages.
Date: Monday, 8 December 2025
Time: 20:00/8pm
Venue: Harbour Hotel, Galway