Prospective readers of Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance need not worry about their skepticism when first seeing Dublin, the Pale, and Renaissance in the same title: indeed, a review of the editors' earlier work on Ireland and the Renaissance (Four Courts Press, 2007) insisted that few if any “think that Ireland was even touched by any aspects of the ‘sophistication’ of the renaissance” (Michael Merrigan, Ireland's Genealogical Studies Gazette 3, no. 7 [2008]: 2). But the current volume on Dublin and the Pale in the Renaissance carries on the editors' goal to demonstrate the many and varied “connections between Ireland and the Renaissance world” and to place the developments in Ireland in the late medieval and early modern periods “in their international contexts” (40). Relying on an interdisciplinary approach to both the Renaissance and the area surrounding Dublin, the present volume manages to explore the regular contacts between Ireland and the Continent and goes a long way toward dispelling the assumptions about Ireland's marginal or culturally challenged status in these years.

The volume is divided into two parts, the first concentrating on “History and Architecture” and the second considering “Music, Language and Letters.” Early essays address some fascinating issues about a rich variety of relations in the Pale. It will come as no surprise that the Fitzgeralds appear regularly in these pages. Their belief in the family ties with Florence meant that their interest in all things Italian was reflected in their impressive library collections, with both Maynooth and Youghal filled with books in multiple languages, all offering evidence of “extensive contacts with the Continent in the later fifteenth century” (26). But powerful magnates were not the sole means for material culture, knowledge, ideas, and fashions to make their way between Ireland and the Continent. Far more common was the influence of merchants, pilgrims, and clerics. In particular, the Irish Franciscans made regular trips between Rome and Ireland, meeting noted humanists at seminaries, chapter meetings, and schools. Remarkably, St. Fiachra was best known in France, with his bones resting at Meaux before being presented to Cosimo II de' Medici, whose family was devoted to the Irish saint for centuries; his chapel in Florence was built by Grand Duke Ferdinand II in 1627. In fact, the numbers of Irish on the Continent following the Reformation was prodigious, with Irish mercenaries so common that Albrecht Dürer painted them, and Irish colleges being founded at Douai, Louvain, Rome, Alcalá, Valladolid, Salamanca, and Lisbon between 1577 and 1593 (36). Because these colleges would provide the leading Irish theologians, controversialists, historians, monks, friars, and teachers, it is clear that Renaissance ideas were well known in Ireland in these years and after.

Among the many fascinating chapters, one finds John Bradley's on Kilkenny. Bradley shows how Kilkenny, reliably loyal to the Crown, was not really part of the Pale because the borders were designed to defend Dublin and—much like Calais—England from assault. But the Butler lords of the area were determined that the city of Kilkenny be modeled to reflect the new emphasis on civility. Consequently, the goal of the town council was “to transform it into a Renaissance city” (55). Some very early town planning guaranteed that it adopted the aesthetic vision of Dublin and London, and the creation of coordinated street frontage of stone houses makes plain how easily Renaissance ideals and architecture were adopted in Ireland. Sinead Quirke uses the period of the Renaissance to discuss the variegated boundaries associated with the Pale. Relying on the Wogans of Rathcoffey, she shows how cultural, religious, and physical boundaries were “manifested, maintained, diluted, and challenged” (124) by those on either side of the boundaries, making it clear that there was a good deal of interaction within and beyond the Pale and that boundary lines of all sorts were accordingly blurred. In short, the strict division between civility and barbarity are far more complicated than is often depicted.

In an important series of chapters on architectural developments, Rachel Moss reveals the ways in which the Tudor Reformation altered the fabric and furnishings of churches, claiming that talk of wholesale iconoclasm has been much exaggerated, at least by limiting the discussion to secular churches, while Jane Fenelon offers intriguing details on the ways Thomas Wentworth redecorated Dublin Castle with tapestries from Brussels, drawing on the lord deputy's fascination with Renaissance display, ritual, and magnificence. Indeed, this same trend can be seen at Wentworth's house at Jigginstown, where he introduced ideas from Bolsover and Mantua. Similarly, Stuart Kinsella argues that Jigginstown House was inspired by the crypt at Christ Church Dublin, offering an excellent account of the way that Renaissance ideas and influences percolated into Ireland from London, the clergy, the nobility, merchants, as well as the interaction of local and immigrant craftsmen.

In part 2, music, language, and books are discussed in a series of fascinating chapters. Thomas Herron looks at Stanihurst's Aeneis to find Counter-Reformation ideals and hints of religious martyrdom in the writings of antiquity. B. R. Siegfried finds the typology of Israel put to use by Derricke in his Image of Ireland, seeing Dublin portrayed as the New Jerusalem and the dichotomy of civility versus barbarity anticipated in the land of promise and the locusts of the apocalypse. In one of the most interesting chapters, Brendan Kane makes clear that Irish was used much more in the Pale than has been previously accepted. He shows the important role that the language played at the political as well as the social level—used with facility by natives, Old English, and New English in the Pale. He takes issue with Sir John Davies's view of English success, showing that the “decline of the language was [clearly] in the eye of the beholder” (273). Kane's examination of the links among language, centralization, and colonization is supported by his fascinating reading of the Earl of Thomond's portrayal in the “Contention of the Bards.”

The present book shows the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to the topic. From the ability of church interiors to help us understand the limited extent of iconoclasm or domestic interiors to clarify the influence of the Renaissance in Ireland, the contributors provide an impressive variety of lenses that offer significant new insights to both the period and the geographic space under consideration. Music, theater, and gender appear as sources that will make this finely produced collection appealing to a wide range of readers, including any intrigued by the idea that the Mona Lisa may have been a relative of the Irish Fitzgeralds.