Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Dr Philippa Byrne

Assistant Professor in Medieval History

I am primarily interested in the intellectual history of the central Middle Ages, the relationship between theology and law, and the (much-contested) concept of a Twelfth-Century Renaissance. My work examines how ideas developed in newly-founded schools and universities transformed political and legal realities. In 2019, I published a monograph examining the moral dilemmas faced by medieval judges. More recently, I have been working on a project which examines the distinctive intellectual synthesis of twelfth-century Sicily and southern Italy: a region in which Arabic-, Greek-, and Latin-speakers engaged in philosophical and theological dialogue and exchange. Before coming to Trinity, I was a Departmental Lecturer at Oxford, and, before that, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow.

Select Publications

Monographs:

Justice and Mercy: Moral Theology and the Exercise of Law in Twelfth-Century England (Manchester University Press, 2019)

Edited Collections:

With Dr C. Ellis, Maritime Exchange and the Making of Norman Worlds (Brepols, 2023)

Journal Articles

‘Cassinese Horizons: Peter the Deacon, Cowdrey’s “Golden Age,” and Benedictine Tradition in Southern Italy’, Viator 54:1 (2023)
‘Portable Scholasticism? The Sicilian Intellectual Horizons of Gervase of Tilbury’, Journal of the History of Ideas 84:3 (2023), 441-64
‘Cutting out the camel-like knees of St. James: The De Viris Illustribus Tradition in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, Historical Research 94, no. 264 (2021), 191-212.
‘Is there a Medieval Legal Theology? Legal Learning, Legal Careers, and Historical Methodology in the Twelfth Century’, Reading Medieval Studies 47 (2021)

Teaching

I contribute to the teaching of undergraduate survey modules on medieval history, including ‘Religion and Society, c.1095-c.1517’ and ‘The Hundred Years’ War’. At Sophister level, I teach the List I module ‘Deviance and Dissent in Medieval Britain and Ireland’, and the List 2 module ‘The World of the Crusades’. I am also part of the teaching team for the MPhil in Medieval Studies.