The article deals with the analysis of animal images in the famous Old Irish Gospel of the 8th century —  the Book of Kells. The authors propose to distinguish between the tree types of animal images: canonical images of the evangelists in the form of animals, ornamental and denominated as iconic. Ornamental images of animals have parallels in Germanic animal style. Germanic animal style became widespread in the West and was used in Mediaeval manuscripts. Animals depicted in that style are often distorted, elongated and sometimes unrecognizable. The other type of animal images are the so‑called line‑fillers. They are considered to be an invention of insular manuscript art. In the Book of Kells such images occur frequently. They may be dogs or cats or fishes or even humans. Those images tend to be kind of realistic ones and can be in a way considered to be precursors of Mediaeval Bestiaries. The authors pay special attention to the images of cats which can also be divided into ornamental and realistic ones. The article analyses pictures treating one and the same subject: a cat is hunting a mouse with a stolen wafer in its mouth. The authors show that such pictures, on the one hand, refer to the real monastic everyday life, yet on the other hand, they may have profound symbolic meaning.

This article explores Richard Hooker’s liturgical theology and his defence of ecclesiastical splendour against the critiques of radical Reformation thinkers. It argues that Hooker regarded sensation —  understood as perception and sensibility rather than sentimentality —  as a vital dimension of worship, complementing imitation and iteration. For Hooker, the “beauty of holiness” achieved its fullest expression not through iconography but through the spatial and material language of sacred architecture. The study unfolds in four parts. It first analyses the heuristic models underlying late sixteenth‑century theories of sacred architecture. It then examines the concepts of hierotopy and hierotopics as frameworks for understanding the creation and experience of holy space. The third section reconciles the methodological approaches of hierotopics and liturgics in the study of Christian ritual practices, demonstrating how spatial design and liturgical performance interact as complementary modes of theological expression. The final section traces the legacy of Hooker’s liturgical aesthetics in the reconfiguration of sacred space by later figures such as Lancelot Andrewes, Richard Neile, and William Laud. Methodologically, the article combines historical analysis with insights from the material turn in the humanities, situating Hooker’s theology within wider debates on ritual and material culture. It concludes that Hooker’s conception of the “beauty of holiness” illuminates the theological aesthetics of the Late Tudor and Early Stuart Church of England and offers a distinctive perspective for contemporary ritual studies. His synthesis of theological reason, sensory experience, and architectural imagination demonstrates how Anglican worship sought to embody divine order through material splendour.

As the least Romanized part of Europe, early Christian Ireland preserved till the Anglo-Norman invasion several unique cults, traditions, and religious concepts. The one under consideration here are the twelve apostles of Ireland, a barely examined group of Irish saints, that nonetheless appear in a number of texts. The article deals with the origins, development, and decline of this cult as evidenced in the sources of different types, using the narrative approach, which contributes to our understanding of church life and politics in Ireland in the ninth-twelfth centuries

The article attempts to identify the social status of some main characters of the Immrama, the old Irish texts about sea journeys. Mael Duin and Ua Corra brothers, with their young age and material disability, remind us a typical fer midboth —  one of the lowest social categories in Early Ireland. The meanings of fuirseóir and crosán are also in the focus, since the former refers to jester or a mountebank, while later has a more widespread semantic range included some penitential aspects of an atonement. A context from the Old Irish Law texts, glossaries and narratives allows us to consider all these ranks and categories as the marginal ones. Constructing Immrama penitential and moral effect a medieval author found such marginals as a perfect role model for his narratives.

This article focuses on the medieval cults of Welsh saints in their connection with political processes that affected both Wales and the entire island of Britain. The images of saints, the texts associated with them, and religious communities were used by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities to solve problems related to the legitimization of material wealth, legal status, or social position. The Welsh kingdoms could emphasize their connection with the saint, thereby supporting his veneration at the local level if this helped to confirm the right to power or preserve their lives and the potential for further action in a situation of temporary defeat. The clergy used the political potential of cults in a broader perspective: they tried to defend their autonomy from an external force, the power of the archbishops of Canterbury; to protect their material well‑being from the raids of the Norman lords of the Anglo‑Welsh borderland, as well as in disputes with each other; to obtain recognition of their legal immunities from representatives of the Welsh nobility. The article analyzes the historical context of such cases, the goals, methods, and the overall effectiveness of using a locally revered cult as a political tool.

Translation from Old English to Russian of penitential texts from Oxford, Bodleian Junius with historical commentary.

The article presents a commented translation of a medieval Irish text ‘The Story of the Finding of Cashel and the Blessing of the King’. The text is preserved in a single copy in manuscript TCD H.3.17 (15th century). It belongs to the “royal cycle” of Irish medieval literature and is one of the narratives about Conall Corc, the semi‑legendary king of Munster and the founder of the Eóganachta dynasty, which dominated southern Ireland from the 5th to the 10th centuries. The article examines a synopsis of the story, possible dating of the text, mechanisms of dynastic legitimation of Eóganachta kingship in Munster, the sacralisation of the Rock of Cashel as a political and religious center of Munster, as well as investigates the system of vassalage between the king of Cashel and its subordinate kingdoms. The author demonstrates that the text has ideological inspirations, and that it uses mythological and biblical motifs to legitimise the power of the Eóganachta and justify the existing political order of medieval Munster.

For the first time in Russian, a complete translation of Cáin Adomnáin (the Law of Adomnán), a remarkable specimen of ancient Irish canon and secular law from the seventh century, is published. It was adopted with the aim of protecting women, children, and clergy from military violence —  that is, those categories of the population that, in accordance with the norms of modern international humanitarian law, fall under the definition of “noncombatants”. The text is provided with an introductory article and comments. The study of this legal source will contribute to the further expansion and deepening of ideas about the chronological framework and features of the genesis of early Irish canonical and secular law, as well as the formation of international law in the Middle Ages.