The Red Book of Ossory

An online article from the Irish Independent reports on a year long exhibition in St Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny of the fourteenth century Red Book of Ossory. 

There is a brief introduction to the Red Book by Wikipedia at Red Book of Ossory

The newspaper article can be seen at Returned 14th Century manuscript offers a look into Medieval Kilkenny

It concentrates on the career of the Bishop associated with the text, the English born Richard de Ledrede OFM, who held the diocese of Ossory from 1317 until 1360/1. This included the trial for witchcraft of Alice Kyteler, disputes with the local Anglo-Irish nobility and the government in Dublin, as well as Archbishop Bicknor of Dublin, and, endowed what appears to have been of a determinedly controversial temperament, taking on the morals of the local clergy and laity, and to have, despite all the disputes, lived to a great age. 

Wikipedia has a life of the bishop at Richard de Ledrede

There are a selection of pictures of the essentially thirteenth century cathedral, one of the best preserved in Ireland, including Bishop Ledrede’s tomb effigy, at St Canice's Cathedral and Round Tower • Visitor

Wikipedia describes the cathedral at St Canice's Cathedral

Fourteenth century Kilkenny was not just the seat of an important bishopric but also of the Buler family Earls of Ormonde, one of the most active Anglo-Irish noble families, with close ties to the English court, and where the Irish Parliament in 1366 pased the Statutes of Kilkenny which legislated to try to maintain English identity in the Lordship of Ireland. This is set out on Wikipedia at Statutes of Kilkenny and in a History Today note at Statute of Kilkenny

The issues which this legislation sought to address no doubt contributed to the tumultuous episcopate of Bishop Ledrede and the compilation of the Red Book itself. In contrast to the previous century in the fourteenth century English cultural and political dominance stagnated and declined as more of the Anglo-Irish or ‘Old English’, to use later terminology, increasingly became more acclimatised to purely Irish cultural influences and practices. Kilkenny was in one of the more Anglicised areas of Ireland yet for that reason such issues mattered all the more there.