At first sight, this work’s rather sensational title might put off the academic reader. The three topics grouped together have too often received non-academic treatment, less-than-serious method and debatable conclusions. However, in this case, the author has a solid reputation and her introductory arguments quickly dispel such negative suspicions. Callan displays from the onset a remarkable blend of competent research, firm grasp and knowledge of the sources, as well as an open, all-round approach to the themes. She examines three events in fourteenth-century Ireland: the local offshoot of the international legal action that brought the Templar order to an end (1308–1310); the complex witchcraft trial orchestrated by the bishop of Ossory, Richard Ledrede, against a Kilkenny noblewoman, Alice Kyteler (1324), and the separate executions of Irishmen on charges of heresy: Adducc Dubh O’Toole (1328) and two members of the MacConmara clan (1353).

The common denominator is the topic of ‘heresy’, as suggested by the work’s subtitle (‘Vengeance and heresy in medieval Ireland’). The grouping together of these events is in itself a fresh approach: since Herbert Wood (1907), few scholars have dealt with the trial of the Templars in Ireland until recent comprehensive studies by Helen Nicholson (2007, 2009, 2010). The Kilkenny case did attract considerable attention since the publication of the trial’s proceedings by Wright (1843). As for the O’Toole case, the author provides an interesting historiographical summary (p. 203 and n. 75), highlighting how several scholars either accepted the charges against the victim at face value, or partially challenged them, thanks to a proper work of contextualisation.

But no historian had considered these cases together. The collective and comparative study of the three cases, according to Callan: ‘brings significant issues to the forefront, such as the relations between the “three nations” – the English, the Irish, and the Anglo-Irish – and the role of the church in these relations; tensions within the ecclesiastical hierarchy and between secular and spiritual authority; Ireland’s position within its European context; and the political and cultural aspects of the heresies’ (p. 2).

In the case of the Templars, Callan tends to highlight the peculiar hostility shown towards the order by other members of the Anglo-Irish community, thus stressing the importance of the trial not so much for its ‘heretical’ motives, but as a window opened onto a tense and quarrelling society. The second case, which has the lion’s share of the analysis (pp 78–187), is dominated by the sinister figure of Bishop Richard Ledrede and his obsessive persecution of his political (and religious) enemies. The background is a most complicated one: mid-fourteenth century Ireland was a society in great turmoil, shaken by widespread rebellion, Gaelic resurgence, bitter internecine warfare among the most prominent lords, all against a backdrop of an even more complex political upheaval in neighbouring Britain (especially in the 1320s). It is no easy task to try and make clear sense of the tangled alliances and allegiances between Ireland and Britain and the impact – if any – they had on the events described. It is notable that scholars of the calibre of J. Lydon and R. Frame disagreed on how much weight to assign to these loyalties, as Callan herself points out (pp 150–1). Ledrede’s all-out war against his enemies is nevertheless told in a compelling account which leaves no stone unturned. All characters in the ‘play’ are dissected and analysed in depth, along with their backgrounds, motives and attitudes, all the while keeping an attentive eye on the cultural differences between the Irish environment and ‘alien’ European influences. It is these differences, the author argues, that were perhaps at the root of the vehement local reactions to the trials and executions, and hindered attempts to make them into the norm.

Callan’s conclusions are quite convincing, especially with regards to the conceptual distinction between ‘real’ and ‘artificial’ heresies, the second case mostly applying to Ireland. The Templars, the witch and the wild Irish is a very good work, which has the merit of touching on curious and fascinating events of medieval Irish history without relinquishing on serious academic research and analysis, and grouping them into a line of inquiry that had hitherto largely escaped the attention of scholars.