Ritual Lamentation in the Irish Penitentials

Alexandra Bergholm

doi:10.3390/rel12030207

Abstract

Some of the earliest references to ritual lamentation or keening in the early Irish sources are found in the penitential handbooks dated to around the seventh and eighth centuries. In previous scholarship, these passages have commonly been interpreted as evidence of the continuous attempts of the Church to curb pagan practices among the ‘nominally Christian’ populace, thus assuming that such regulations were primarily used as a means of social control. This article examines the wider theological and intellectual context of these texts, by focusing in particular on the influence of the Old Testament on early Irish ecclesiastical writing. It will be argued that the demonstrable preoccupation of these sources with issues such as ritual purity and proper religious observance suggests that the stipulations pertaining to lamentation were not solely intended to regulate lay behavior.

Highlights

26.16), as well as in Blathmac’s long devotional composition from the mid-eighth century, in which the theme of keening is used to frame a poetical account of the Passion of Christ. (Bieler [1979] 2004, pp. 122–67; Carney [1964] 1989).) Among the most important sources in this regard are the Irish penitential documents, of which three in particular include lamentation as part of their treatment of various sins requiring some kind of expiation
Sharpe’s argument that this is the only option since “keening was regarded by the Church as a pagan practice” and “the laity were not regarded as unclean” (Sharpe 1979, p. 78) is not supported in light of the analysis presented above, and it is possible that these categories are used instead to distinguish between degrees of sinfulness or worldliness among the members of the wider Christian community
The passages on ritual lamentation in the Irish penitentials have come down to us in texts written over a period of time spanning approximately from the mid-seventh century to the end of the eighth

Summary

Introduction

122–67; Carney [1964] 1989).) Among the most important sources in this regard are the Irish penitential documents, of which three in particular include lamentation as part of their treatment of various sins requiring some kind of expiation These texts—the Canones Hibernenses or the Irish canons, the so-called Bigotian penitential, and the Old Irish penitential—have all been dated to the seventh and eighth centuries, and are part of a much larger corpus of penitential literature that was produced in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe throughout the early medieval period The purpose of the following analysis, is to offer a detailed examination of these sources in order to gain a better understanding of this evidence and its historical value Due to their normative nature, the penitential texts have been characterized as exceedingly formal, dogmatic, and derivative, and their utility as sources for cultural and social history remains an issue of ongoing debate.

Contextualizing the Penitential Texts

Controlling the “Clamour Aroused by Grief”: The Bigotian and the Old

Conclusions