The Heavenly Light

Abstract

While the majority of surviving hagiography in the Celtic and other traditions is focused on male saints, studying hagiography of female saints can provide historians with crucial insight into how religion shaped medieval attitudes towards gender, and how women exercised power and agency within the existing societal confines shaped by Christianity. Initially, the glorification of female virginity in Celtic hagiography appears to demonize sexually active women while idealizing the rhetorical figure of the virgin. However, while Celtic hagiography certainly uses literary symbolism, metaphor, and imagery to promote female virginity, as narrowly defined by patriarchal standards, the social structures created by Christian institutions also provided some of the only spaces in medieval communities wherein women could construct lives independent of men, access education, and exercise political and social power. Consequently, a more nuanced understanding of the feminist implications of Celtic hagiography and its depictions of female saints is necessary in historical study.