Abstract
The Sexual Shame of the Chaste: ‘Abortion Miracles’ in Early Medieval Saints’ Lives
Highlights
Some medieval historians have drawn attention to the complexity of medieval gender by identifying distinct groups which did not conform to conventional roles, from late Roman and Byzantine court eunuchs to thirteenth-century dowagers, as third genders.[2]
In the early third century, Tertullian critiqued an emergent custom in Carthage for virgins who had renounced marriage to stand unveiled in church, he noted acerbically that after uncovering their heads many ended up covering their bellies in shame or resorting to abortion to prevent public disclosure of sexual sin.[9]
This article focuses on questions of chastity and sexual sin in examining an unusual ‘abortion miracle’ motif in the Latin hagiography of early medieval Ireland
Summary
In the early Middle Ages, gender distinctions commonly expressed ideas of polarity and hierarchy. Callan has provided a gendered reading of the motif and the hagiographic handling of reproduction: male incursions into reproductive matters, like those of Aed and Cainnech, were failed attempts to appropriate control of a female zone of reproductive labour, in which women turned to other women for their needs, and prescriptive texts, which explicitly refer only to female abortionists, ‘represent the morality of “ordinary” Irish Christians’.12 While these readings, especially Callan’s, are of much interest, the question of how the erasure of a nun’s pregnancy could be ‘Abortion Miracles’ in Early Medieval Saints’ Lives represented as a mark of saintly sanctity has not been fully explored. This paper will approach the miracle lying at the heart of the motif in light of a critical juncture between early medieval gender and religion, namely the promotion and protection of chastity
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