Irish Hagiography Research Articles

Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian Traditions

Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian Traditions

Gendered Womb-Healing: Malevolent Magic and Spiritual Medicine in the Early Medieval Lives of St Brigit

This paper examines what have been termed ‘abortion miracles’ attributed to the hagiographies of St Brigit of Kildare. Of the early vitae of St Brigit, two have survived in their entirety: the seventh-century Life of St Brigit by Cogitosus and the Vita Prima Sanctae Brigitae. ‘Abortion miracles’ in hagiographies are largely unique to Ireland and past scholars have theorised their existence and placement as a defiance of early Christian morality, while others have theorised their inclusion to demonstrate the value of chastity in early medieval Irish Christianity. This paper refocuses the argument by separating medieval abortion as an act of maleficium, or ‘malevolent magic’, as described in the Irish penitentials, and argues that the miracles found in Irish hagiography are medicines of penance, called wombhealing.

Roman soil and Roman sound in Irish hagiography

ABSTRACTIrish hagiography displays considerable interest in communication between Ireland and Rome, particularly as this featured saints, popes and relics. While people and objects travel between the two places, there is also concern to circumvent the distance involved. This article discusses an episode of miraculous communication in the Irish Life of St Colmán Élo. Here messages and messengers travel from Rome, but time and space are also telescoped through aural and material means: the sound of the bell marking the death of Pope Gregory the Great and a gift from him of Roman soil to be spread on Colmán Élo’s cemetery. The article considers how the two elements function within their hagiographical context to connect Rome and Ireland, and how these places shaped the account. The roles of bell and soil both draw on their associations in Ireland and relate to papal communication as this was experienced and imagined more widely.

Life of St Molua: Date and Authorship

The extant recensions of the Life of St Molua are examined to determine the date of composition. The main focus is on the historical content of the Life. The result shows, with a high degree of assurance, that the original is a seventh-century composition, and thus one of the earliest works of Irish hagiography. Its author may have been Laidcend mac Baíth Bandaig, sapiens († 661).

The Sexual Shame of the Chaste: ‘Abortion Miracles’ in Early Medieval Saints’ Lives

The Sexual Shame of the Chaste: ‘Abortion Miracles’ in Early Medieval Saints’ Lives

Iona in 1771: Gaelic tradition and visitors’ experience

This account of Iona has long been known only under the claim, made in 1883, that it was translated from Irish. It is here shown to have been printed in English in Edinburgh in 1774. The account provides important testimony to the experience of a Scottish visitor before the famous visits by Joseph Banks, Thomas Pennant, and Samuel Johnson opened up Iona and Staffa as popular destinations. Its valuable evidence on the state of the antiquities in 1771 is drawn out by comparison with the nearest available witnesses. This account is unusual in the richness of its Gaelic material, both sayings and stories associated with St Columba and also names of local features pointed out to visitors in Iona. One poem cited by the visitor is found in Irish manuscripts from the sixteenth century, raising the question whether his reportage was backed up by written texts. This account more than any other gives a glimpse of Catholic tradition with roots in Irish hagiography. The writer's circumstances are nowhere made explicit, but there are signs that his knowledge of Columban stories in Gaelic was not acquired in the context of a brief visit. In the local setting, however, what was told to visitors was also adapted to their expectations, so that, over the following twenty years we have an instructive example of an early transition from vernacular, and largely oral, transmission to a polite written circulation of selected stories retold by visitors. This in turn has its effect on the antiquities, which in some cases were actually replenished. Detectable changes in what was pointed out and said to visitors show that what visitors received as ancient tradition was already in the 1770s capable of new and creative responses to their expectations based on their awareness of what earlier visitors had seen. This account is the most important key to understanding Iona in the years before the regular stream of visitors began.

Of Vanishing Fetuses and Maidens Made-Again: Abortion, Restored Virginity, and Similar Scenarios in Medieval Irish Hagiography and Penitentials

Of Vanishing Fetuses and Maidens Made-Again: Abortion, Restored Virginity, and Similar Scenarios in Medieval Irish Hagiography and Penitentials

Steadfast Saints or Malleable Models? Seventeenth-Century Irish Hagiography Revisited

At one of the last sessions of the Council of Trent, the question of the role of saints within the Church was addressed. While the fathers upheld the value of venerating images and relics of the saints, they nevertheless admitted that there had been some abuses of their cults in the past. This led effectively to an effort to regulate and reform the process of canonization, by which saints were made, involving a greater control over the creation of saints by the authorities in Rome in order to avoid the further growth of dubious local cults that ranged from the benign to the bizarre.1 In other words, recognition of the sacred was centralized.2 In the wake of the Council, and amidst criticisms of the previously accepted view of sainthood from reformers within and without the Church alike, the official reaction of church authorities was indecisive. Thus, from the close of the Council in 1563 until 1588, when the Congregation of Sacred Rites and Ceremonies was established to over see canonizations, there were no new saints officially recognized within the Catholic Church.3 One of the problems facing the Church was the prevalence of what was now considered to be questionable material in the lives of even the officially recognized saints. A historically critical method of outlining the lives of saints was required if the idea of sainthood was going to retain any credibility in a rapidly changing Europe. In order to achieve this, the construction of new lives would have to attain certain standards and, concomitantly, old lives that were deficient in this area necessitated amendment. Peter Burke sees evidence of this new and critical approach to the lives of saints in the work of Erasmus on the life of St. Jerome.4 It was, however, a Jesuit project, begun in Antwerp in 1607 and spearheaded by Father Heribert Rosweyde, that began a systematic attempt at collating and publishing what was hoped would be a acceptable collection of the lives of the saints of the universal church.5 Rosweyde's Fasti sanctorum (1607), apart from giving an account of the manuscript lives of saints found in Belgian libraries, outlined a plan for the publication of eighteen volumes of the lives of the saints including a commentary volume and index volume.6 He did not live to see his plan implemented, however, and when he died in 1629, John BoIlandus was placed in charge of the project in his stead.7 The group that worked with John Bollandus, known since as the Bollandists, published in 1643 two volumes of the lives of saints whose feastdays occurred in January, followed in 1648 by three volumes treating of the saints whose feasts occurred in February.8 Roughly around the same time, in 1645 and 1647 respectively, to be precise, John Colgan, an Irish Franciscan friar based at Louvain, published two volumes of Irish saints' lives, the first, entitled Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae (1645), treating of the lives of Irish saints whose feast days occurred in January, February, and March, and the second, Triadis Thaumaturgae (1647), comprising various lives of Patrick, Brigid, and Colmcille. The works of Colgan marked the culmination of a long process, involving many individuals, that partly entailed the production of Irish saints' lives that would satisfy the expectations of Tridentine prelates such as John Roche of Ferns, who praised the life of Patrick in the new breviary as modern, drawn out of the best writers, to be read than the ancient legend.9 Renewed interest in the publication of more seemly lives of Irish saints can be traced to the activity of Richard Stanihurst, whose Latin life of St. Patrick entitled De vita S Patricii, Hiberniae Apostoli was published at Antwerp in 1587.10 Based on both the works of Jocelin and Giraldus Cambrensis, this life also contained many additional patristic and biblical references that portrayed Patrick as a figure whose life was intimately related to the patriarchs in Scripture and the Fathers of the Church, therefore bestowing on him exceptional credentials. …

Creative Medieval Etymology and Irish Hagiography (Lasair, Columba, Senán)

The main arguments of this paper are to be found in section III, which deals with the etymological origin of four miracles from the hagiographical spheres of saints Lasair, Columba, and Senán. Putting the discussion in context, section I offers examples of etymological aetiologies from other linguistic and literary environments, and section II demonstrates Isidore's epistemology, which provided Irish scholars with helpful methodology.

Studies in Irish hagiography. Saints and scholars. Edited by John Carey, Máire Herbert and Pádraig Ó Riain. Pp. xii+418 incl. numerous ills. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001. £35.44. 1 85182 486 3

Studies in Irish hagiography. Saints and scholars. Edited by John Carey, Máire Herbert and Pádraig Ó Riain. Pp. xii+418 incl. numerous ills. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001. £35.44. 1 85182 486 3

Studies in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Scholars. John Carey , Máire Herbert , Pádraig Ó. Riain

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsStudies in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Scholars. John Carey , Máire Herbert , Pádraig Ó. Riain Dorothy AfricaDorothy Africa Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 79, Number 1Jan., 2004 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0038713400094884 Copyright 2004 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Early Irish Saints’ Cults and their Constituencies

This article explores the differences between early Irish saints' cults, concentrating mainly but not exclusively on those associated with the Fothairt. It begins with a simple and local cult, that of Damnat of Tedavnet, and a complex and widespread cult, that of Brigit. It is argued that Brigit's cult had at least four constituencies: the Fothairt, Kildare, Leinster, and the weak throughout Ireland and even in Britain. Brigit's cult among the Fothairt is then contrasted with that of another Fothairt saint, Fintan of Clonenagh; and Fintan's cult, in turn, is contrasted with that of Rignach. The Uf Ercdiin, a branch of the Fothairt, illustrate how the political status of a cult's constituency may determine its character. Finally, the shift from an alliance between cults to competition is studied in the example of Cainnech and Columba. This paper arises from one fundamental idea, that there were major differences not just between one saint's cult and another in pre-Viking Ireland but also within the cult of a single saint. Approximately, the idea is that the major cults had more than one constituency, and that, because they had more than one constituency, they were themselves complex. Moreover, the balance between one constituency and another was likely to change over time. An implication of this idea is that the entire dossier of a saint may not always be best understood as advancing the interests of the leading church of that saint. This mode of interpretation has had notable successes, but it also has its limitations, since the community of the leading church of a saint was only one constituency of the cult.2 My starting-point needs to be distinguished from the allied notion that a particular piece of hagiographical writing was directed at more than one readership:3 that is a point about a text, whereas my concern is with the cult and with texts only as evidence for the cult. To illustrate the possibilities, I shall begin with two cults of female saints, one local, that of Damnat of Tedavnet in Co. Monaghan, the other ' This paper originated as a lecture given under the auspices of the Michael O'Clery Institute in UCD. I am very grateful to Dr John McCafferty for inviting me to give the lecture and for his hospitality, to those present for their contributions to discussion, and to Fiona Edmonds for making the maps. 2 For a survey of Irish hagiography see Maiire Herbert, 'The Latin and vernacular hagiography of Ireland from the origins to the sixteenth century', in Guy Philippart (ed.), Hagiographie: histoire internationale de la litt&rature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en occident des origines ai 1550 (3 vols, Thrnhout 2001), vol. 3, 327-60. 3 So, for example, J.-M. Picard,'The purpose of Adomnin's Vita Columbae', Peritia 1 (1982), 160-77, argues that the Life of St Columba was directed at three readerships: the familia of the saint, Northumbrian churchmen and continental churchmen. triu LIV (2004) 79-102 © Royal Irish Academy This content downloaded from 157.55.39.175 on Mon, 23 Jan 2017 18:43:51 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 80 T.M. ('HARLES-EDWARDS widespread, the cult ofI Brigit. The latter will lead to a general theme, the different and complex relationships of the Fothairt to their saints. THiE CULT :OF DAMNAT Damnat is dcscribd in the Martyrology of Tallaght as Damnat of Sliab Betha, the mountain on which the counties of Monaghan, Fermanagh and Tyrone meet (see Map 1).1 Her church, Tedavnet, Tech nDamnata, lies east-south-east of Sliah Betha, but a well at Caldavnet is in the lower foothills, and it remains to this day an active centre of her cult. She was later identiied with St Dympna of Gheel in the Netherlands. patroness of the insane,' the signpost to the well directs one not to St Damnat's Well, in spite of the name Caldavnet, but to St Dympna's. There is no Life, but the genealogies of the saints connect her, through her mother, with several

Studies in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Scholars (review)

The year 1997 marked the 1400th anniversary of the death of one of the greatest of medieval Irish saints, St. Colum Cille (or Columba as he is more generally known outside of Irish academic circles). In recognition of that event, scholars at University College Cork convened an international conference on Irish hagiography, the proceedings of which have now appeared under the title Studies in Irish Hagiography: Saints and Scholars. This is an important collection of essays, a volume that is as much a celebration of the remarkable work done in the field of Irish hagiography in recent years as it is a tribute to the life and achievements of Columba himself.

Sucking at the breast of Christ: a spiritual lesson in an Irish hagiographical motif

The motif of holy men suckling infants, while relatively minor and late in Irish hagiography, is nevertheless significant in a metaphorical sense as a spiritual aci of imparting the grace and teaching of Christ through the symbols of milk and motherhood. This motif relates to the role of both men and women saints (such as St Ite) as nurturers and teachers in the early Irish church.

Conversing with Angels and Ancients: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland (review)

288 Reviews formulation in which m e n are the carnal, morally weak creatures while w o m e n are inherently chaste and spiritually inclined, while Parmer's witty deconstruction of Medieval versus Early Modern Subjectivities in scholarly discourse should evoke genuine laughter. As an example of the growing corpus of studies of premodern sexualities, Desire and Discipline testifies to the fruitful work emerging in this field. Stephanie Tarbin Department ofHistory Australian National University Nagy, Joseph Falaky, Conversing with Angels and Ancients: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1997; paper; pp. xi, 356; R.R.P. US$17.95. Nagy's latest book provides a complex and nuanced literary reading of early medieval Irish hagiographical traditions. As such it is a welcome addition to the burgeoning scholarship in this fascinating area of Irish medieval studies. The device on which Nagy centres his enquires is essentially a rereading of the wellk n o w n hagiographic topos of speech with older or divine authorities to provide legitimation for the missionary enterprise of early Christianity. In the case of Irish hagiography, Nagy argues that this was done using the topoi of dialogue, though speech and the written word, with angels and with ancients, both pagan and older Christian. A significant amount of space is devoted by Nagy to Patrician hagiography. Chapter One discusses the Confessio and other works of the historical Patrick. Chapter T w o moves on to the seventhcentury reworkings of the stories of Patrick by Muirchu, Tirechan Reviews 289 and the Tripartite Life. Adomnan's vita of Columba is discussed in the third chapter and it is only in the fourth chapter that there is any extended discussion of any of the other Irish saints. In Chapters Four and Five, the discussion shifts from individual saints to discussions of themes within a variety of texts, including hagiography, the early law tracts and some vernacular literature, particularly concerning C u Chulainn. The themes which are addressed are that of the role of the charioteer in both heroic and hagiographical texts in Chapter Four and the theme of outsiders such as brigands in Chapter Five. This concentration on Patrick is understandable, Patrician hagiography has always held the greatest appeal to scholars of Irish hagiography and Patrick is the saint with perhaps the most scope for an analysis of the interactions between the old order, the ancients, and the new Christian one. Both Patrick and Columba have lengthy discussion with angels which m a k e them important to Nagy's central themes. Columba with his special affinity with poets provides a different sort of bridge between old and n e w from the missionary Patrick. Columba becomes both old and Christian in a w a y that Patrick couldn't, (p. 197) Patrick, w h e n he needed the authority of ancients, of necessity had to call upon the pagan past, and find ways to reconcile it with his Christian mission. Nagy argues that this is done with varying degrees of success, but mostly that it is an inherent project within the texts of both the historical Patrick and Muirchti and Tirechan. Although the concentration on Patrick and Columba is logical and would have been understandable to the medieval Irish writers themselves, Nagy's choice is not transparent. The earliest hagiographic text from Ireland is in fact not from the Patrician or Columban dossier, but is the seventh-century vita by Cogitosus of Brigit. Brigit, in fact, is rather curiously neglected in Nagy's book. 290 Reviews Although she is used by Nagy in interesting discussions on the role of charioteers and brigands, and the complexities of her role as a w o m a n in the male dominated world of hagiography are briefly discussed [pp. 232-36] there is no extended layering of discussion such as that devoted to Patrick and Columba. This is perhaps surprising given the indisputable pre-Christian origins of her cult and the ways that these are dealt with in the early corpus of her hagiography. The method which Nagy uses in his analysis is to delineate a particular episode and then weave his analysis around it, often...

Transforming women in Irish hagiography

The transformation of women is a common motif in early Irish literature. Three aspects will be dealt with, using mainly hagiographical sources. Initially there will be an exploration of the image of the sovereignty goddess. This will be followed by a discussion of the notion of a woman possessing a masculine soul, and finally, of the evidence for the transvestite saint. It will be argued that these represent aspects of the Irish church’s ideology.

Women's monastic enclosures in early Ireland: a study of female spirituality and male monastic mentalities

Early Irish communities of religious women have never been adequately studied. However, Irish hagiography, unique among medieval saints' lives because of the incidental details it offers, provides much evidence about nuns and nunneries. Because the Irish saints' lives were written by monks, this information also reveals the monastic attitude towards nuns. Hagiography shows that many nunneries were established before the seventh century. But these communities began to disappear soon after, so that today only the location of a dozen or so are known to historians. Women's religious communities disappeared for a combination of reasons, political, social, economic, and spiritual. Secular society was hostile towards these communities from the start because they consumed a resource considered precious by men: unmarried women. Male ecclesiastics held an ambiguous attitude towards nuns and nunneries. They believed that women could attain salvation as well as themselves. Yet the entire church hierarchy of Ireland was dominated by supposedly celibate men, whose sacral functions and ritual celibacy were threatened by women, especially women's sexuality. Hagiography expressed this threat with the theme of sinful, lustful nuns; even the spirituality of women vowed to chastity and poverty was suspect. This attitude affected the structure, organization, and eventually the survival of women's monastic enclosures in early Ireland.

Towards a methodology in early Irish hagiography

Towards a methodology in early Irish hagiography