Patrick's Purgatory Research Articles

A Landscape of Words: Ireland, Britain and the Poetics of Space, 700–1250

A Landscape of Words: Ireland, Britain and the Poetics of Space, 700–1250

Marie de France: a critical companion

Marie de France is the author of some of the most influential and important works to survive from the middle ages; arguably best-known for her 'Lais', she also translated Aesop's Fables (the 'Ysope'), and wrote the 'Espurgatoire seint Patriz' (St Patrick's Purgatory), based on a Latin text. The aim of this Companion is both to provide information on what can be gleaned of her life, and on her poetry, and to rethink standard questions of interpretation, through topics with special relevance to medieval literature and culture. The variety of perspectives used highlights both the unity of Marie's 'oeuvre' and the distinctiveness of the individual texts. After situating her writings in their Anglo-Norman political, linguistic, and literary context, this volume considers her treatment of questions of literary composition in relation to the circulation, transmission, and interpretation of her works. Her social and historical engagements are illuminated by the prominence of feudal vocabulary, while her representation of movement across different geographical and imaginary spaces opens a window on plot construction. Repetition and variation are considered as a narrative technique within Marie's work, and as a cultural practice linking her texts to a network of twelfth-century textual traditions. The Conclusion, on the posterity of her 'oeuvre', combines a consideration of manuscript context with the ways in which later authors rewrote Marie's works. Sharon Kinoshita is Professor of Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz; Peggy McCracken is Professor of French, Women's Studies, and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Religion, Heritage, and Politics: Literary Representations of St. Patrick's Purgatory in Spain During the 1620s and the Agenda of the Irish Émigrés Behind Them

In 1627–28, the legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory served as inspiration for three literary works: Vida y purgatorio de San Patricio (1627) by Juan Pérez de Montalbán, El mayor prodigio y purgatorio en la vida (1627) by Lope de Vega, and El purgatorio de San Patricio (1628) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. This curious phenomenon has intrigued scholars for more than a century; however, while critics have studied various textual aspects of these works, they have ignored the sociopolitical factors that made the Irish question a topic of interest to a Spanish audience. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century, many Irish émigrés fleeing Protestant persecution in their homeland sought refuge in Spain, which caused much heated debate throughout the country. With the arrival of Felipe IV to the throne, the 1620s saw a concerted effort in the Irish colleges to justify to the king and his court the Irish presence in Spain on the basis of their religious, ancestral, and political affinities with the Spaniards. This article proposes that Montalbán, Lope de Vega, and Calderón understood these arguments and used their respective literary works to contribute to the efforts of the Irish émigrés who strived to create a positive image of their country, its people, and its history by reinventing the legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory for a Spanish audience.

Shane Leslie: Sublime Failure

Reviewed by: Shane Leslie: Sublime Failure Geert Lernout (bio) Shane Leslie: Sublime Failure, by Otto Rauchbauer. Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2009. 320 pp. €40.00 If Joyceans know Shane Leslie at all, it is as the author of two extremely negative reviews of Ulysses, one of which appeared in the Catholic journal Dublin Review under the name of "Domini Canis," in which the anonymous "dog of the Lord" (or heretic-hunting Dominican) called for extreme censorship, a type of reaction that Joyce may well have welcomed as the correct religious interpretation of a book that opens with a blasphemous version of the Catholic Mass.1 Although Leslie is now forgotten, between the two World Wars, he was not just a prolific and successful writer but also a major Catholic intellectual with connections in the highest political and ecclesiastical circles in London and New York. Despite his fame and despite a stunning output as a writer, Leslie has all but disappeared. The Modern Language Association bibliography lists only three articles about him,2 two of them on his role as reviewer of Ulysses; it is more than a little ironic that Leslie's only reason for survival is as part of a footnote in the biography of a writer he so totally condemned. Shane Leslie was born as John Randolph Leslie, the son of a protestant Anglo-Irish landlord (with holdings in County Monaghan that included Saint Patrick's Purgatory, the pilgrimage site at Lough Derg). His mother, Leonie Jerome, was one of three daughters of an American businessman, all of whom married into English society; one of the other sisters was Winston Churchill's mother, which made the future British Prime Minister Leslie's first cousin. As a scion of an absentee landlord family, Leslie enjoyed the correct kind of English education: first Eton, then a year at the Sorbonne, and then King's College in Cambridge, where he came under the double influence of the Oxford Movement and of the Irish Revival. His conversion to Catholicism was nothing if not methodical: first he joined the Anglo-Catholic (or "high-church") movement within the Church of England; then he embraced and practiced Christian socialism (visiting Leo Tolstoy, one of the movement's prophets, in Russia). Ultimately he made the big jump, even changing his name from the English John to the Irish Shane, while seriously contemplating becoming a Dominican friar. Today we can no longer imagine the import of Leslie's conversion, but at the time it must have been close to social and cultural suicide. It [End Page 164] is a pity that, despite access to the complete archives, Leslie's biographer, Otto Rauchbauer, has not managed to throw more light on this decision, which Leslie, in later life, refused to comment on because he felt that it was beyond rational explanation. As pointed out by his Anglican bishop, Leslie's conversion came at a most difficult time for the credibility of the Church of Rome—right in the middle of the so-called modernist crisis, when the authoritarian Pope Pius X steered the Church away from the historical study of the Biblical texts and the Christian past and away from all political, social, and cultural accommodation to the modern age (and to other Christian churches). Socially the decision meant that Leslie lost the right to the baronetcy, which went to his brother instead. Yet after his father's death in 1944, Leslie did become the third Baronet of Glaslough after all, and he was succeeded by his son, Sir John Leslie, the fourth and current Baronet, who in 2002 enjoyed a brief brush with fame when he inadvertently revealed that Paul McCartney and Heather Mills were going to get married at Castle Leslie. Leslie's social suicide did not lead to abject poverty either. He became an old-fashioned man of letters or "scholar-squire," as his biographer calls him (8). Becoming a Catholic was one thing, but joining the Celtic Revival and running for Parliament on John Redmond's nationalist Irish Party ticket in 1910 Ulster was an entirely different affair; it did not help that Leslie lost the election. He sent a sarcastic telegram to his parents...

The Parable of the Sower and Obscurity in the Prologue to Marie De France'sLais

The twelfth-century Anglo-Norman poet known as Marie de France is usually credited with the authorship of three works: the religious adventure St. Patrick's Purgatory, a collection of beast Fables; and what is considered her masterwork, the Lais, a group of twelve lapidary romances. (1) The Lais at least have recently achieved a mark of canonical status, with selections appearing in the anthologies of British literature published by W.W. Norton, Longman, and Broadview. Readers who encounter the Lais in two of these commonly used texts, however, do so without the benefit of reading Prologue, where Marie sketches the sources of the Lais, her purposes in composing them, and her hopes for success. (2) A compact and sophisticated example of medieval literary theory, the Prologue is generally understood by critics as Marie's declaration of the poetic according to which she wrote the Lais and through which she wishes readers to interpret them. The Prologue thus provides a crucial lens for viewing the narratives that follow it. The Prologue, however, is hardly straightforward. Its notoriously paratactic and ambiguous style raises as many questions about Marie's literary theory as it answers. Perhaps the chief curiosity of the Prologue is a passage that misattributes to the Latin grammarian Priscian, whose works served as standard textbooks in the medieval curriculum, the idea that ancient writers willfully contrived enigmatic texts so that later scholars would write commentaries clarifying obscurities. Using the conventional critical vocabulary of her day, Marie calls the act of composing a textual commentary gloser la lettre, glossing the letter: Custume fu as anciens, Ceo testimoine Preciens, Es livres ke jadis feseient, Assez oscurement diseient Pur ceus ki a venir esteient E ki aprendre les deveient, K'i peussent gloser la lettre E de lur sen le surplus mettre. Li philesophe le saveient, Par eus meismes entendeient, Cum plus trespassereit li tens, Plus serreient sutil de sens E plus se savreient garder De ceo k'i ert a trespasser. (lines 9-22) It was customary for the ancients, in the books which they wrote (Priscian testifies to this), to express themselves very obscurely so that those in later generations, who had to learn them, could provide a gloss for the text and put the finishing touches to meaning. Men of learning were aware of this and experience had taught them that the more time they spent studying texts the more subtle would be understanding of them and they would be better able to avoid future mistakes. I quote from the Prologue as edited by Jean Rychner and as translated into prose by Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby (p. 41). Yet the edition, and even more so the translation, conceal a host of textual and semantic problems that occur in the single manuscript witness to the Prologue, British Library MS Harley 978. These problems have been thoroughly and usefully catalogued by Sally L. Burch, who also analyzes resolutions to these difficulties advanced by generations of editors, translators, and literary scholars. Some of the difficulties Burch discusses are local, generated by ambiguous grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. What, for instance, are the implied subjects of the verbs in lines 18-20? How should one render lur sen (literally their sense) of line 16, which is said to furnish the content of readers' glosses? Does the phrase refer to later scholars' understanding, intellect (from Latin sensus); or does it refer to the bits of wisdom that the ancients concealed in texts (Latin sententia)? How should one translate the verb trespasser of lines 19 and 22 (and should it in line 19 be plural, as the manuscript indicates?), a verb whose semantic range includes meanings such as to transgress, neglect, surpass, spare, penetrate, overlook, happen, pass through, and die? …

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and St Patrick's Purgatory

St Patrick's Purgatory on Lough Derg was a legendary entrance into the afterlife known throughout Europe. As the vision was specifically linked to a particular geographical location, it initiated a...

Writing Lough Derg: From William Carleton to Seamus Heaney (review)

Reviewed by: Writing Lough Derg: From William Carleton to Seamus Heaney Andrew J. Auge Writing Lough Derg: From William Carleton to Seamus Heaney, by Peggy O’Brien , pp. 312. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006. $29.95. The pilgrimage to Station Island in Lough Derg, County Donegal, the legendary locus of St. Patrick's Purgatory, is one of the most longstanding and distinctive rituals of Irish Catholicism. In Peggy O'Brien's rendering, this site constitutes nothing less than an omphalos, a nodal point where the ligatures of religion and nation that define so much of Irish identity are tightly knotted together. Like the childhood wells that Seamus Heaney casts as his own omphalos, Lough Derg exhibits a delphic duality. Those writers who journey there sometimes experience the purification that this sacred place proffers, but they are just as likely to discover that, as Heaney puts it, "to pry into roots" is "to finger slime," that identity—whether personal or communal—is always impure and resistant to apprehension. The strength of O'Brien's analysis of the literary [End Page 156] representations of Lough Derg lies in the deft manner in which she brings out this "doubleness." Employing an eclectic mix of intertextual, feminist, and formalist critical approaches, she carefully elaborates how the act of writing about this site simultaneously clarifies and complicates the notions of poetic, religious and national identity at stake for these authors. The literary Lough Derg that she presents is a place where renewal occurs as much through accretion as purgation. O'Brien's opening chapter provides a condensed history of Lough Derg's shifting status within Irish culture and Catholicism. She touches briefly upon most significant pre-modern representations of Lough Derg: the Fenian tales and their Christianized redactions that identify the site with the two greatest cultural heroes of ancient Ireland—Finn MacCool and St. Patrick—and the medieval monastic account of Knight Owen's supernatural penitential experiences that inaugurates Lough Derg's reputation as a place that engenders otherworldly visions. Her commentary on these early works serves primarily as a propaedeutic to the more substantial analysis of the modern Lough Derg writers that occupies her throughout the rest of the book. That analysis begins, fittingly, with the early nineteenth-century Irish author William Carleton, whose "Lough Derg Pilgrim" culminates a Protestant tradition of exposé that casts Lough Derg as a site of exploitative and dangerous mortification. But here as elsewhere, Lough Derg functions like the proverbial cracked looking-glass, revealing the bifurcations in those colonial or postcolonial subjects who peer into it. In the case of Carleton, his "skepticism" is belied by his unwilling acquiescence in the "Catholic mesmerism" that Lough Derg triggers. Subsequent chapters delineate how lesser known writers, seeking to redress Carleton's critique, attempt to homogenize the site. The Catholic protégé of the Young Irelanders, Denis MacCarthy, produces his St. Patrick's Pugatory, a translation of Calederón's seventeeth-century play, in an effort to solidify Lough Derg's Patrician identity. A similar essentializing intention underpins the Lough Derg works of the Anglo-Irish Catholic convert Shane Leslie and the Dante scholar Alice Curtayne, each of whom responds to the uncertainties of the nascent Irish state by employing Lough Derg as the foundation for monolithic conceptions of cultural identity. In the final six chapters, the heart of the book, O'Brien focuses upon Denis Devlin, Patrick Kavanagh, and, most extensively, Seamus Heaney. Each poet's Lough Derg work illuminates the central anxieties and aspirations that animate his oeuvre. The encounter with Lough Derg confronts these poets with "a range of dichotomies"—self and community, skepticism and faith, spirituality and sensuality—that they struggle, with varying levels of success, to resolve. For the cosmopolitan Devlin, O'Brien's symbiotic reading of "The Heavenly Foreigner" [End Page 157] and "Lough Derg" shows how his baroque modernist style is driven by a desire for integration that remains unfulfilled. On the matter of whether Devlin's intransigent "doubleness" should be regarded as virtue or a flaw, she remains, appropriately, of two minds. Her incisive readings of Kavanagh's "The Great Hunger," "Father Mat," and "Lough Derg," reveal an analogous duality arising from the...

History of the Diocese of Clogher (review)

History of the Diocese of Clogher. Edited by Henry A. Jefferies. (Dublin: Four Courts Press. Distributed in the United States by ISBS, Portland, Oregon. 2005. Pp. 249. $65.00.) The Irish diocese of Clogher, which incorporates County Monaghan, most of County Fermanagh, and portions of counties Cavan, Donegal, Louth, and Tyrone, has the good fortune of possessing many rich and important historical records. The Clogher Historical Society, which has produced the weErespected journal Clogher Record since 1953, has ensured that a lively interest in ecclesiastical history continues in the diocese to this day. This volume builds upon this strong tradition of historical scholarship by making available npotpourri of important articles which cast light not just on Clogher but also on significant national historical questions. The editor, Henry A. Jefferies, admits that the volume does not pretend to be exhaustive, and this is borne out by the lack of treatment given to the early modern period: nevertheless, there is much to recommend this collection. Charles Doherty begins with a study of the early cult of St. Molaisse, arguing that the ecclesiastical site of Devenish was an important and powerful force from the early seventh century, with wide jurisdiction, and that the status of Armagh, with the support of the Airgialla dynasty, only increased considerably around the year 640. Cormac Bourke traces a number of significant metalwork survivals from the early medieval period and in particular saints' beEs. Katharine Walsh, in a substantial and comprehensive article, examines evidence for the popularity of St. Patrick's Purgatory (Lough Derg) among late medieval continental pilgrims and provides much that is new and original. Brendan Smith explores diocesan relations in the late medieval period, with particular reference to papal interventions and the relationship between the bishop of Clogher and the archbishop of Armagh, which varied from collaborative to hostile. Henry A. Jefferies, in a ground-breaking study of the papal registers referring to Clogher, challenges the view that the late medieval Irish church was on the verge of total breakdown. His systematic examination of the registers reveals some significant statistics, which call into question previous generalizations. A second article by Jefferies, which assesses the career of Dr. Hugh MacMahon, vicar general and later bishop of Clogher from 1707 to 1715, also constitutes a fascinating yet accessible study of the practicalities of living under the penal laws in one Irish diocese. …

Doctrine, politics and purgation: The vision of Tnúthgal and the vision of Owein at St Patrick's Purgatory

The article takes two vision-narratives set in Ireland in order to explore eschatological beliefs and ideas about the geography of the hereafter during the twelfth century. The visions are examined in the context of traditions of vision-writing, the authors' likely motives and the political context in which they wrote. The emphasis then shifts to how the visions of Tnúthgal and Owein fit into Jacques Le Goff's model of how ideas about Purgatory came to be formed. It is suggested here that both visions, but especially that of Owein, were essentially conservative in their presentation of the hereafter. The Vision of Owein did not mark a radical departure in the presentation of a discrete purgatorial state, but rather was closely based on existing eschatological paradigms. In the conclusion a new explanation of Purgatory's evolution is suggested which gives more weight to ‘popular’ perceptions of stories like the Vision of Owein as an agent of change.

Review. Saint Patrick's Purgatory: A Poem by Marie de France. Translated, with an Introduction and Notes by Michael J. Curley. Marie de France

Review. Saint Patrick's Purgatory: A Poem by Marie de France. Translated, with an Introduction and Notes by Michael J. Curley. Marie de France

Saint Patrick's Purgatory: a poem by Marie de France (review)

Saint Patrick's Purgatory: a poem by Marie de France (review)

St. Patrick's Purgatory: Two Versions of "Owayne Miles" and "The Vision of William of Stranton" together with the Long Text of the "Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii.". Robert Easting

<i>St. Patrick's Purgatory: Two Versions of "Owayne Miles" and "The Vision of William of Stranton" together with the Long Text of the "Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii."</i>. Robert Easting

Ritual, Gender and Power Strategies: Male Pilgrimage to Saint Patrick's Purgatory

The ritual at Saint Patrick's Purgatory offers insights into two aspects of medieval Christian pilgrimage which warrant further attention in pilgrimage scholarship: gender and power relations. My examination of texts related to the pilgrimage site reveals the institution of exclusive and arduous rituals in the 12th century which excluded all but a select group of men. The discovery of an exclusive male pilgrimage site raises the question of whether or not pilgrimage centers reflected and reinforced social strata rather than minimized them as Victor Turner suggests. An inquiry into the power strategies at work behind the ritualization of Saint Patrick's Purgatory reveals the stake the Cistercian order had in simultaneously popularizing and carefully restricting access to the center.

The Medieval Pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European Tradition. Edited by Michael Haren and Yolande De Pontfarcy. Enniskillen: The Clogher Historical Society, 1990. viii + 242 pp. IR£20.

The Medieval Pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European Tradition. Edited by Michael Haren and Yolande De Pontfarcy. Enniskillen: The Clogher Historical Society, 1990. viii + 242 pp. IR£20. - Volume 60 Issue 3

The Medieval Pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory Lough Derg and the European Tradition

The Medieval Pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory Lough Derg and the European Tradition

St. Patrick's Purgatory

St. Patrick's Purgatory

The Medieval Pilgrimage to St Patrick's Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European Tradition

The Medieval Pilgrimage to St Patrick's Purgatory: Lough Derg and the European Tradition

Saint Patrick's Purgatory

Saint Patrick's Purgatory

Saint Patrick's Purgatory

Saint Patrick's Purgatory

The Todi Fresco and St. Patrick's Purgatory, Lough derg

The Todi Fresco and St. Patrick's Purgatory, Lough derg