Brigit and the Bishop Conundrum: Gender and Authority in Early Medieval Ireland

The first portion of the ninth century Bethu Brigte,(The Book of Brigit) climaxes in St. Brigit being ordained as a bishop. There has been little discussion of this topic in the scholarship. Donncha OhAodha, editor and translator of the critical edition of Bethu Brigte, simply states, “This is obviously a scribal error,” pointing out that later portions of the text show Saint Brigit refraining from performing the sacrament of baptism.  

However, the “error” had meaning for several communities within early medieval Ireland; Brigit’s episcopal ordination also appears in the 9th century Martyrology of Oengus and is retained, with additional explanations, in the later Middle Irish Life of Brigit. How are we to understand this repeated assertion? This paper investigates contextual factors that might have served to make Brigit the Bishop culturally intelligible to certain populations in early medieval Ireland, particularly  the factor of religious status and gender exceptionalism in Early Irish law texts   

One resource for investigating social constructions of gender in early medieval Ireland is the Old Irish law-texts, most of which can be dated to the seventh through the eighth centuries CE.[i] Placed side by side, the hagiographical texts and the law texts illuminate each other on the topic of the exceptional holy woman.In early medieval Irish law the general category of “gender,” though salient, is riddled with exceptions at the intersection of multiple factors. For women, this included significant wealth (especially for a female heir without a brother), high religious status-- an abbess or a hermit of proven miraculous power--and professional skills of particular importance to the túath.

Both religious and secular law carve out a place for the “exceptional” holy woman. The Collectio Canonum Hibernensis states, “Two classes of women can stand surety without outside authorization—virgo sancta and domina.”[i] The term domina referred, in general, to heiresses but is also used in the vitae as a form of address for abbesses. The term virgo sancta, though probably not referring to individual/simple nuns, is broad enough to cover both the abbess and the exceptional hermit woman. Thus, the two exceptions, the virgo sancta and the domina, imply that there were holy women who, unlike ordinary monastics, were legally competent to act without authorization from a supervising head. 

The secular legal text Bretha Crólige places several different types of holy women within a specialized category whose legal standing is enhanced by virtue of their value to the túath.[i] Irish medieval law requires victims of extensive illegal injury to be nursed at the culprit’s expense, usually in the home of a third party. The nature of the maintenance must, by law, match the standard of living dictated by the victim’s position in society.[ii] Though it is difficult to determine where and when, if ever, the laws of sick-maintenance were performed as written, they still serve as one indication of relative social status in early medieval Ireland.[iii]

A close reading of the ways in which categories are structured in the Bretha Crólige indicates that the exceptional holy was not unique in her unusual legal standing. The law lists a specific group of women who are accorded independent legal ranking without reference to their relationship to a male relative by virtue of their particular skill or professional status. The members of this group are paid compensation based on their own rank (míad) and possessions (§33).[i] After stating the basic concept twice (§§ 33, 35), the text adds a further clarification, “just as a man entitled to a nursing [fee] is paid according to Irish law” [amail direnar fer otrusa la Féniu].[ii] This category includes women of special rank or skill considered particularly important to the túath.[iii] Four of these women appear to be drawn from secular professions or rank: the female satirist [be rinnuis], wright [bansáer], physician [banliaig], and the woman revered by the túath. However, the first three listed in the law-text may have ties to religious settings either in their original context or in the opinion of later commentators.[iv] The first is the “woman who turns back the streams of war” [ben sues srutha coctha for cula]; this could be a rare, non-literary reference to a female war-leader although the glossators suggest the abbess of Kildare or a female religious hermit as examples.  Several of the most prominent of Ireland’s early medieval female saints were portrayed as active in averting—or even thaumaturgically assisting in—warfare. “The woman who is abundant in miracles” is glossed as “the virgin, or the female ‘exile of God.’” The “female hostage ruler” [rechtaid géill] is the most problematic; the glossator understands this as one “who takes hostages” and references Medb of Connacht. However, the vitae of Samthann, Brigit, and Íte all make a practice of using the saints’ spiritual authority or miraculous powers to free hostages.

Taken together, the seven types seem to be a list of women who by virtue of their particular skill or professional status are accorded independent legal ranking without reference to their relationship to a male relative. The exceptional holy woman—both abbess and hermit—appears to be included in this category. Nor is there any gender rhetoric attracted to the gender construction within this category of exception. Both the law and the glossators let the exception stand without philosophical or religious defense with regard to gender suggesting that the exception is not a site of cultural anxiety around gender construction. 

 The law-texts support the hagiographical picture of the exceptional holy woman as occupying a space that, at certain points, contravenes normative gender expectations. In her work, Versions of Virginity, Sarah Salih argues that if Judith Butler has helped her to understand gender construction, then medieval gender performance has helped her to understand gender theorist Judith Butler. “Medievalists, like anthropologists, should already be aware of the social performance of gender and know that genders can be multiple, flexible, constituted in action and detachable from biology.”[vi]