At 04:20 PM 1/18/98 -0500, you wrote:
>What were the circumstances of and reactions to these saints' performing
>these abortions? Were these particular miracles, or were the saints in
>question practioners of folk-medicine?
>
>Steve Cartwright
>Western Michigan University
>
>
>
Dear Steve and others interested in the matter,

Forgive me for going on at length, but I find this fascinating, and maybe
somebody out there can illuminate the concept of virginity, Irish and
otherwise, for me.  In the vitae and the Penitentials, it seems to have more
to do with a woman's relationship to the church than with an actual physical
condition.

In the case of Ciarán of Saigir, a local king named Dima abducted Bruinnech,
a vowed virgin, from Ciarán's monastery.  "Sanctus quoque Keranus, tanti
facinoris immanitatem detestans ac remedium apponere cupiens, ad domum
sacrilegi, quesiturus ab eo puellam, accessit.  . . . Reverente vero vir Dei
cum puella ad monasterium, confessa est puella se conceptum habere in utero.
Tunc vir Dei, zelo iustitie ductus, viperium semen animari nolens, impresso
venri eius signo crucis, fecit illud exinaniri."  ["St. Ciarán, despising
the enormity of such a crime and wishing to apply a cure, went to the house
of sacrilege to seek the girl from there.  . . . When the man of God
returned to the monastery with the girl, she confessed that she was
pregnant.  Then the man of God, led by the zeal of justice, not wishing the
serpent's seed to quicken, pressed down on her womb with the sign of the
cross and forced her womb empty."]  Bruinnech then resumes her previous
status in the community until Dima returns to the monastery to abduct her
again.  The very sight of the king causes her to die, and in response Dima
threatens Ciarán with exile for killing his "wife."  Ciarán's holy power
then causes two of Dima's sons to die, which thus removes Dima's threat to
Bruinnech and Ciarán's community.  Ciarán then restores the sons and
Bruinnech back to life, and neither she nor Dima is mentioned again.
The two women who received such services from Áed of Killarien and Cainnech
of Achadh Bó are not named, nor are the exact circumstances leading to the
pregnancy detailed; they appear in the vitae exclusively as the occasion for
the saints to perform such a "miracle" upon them.  Áed noticed that the womb of
one of the consecrated virgins serving him "grew quickly without food, as if
it might flee from that place.  Then (the virgin) confessed before all that
she had sinned secretly and she did penance. St. Áed blessed her womb, and
at once the baby in her womb disappeared as if it did not exist."  [cito
surrexit ille sine cibo, ut ab isto fugeret.  Tunc illa coram omnibus
confessa est quod occulte peccasset et penitentiam egit.  Sanctus autem
Aidus benedixit uterum eius, et statim infans in utero eius evanuit quasi
non esset.]   The "virgo" in Cainnech's vita had "fornicated secretly,"
became pregnant, and asked Cainnech to bless her womb.  When he did so, "at
once the baby in her womb vanished without a trace."  [occulte fornicavit .
. . statim infans in utero eius non apparens evanuit.]

I have yet to read the accounts told of Brigid.  I haven't encountered much
reaction to these "miracles," either of the medieval Irish church or modern
scholars.  Lisa Bitel discusses them briefly in her Land of Women, as does
Mary Condren in The Serpent and the Goddess.  Richard Sharpe [Medieval Irish
Saints' Lives] mentions the tale of Brigid in passing in a footnote to the
Vita IV S. Brigidae, in which the tale does not appear.  It is found in the
Vita Prima S. Brigidae, and in only some of the copies of Cogitosus's Vita
S. Brigitae.  The omission from other copies, as well as its disappearance
from her subsequent vitae, would suggest that some found the tale
problematic. The Penitentials, however, declare abortion to be a lesser
offense than bearing an "illegitimate" child (although the issue of
illegitimacy in pre-Norman Ireland is still debated, with good reason).  The
abortions in the vitae are performed exclusively on vowed virgins, and the
Penitentials are primarily concerned with the same class of people,
suggesting an alternative definition of "virgin."  Despite Jerome's claim in
his letter to Eustochium that "although God is able to do anything, he
cannot raise a virgin after she has been defiled," the sixth-century
Penitential of Finnian declares something quite different.  It decrees that
if a woman, presumably unmarried and probably a nun, "bears a child and her
sin is manifest," she must live for six years on bread and water, "as is the
judgement in the case of a cleric, and in the seventh year she shall be
joined to the altar; and then we say her crown can be restored and she may
don a white robe and be pronounced a virgin."  This process of the
restoration of virginity immediately follows Finnian's assessment of
abortion, which demands considerably less penance than allowing the
"manifestation of sin" to come to term.  Abortion in Finnian's system cost a
woman six months on bread and water, two years without wine and meat, and
six forty-day fasts on bread and water. 
He does not here offer the possibility of restored virginity, but it is
quite possible he would not perceive the situation as a threat to virginal
status, as the woman had not actually allowed her "sin" to become manifest.
There are references to abortion in other Penitentials, but they more or
less echo Finnian.


Maeve




Qui dederit alicui liquorem in quo mus uel mustella mortua inuenitur, tribus
superpositionibus peniteat.
--Paenitentiale Cummeani



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%