Feminine Sanctity in Medieval Wales

by Jane Cartwright

This illuminating volume sheds light on the religious women of medieval Wales, drawing on a wide range of sources from saints’ lives and native poetry to holy wells and visual imagery. Feminine Sanctity and Spirituality in Medieval Wales explores the meanings, manifestations, and related iconography of feminine sanctity in a specifically Welsh context, including Welsh sources on the Virgin Mary, valuable insights into the history of Welsh nunneries, and commentary on some of the lesser-known Welsh women saints such as Dwynwen and Tudful. Of interest to anyone working in the field of medieval Christendom and women’s studies, this volume draws powerful connections between Welsh source material and discoveries throughout England and Continental Europe.

 

Genres: Medieval

250 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2008

About the author

Jane Cartwright, BA, PhD.

Reviews

[Florence · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an astonishing work and beautifully written but too academic for my taste. However, I picked up interesting information about the Virgin Mary (whose mother reportedly was also a virgiin) and Mary Magdalene as well (becoming a wet nurse in Marseille). I haven't finished it all, but am left wanting more analysis of the medieval human mind and how important the adoption of Christianity was to the masses especially given the dogmatic pagan approach to the saints legends. We live in a relatively rational science based world that bears no resemblance to culture even 500 years ago that lived in hope and belief of the fantastic. Or is that so? That aside, it becomes apparent from Cartwrigh's painstaking study of the Welsh portrayal of female saints (through poetry and important surviving documents only available in Welsh) that women saints numbered much more than thought, but virginity and chastity was their most important quality. Surely there must have been more to them than that!! It seems a strange juxtaposition. All else seems not to matter and the number of Welsh convents compared to male monasteries were few and far between. I'm left slightly confused in wanting more... social history of the period or real lives...but this is a very exacting and focused study and so little remains from what was initially more oral history and not formally written down many centuries later.

I am also wondering about other theories related to Dwynwen, the patron saint of lovers, as I have also read her love Maelon Dafodrill had accosted (raped) her when learning Dwynwen was promised to another and her brother sought revenge and bound Daffodrill in ropes in water and he froze to death. Cartwright seems oblivious to this legend and recounts another. If she was raped her betrothal to the other would probably not have been possible and as a despoiled woman would have had to become cloistered I assume. I would have thought many rape victims would have sought her out for healing, but even today this isn't really discussed. Strange to be referred to as the Patron Saint of Lovers but I guess someone else was named the Saint of Rape.

At the end of the day we know so little about the lives of these women saints. One thing is clear and that is women in a religious (and all contexts) have been seriously dismissed and very poorly treated but (in my opinion) men developed religion to counter the innate sexual and life giving powers of the female.

Maybe it isn't a hagiographer's role to analyse other possibilities, but even the Virgin Mary could have spontaneously developed a pregnancy as several species of animals (snakes and even recently mice) can become pregnant without being fertilized. And no one seems to question why if Mary was imminently pregnant and due, would she and Joseph be so far from their home? How was birth out of wedlock dealt with at the time? Is it possible babies were abandoned? Did the Three Wise Men convince Mary and Joseph to keep the child and that he was special in that sense and the story started from there as surely returning to their village it was a scandal.

Same with St. Winfried in Holywell, Flintshire as legend says Caradog wanted sex and when refused, cut her head off. Is it possible in his attempt to rape, she took her rosary cross and gave him a good old stab in his groin to which he took exception? I don't know. I like a bit more discussion on what events could have played out and an analysis on why and how the recounting of fantastical miracles were spread thru time. Anyway, hats off to Jane Cartwright. It is a remarkable book.