Saturday 30 January 2010

Saint Fine, Abbess of Kildare

This is the first in a series of posts on saints of the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin from my blog Under the Oak. My site is dedicated to the saints of Ireland and I explore their lives and the spiritual legacy of the early Irish church. I use as a primary source the Lives of the Irish Saints by John, Canon O'Hanlon, supplemented by other sources and more recent scholarship.

O'Hanlon has a very short entry for Fine or Finia, an eighth-century abbess of Kildare, whom the great 17th-century Irish hagiologist, Father John Colgan, believed had reposed on January 9 in the year 800, an event recorded in the Irish Annals:

St. Finia or Fine, Abbess of Kildare. [Eighth Century.]

Because truth and innocence of life distinguish holy virgins, they live without stain before the throne of God. We are informed by Colgan, that Finia, Abbess of Kildare, died on the 9th of January, a.d. 800. The same year is set down for the death of this Fine, in the Annals of the Four Masters.

Although it is not expressly stated, Colgan seems to regard this day as dedicated to her memory.

It seems impossible to discover much else about this particular successor to Saint Brigid as an individual, but Christina Harrington, in her valuable work on the role of women in the Irish church, can place the office of abbess into a context for us:

The sources of material on Irish abbesses are extremely patchy, and the overall quantity of evidence quite slim. The Irish left no guiding or prescriptive texts on this office; there is no surviving correspondence such as is found in Anglo-Saxon England and which proves so illuminating for the abbess’s position there. There is a small but important quantity of legal material in which are found occasional notes concerning abbesses’ rights and privileges; there is a large amount of hagiography containing anecdotes about abbesses; and there are annal entries for abbesses of the most famous houses...

In female saints’ Lives, the characterization of the foundress serves repeatedly to restate the holy ideal not only for the ordinary nun, but also for the abbess, since in Ireland the major female saints were abbesses. As the spiritual heir of the foundress saint, the abbess was supposed to manifest at least in part her patron’s virtues and be in her own lifetime a role model in the religious life. The Lives also offer insights into the practicalities of an abbess’s duties, both to her own nuns and also to the outside world. Thus the foundress formed the prototype for the abbess’s role, both spiritually and practically....

In her community of nuns, the abbess too was the supervisor and governor, domina and mother. In the female Lives, the abbess is the person who is directly responsible for ensuring the monastery’s survival. She decides if the community is to move location. She procures food and beer in times of scarcity, and organizes help in fending off attackers in times of danger. It is she, for example, who asks for charitable help from clerics, monasteries, and other nunneries when her own community runs into difficulty.

Decisions on who joined the familia were within the abbess’s remit: it was she who approved the intake of novices and the adoption of fosterlings and abandoned babies. She was responsible for the maintenance of the moral standard and adherence to the rule. Then there were matters of discipline, and in the Lives the abbess appears as inspector, judge, and setter of punishments.

Like the foundress saint whose heir she was, the abbess had to strive to embody the seemingly contradictory qualities of world-renunciation and temporal dominion. She was to uphold the ascetic tradition whilst at the same time shoring up and even expanding her church’s sphere of control...

One of the abbess’s most important tasks in the continued work of aggrandizing her church was the provision and reception of hospitality, which in early medieval Ireland formed one of the major currencies of social interchange, social cohesion, and assertion of power and status. Failing to provide hospitality to those whose rank warranted it brought dishonour upon the failed host; providing abundantly brought status, and fulfilled economic and/or ecclesiastical obligations...

The ideal abbess was a provider of abundance to all the religious superiors who came to her community. A poem attributed to St Brigit from the tenth or eleventh century, shows her as the giver of hospitality: the feast she provides is one of spiritual nourishment, and her overlord is none less than Christ and the hosts of heaven. Hospitality was a Christian virtue and Brigit its exemplar, just as Monenna was treated as an exemplar of the discipline of fasting.

C. Harrington, Women in a Celtic Church- Ireland 450-1150 (Oxford University Press, 2002), 165-169.

Harrington has much more to say about the office of abbess, and has a particularly interesting analysis of the power that these women were able to wield in both the secular and the ecclesiastical spheres. Irish law did not see women as legally competent and some of the sources upheld the need for all women to have a male 'head'. In theory this would seem to create a problem for Abbesses as the equivalent of male 'heads' of religious communities. Yet the sources also indicate that this was not necessarily so in practice. Harrington sees the accounts of abbesses acting as confessors or soul-friends as especially important to the question of 'headship', although of course an Abbess could not hear confession in the sacramental sense. Indeed, some Abbesses were even prized as soul-friends by men, Saint Samthann of Clonbroney is one famous example. Abbesses like Fine were also drawn from the Irish aristocracy of the day and thus derived some of their authority from their connections to powerful ruling families. In her case this authority was bolstered by the fact that Fine was the heir to a foundress of exceptional sanctity, and it is surely a mark of how important a figure the Abbess of Kildare was felt to be that the Irish Annals continued to record the deaths of the successors of Saint Brigid for centuries after her passing.

This post was originally published here.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brigit,

You are to be congratulated on this post and on your excellent and interesting blog. I'm delighted that you are going to be posting here too because I enjoy placing these historical posts in a contemporary context.

JSB

Semper Eadem said...

Brilliant!

Shandon Belle said...

Really interesting. Great use of sources. Where are you sourcing them? Google books is an excellent research tool for me.

Pray for a friend and colleague who died a few days ago.

MC

Random Thinker said...

Two great things I never knew... the role of an Abbess in ancient Ireland and the successors of St. Brigit of Ireland. Thanks so much!

Brigit said...

Thank you all very much for your welcome. Many of the older sources I use are now available online through the Internet Archive, others I trespass on the patience of the long-suffering staff in various local libraries to obtain. Much of the recent research into the Irish Church and its saints is published in journals, the more obscure ones can be difficult to track down. But it's amazing what is out there if you look. Prayers for the repose of the soul of your friend and colleague.

Anka said...

Thank you for this interesting post - makes me want to find out more!

Anonymous said...

I wonder what's your sense of Christina Harrington's view that there was no such thing as the Celtic Church? Also, do you consider her concept of Celtic gender sympathy sustainable in view of the much greater resources devoted to the feminine by the Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian/Frankish Church establishments, particularly in terms of historiography.

Alice W

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed your blog and I think it will be a great addition to the Catholic Heritage blog.

Interesting to note that you are orthodox. I'd be really interested to hear what you have to say on the relationship between Celtic Saints and Orthodoxy.

I hope you'll get into the liturgical questions of Traditional Latin v. Traditional Eastern Liturgy and Modern Latin v. Traditional Eastern Liturgy.

Brigit said...

Alice W, In general I think the idea that there was no such thing as the 'Celtic church' is sound. I'm not a professional scholar in this area but clearly female saints are not as well represented in Irish hagiography as they are in Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian. The more I read the more I realize that the popular presentation of the 'Celtic church' as an egalitarian paradise is a myth. The one part of Harrington's analysis I did enjoy was her subjection of the Brigit the goddess thesis to critical examination. I was genuinely surprised by how weak the evidence is. Overall, I found this book worth reading.

Brigit said...

Thanks, Anonymous, the Orthodox honour all of the saints who flourished before the Great Schism, including those of Ireland. They have been depicted in Orthodox iconography and Orthodox hymns and liturgical services have been composed for their commemoration. This has taken place for the most part among the English-speaking diaspora but some native Orthodox are also interested, A Greek psaltis has composed a number of services in Greek to Irish and British saints including Saint Patrick. I don't think I will be touching on liturgical matters as the focus of my blog is exclusively on the saints.

JTS said...

If the evidence is weak how do you think it has come to pass that St. Brigid is now hijacked as a pagan goddess? It usually seems to me to be nearer to disenchantment with revealed religion among women religious who have abandoned their own identity and need to find something else to occupy their minds. Also, have you read the discussion on St. Brigid and Glastonbury (Is there anybody who HASN'T been seen there?)

Brigit said...

JTS, I think there are various strands to this. One is that the Victorian view of 'pagan survivals' in Christianity continues to be accepted uncritically by both New Agers and modern 'Celtic Christians' alike. Another is that the Internet has given a tremendous boost to neo-paganism. Their views are no longer confined to obscure pamphlets but are recycled endlessly on innumerable websites to the point where they have now become the new orthodoxy. It's a message the Dan Brown generation wants to hear and the media is happy to supply it. Sadly, as you point out, some members of religious orders also act as cheerleaders, perhaps in an attempt to be trendy and 'relevant'. I have looked at the Glastonbury cult of St Brigid and on her cult in 12th-century England generally on my blog. Finally, two Scottish scholars are well worth reading as critics of 'Celtic Christianity' and the dubious foundations on which it rests, one is Fr Gilbert Markus, O.P. and the other is Donald Meek.

Anonymous said...

Do you think the representations of the feminine in the Brigid context have been merely symbolic creations? I'm thinking of the practical farm-woman of the Vitae and of the goddess construct. Is there a real woman behind these symbols? Can she still be found or must we simply reinterpret her to meet our own needs?

Alice W.

Anonymous said...

Fantastic post and another great picture of St. Brigit of Ireland. St. Brigid of Ireland pray for us!!!

Semper Eadem said...

Brigit,

If the Orthodox have devotion to Western Saints before the Great Schism, isnt there some basis for having devotion to people who have been generally honoured for their sanctity since then too? Or is it a filioque issue?

I'm really pleased to hear voices speaking out against the New Age appropriation of early Irish Saints who were just immersed in their own native culture and circumstances but also a part of mainstream orthodox Christianity.

Thanks again for your brilliant post!

Brigit said...

Alice, I think the 'goddess construct' is bogus, made by modern people in their own image. Much of it seems to be based on the repetition of feelgood, trendy cliches rather than on hard historical evidence. I have a post at my blog quoting from Alice Curtayne's biography of Saint Brigid where she describes her as 'supremely the saint of agricultural life'. I think that is indeed how the Irish people have related to her over the centuries. The other attribute that was praised about our patroness was her purity, this was why she was likened to the Mother of God. The Lives make it clear that Saint Brigid was a woman of exceptional holiness who was devoted to God. So, I don't see that we need some beautiful New Age person to tell the people of Ireland who their national patroness is. We already know! Perhaps the real problem is that virtues like purity and devotion to God are not as trendy as challenging patriarchy . I personally wish that we could devote more resources to the rediscovery of the Christian tradition behind our saint, many sources remain unpublished, untranslated and inaccessible. I'm thinking of things like the medieval offices of the saint and of some of the hymns and poems composed by monks at Irish foundations in Europe or even some of the lesser-known Lives. So I would suggest that Brigid the saint can indeed still be found and there are grave dangers in attempting to redefine her simply to meet our own needs. We risk not only violating her integrity as an historical figure who lived in the 5th-6th centuries but also harm to our souls by flirting with paganism.

Brigit said...

Semper Eadem, I'm reluctant to get into any areas of controversy as I conscious of being a guest here. I will attempt to answer your question as best I can. The reason we don't venerate Catholic post-schism saints in Orthodoxy is because our churches broke communion with each other and east and west followed different paths. We cannot thus officially venerate people as Orthodox saints who are outside the Orthodox Church. In doing so we are not making any judgement as to their sanctity, nor do we challenge the right of the Catholic Church to confer sainthood on whomsoever it wishes. Some individual Orthodox have a personal interest in certain Catholic saints just as some of our post-schism saints, most notably, Seraphim of Sarov, have an appeal among Catholics. I wouldn't expect though to find a Mass of Saint Seraphim or to find his feastday officially commemorated on the Roman Calendar, but I wouldn't infer any disrespect for his status as a saint of the Orthodox church from that. I hope that answers your question and that I haven't caused any offence. The focus of my blog is on the Irish saints prior to the Norman invasion and all of those we share in common.

Semper Eadem said...

Dear Brigit,

Good answer. I understand your point. It makes a lot of sense. As long as we can keep a respect for what is good and holy in the other and at the same time be respectful for what is good and holy in our own tradition then we will be doing the Will of God. I like it that if we can't share the experiences of each other after a certain point we can have devotion to those people and virtues that we have in common but I'm sure you will agree that this can't be a reduction to the lowest common denominator. Thanks for your answer and for all the effort that you put into your posts.

Jim'll Fix It! said...

Well done for presenting this. I would really like to have any prayers that would be appropriate to St. Fine.

Brigit said...

Jim, I don't suppose there are any specific prayers for Abbess Fine but you could always use the prayers from the common of virgins in the Breviary.

Cousin Vinnie said...

I wish someone would start to put a new emphasis on 'Christian feminism'. Yea, not the best phrase and it has more than an echo of the Chittisters and the 'Visitated Nuns' but isn't it about time that we started showing the debt that women owe to the Christian emphasis on the dignity of woman?

Anonymous said...

I really enjoy these posts but the comments are just as good! Thank you and God bless you!