in Langue, langage et droit, ed. by A. Lauba and M. Boudot (Poitiers: Presses universitaires juridiques de Poitiers, 2024), 253-70. ISBN 978-2-38194-045-8
This paper, in the proceedings of an international summer school for legal scholars, in intended ... more This paper, in the proceedings of an international summer school for legal scholars, in intended to familiarise the reader with the types of figurative language one encounters in the medieval Irish vernacular legal material.
in Langue, langage et droit, ed. by A. Lauba and M. Boudot (Poitiers: Presses universitaires juridiques de Poitiers, 2024), 235-51. ISBN 978-2-38194-045-8
This paper, in the proceedings of an international summer school for legal scholars, in intended ... more This paper, in the proceedings of an international summer school for legal scholars, in intended to familiarise the reader with the types of figurative language one encounters in the medieval Irish vernacular legal material.
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific r... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. New Developments in the Study of the Wild Man in Medieval Irish Literature Anna Matheson
This study readdresses the question of whether or not there were Jews in medieval Ireland by re-e... more This study readdresses the question of whether or not there were Jews in medieval Ireland by re-examining the records that have previously been used to argue for Jewish contact with Ireland.
in Quel Moyen Âge? La recherche en question, ed. by H. Bouget and M. Coumert, Histoires des Bretagnes 6 (Brest: Éditions du CRBC, 2019), 203-26. ISBN: 979-10-92331-45-5, 2019
This paper endeavors to revise a number of conclusions made in Pádraig Ó Riain’s seminal work, ‘A... more This paper endeavors to revise a number of conclusions made in Pádraig Ó Riain’s seminal work, ‘A Study of the Irish Legend of the Wild Man’ (1972), by taking into account some of the key developments in scholarship witnessed over the past four decades.
Within the context of medieval Portugal, the question whether Jews and free Muslims were consider... more Within the context of medieval Portugal, the question whether Jews and free Muslims were considered municipal members (vizinhos) is hardly straightforward. Using evidence drawn from sources that range in date from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries—municipal charters, collections of customary law, legal proceedings, and records from both Cortes (‘parliamentary assemblies’) and town council meetings—this paper shows that the municipal status of religious minorities differed according to the municipality and the minority in question, and it also changed over time.
Discussion touches briefly on what the status of vizinho entailed, and it highlights the fact that not all Jews and Muslims were necessarily excluded from all of the associated privileges, regardless of whether they held the actual title of vizinho. The focus is on the principal economic benefit of vizinhança ‘municipal membership’: immunity from portagens (sg. portagem), toll payments on commercial activity involving the transportation of goods into a municipality. As a result, our study essentially compares the economic privileges extended to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian merchants.
Written within a decade of the 1497 general conversion of the Jews in Portugal, Anrique da Mota’s... more Written within a decade of the 1497 general conversion of the Jews in Portugal, Anrique da Mota’s Farce of the Tailor appears, at first glance, to be an overt satire deriding a New Christian: Mota uses the common dramatic form of the mock trial to pass judgement on the religious sincerity of a Jew who was baptized voluntarily. In this article, I will show that, despite its clear tone of condemnation and its comic presentation of the convert, the farce is in fact a very serious polemic on the subject of apostasy that highlights the shame and alienation experienced by voluntary converts, scorned by both the Portuguese Old Christians and those who were baptized by force. As shall be make clear, Mota’s text presents an implicit yet brazen critique of Manueline policy concerning the Jews that has not hitherto been adequately recognized.
in Langue, langage et droit, ed. by A. Lauba and M. Boudot (Poitiers: Presses universitaires juridiques de Poitiers, 2024), 253-70. ISBN 978-2-38194-045-8
This paper, in the proceedings of an international summer school for legal scholars, in intended ... more This paper, in the proceedings of an international summer school for legal scholars, in intended to familiarise the reader with the types of figurative language one encounters in the medieval Irish vernacular legal material.
in Langue, langage et droit, ed. by A. Lauba and M. Boudot (Poitiers: Presses universitaires juridiques de Poitiers, 2024), 235-51. ISBN 978-2-38194-045-8
This paper, in the proceedings of an international summer school for legal scholars, in intended ... more This paper, in the proceedings of an international summer school for legal scholars, in intended to familiarise the reader with the types of figurative language one encounters in the medieval Irish vernacular legal material.
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific r... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. New Developments in the Study of the Wild Man in Medieval Irish Literature Anna Matheson
This study readdresses the question of whether or not there were Jews in medieval Ireland by re-e... more This study readdresses the question of whether or not there were Jews in medieval Ireland by re-examining the records that have previously been used to argue for Jewish contact with Ireland.
in Quel Moyen Âge? La recherche en question, ed. by H. Bouget and M. Coumert, Histoires des Bretagnes 6 (Brest: Éditions du CRBC, 2019), 203-26. ISBN: 979-10-92331-45-5, 2019
This paper endeavors to revise a number of conclusions made in Pádraig Ó Riain’s seminal work, ‘A... more This paper endeavors to revise a number of conclusions made in Pádraig Ó Riain’s seminal work, ‘A Study of the Irish Legend of the Wild Man’ (1972), by taking into account some of the key developments in scholarship witnessed over the past four decades.
Within the context of medieval Portugal, the question whether Jews and free Muslims were consider... more Within the context of medieval Portugal, the question whether Jews and free Muslims were considered municipal members (vizinhos) is hardly straightforward. Using evidence drawn from sources that range in date from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries—municipal charters, collections of customary law, legal proceedings, and records from both Cortes (‘parliamentary assemblies’) and town council meetings—this paper shows that the municipal status of religious minorities differed according to the municipality and the minority in question, and it also changed over time.
Discussion touches briefly on what the status of vizinho entailed, and it highlights the fact that not all Jews and Muslims were necessarily excluded from all of the associated privileges, regardless of whether they held the actual title of vizinho. The focus is on the principal economic benefit of vizinhança ‘municipal membership’: immunity from portagens (sg. portagem), toll payments on commercial activity involving the transportation of goods into a municipality. As a result, our study essentially compares the economic privileges extended to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian merchants.
Written within a decade of the 1497 general conversion of the Jews in Portugal, Anrique da Mota’s... more Written within a decade of the 1497 general conversion of the Jews in Portugal, Anrique da Mota’s Farce of the Tailor appears, at first glance, to be an overt satire deriding a New Christian: Mota uses the common dramatic form of the mock trial to pass judgement on the religious sincerity of a Jew who was baptized voluntarily. In this article, I will show that, despite its clear tone of condemnation and its comic presentation of the convert, the farce is in fact a very serious polemic on the subject of apostasy that highlights the shame and alienation experienced by voluntary converts, scorned by both the Portuguese Old Christians and those who were baptized by force. As shall be make clear, Mota’s text presents an implicit yet brazen critique of Manueline policy concerning the Jews that has not hitherto been adequately recognized.
Table Ronde 1: Le statut juridique des minorités religieuses : un statut d’étrangers? Minorités e... more Table Ronde 1: Le statut juridique des minorités religieuses : un statut d’étrangers? Minorités et cohabitations religieuses au Moyen-Âge : Colloque international RELMIN. Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Ange-Guépin, Nantes. 20-22 October 2014.
The answer to the question whether Jews and free Muslims were considered municipal members (vizinhos) in medieval Portugal is hardly a straightforward “no”: records show that the municipal status of religious minorities differed according to time, place, and the minority in question. This paper will consider what exactly the status of vizinho entailed and it will highlight that not all Jews and Muslims were necessarily excluded from all of the associated economic privileges, regardless of whether they held the actual title of vizinho. The discussion will focus mainly on the portagem, a toll payment from which vizinhos trading in their own municipality would have been exempted but which resident Jews and Muslims would theoretically have been obliged to pay.
As shall be seen, prior to the fifteenth century, a number of royal and municipal privileges issued to individuals and entire Jewish communities granted them municipal membership and exemption from the portagem. Interestingly, though records clearly indicate that resident Jews in many areas had the option of purchasing cartas de vizinhança ‘letters of membership’ from the municipality at the same price paid annually by local Christian inhabitants, little evidence survives to suggest that the Muslims of these same areas were granted the same privilege. Nevertheless, as shall be discussed, other evidence suggests that, though Muslims may not have held the title of municipal member, in certain areas they too had the same economic status as Christian vizinhos.
28th Irish Conference of Medievalists. University College Dublin. 1-3 July 2014.
In the Early Mo... more 28th Irish Conference of Medievalists. University College Dublin. 1-3 July 2014.
In the Early Modern Irish text O’Davoren’s Glossary, corrcrechda is defined as “a name for the lump that is wont to be in the forehead of the ammatán, ut est, ‘How is a drúth distinguished? This is the means of recognizing the drúth: the corrcrechda “lump” to be in his forehead.’” This entry has been interpreted as a medical description of a symptom associated with the drúth ‘natural fool,’ and, more specifically, as a reference to the European tradition of the stone of folly. Drawing on descriptions of satirists in early Irish literature, I will argue in this paper that the drúth in the citation here is actually a base poet, an itinerant entertainer who used the threat of satire to extort sustenance, and the lump is reflective of Irish traditions concerning the mark of Cain. The citation is therefore yet another attestation of Church opprobrium for base entertainers.
Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 45th Annual Conference. Università deg... more Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 45th Annual Conference. Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia. 26-29 June 2014.
Manuscript copies of the charter to the free Muslims of Lisbon contain two altogether different readings of one particular clause—a contradiction that has not been addressed in published discussions of the text: according to one version, the Muslim inhabitants were to sell the king’s figs and olive oil just as the inhabitants of the villae sold them, minus one third which was to be reserved for the king; the other reading states that they were to sell the figs and oil just as inhabitants of a villa sold a third of the king’s wines. Though the reading with minus has been followed in all published studies of this charter, uinis reappears in the Latin copy of the charter to the mudéjars of Évora in Inquirições de D. Afonso III (book 4), and it is also reflected in the medieval Portuguese translation of the charter in Ordenações Afonsinas ii.99.
The taxes outlined in the Lisbon charter relate back to canonical Islamic taxes (jizya, al-zakāt, al-fitr), and it has therefore been suggested that the clause in question relates to the as-sukhra, a non-remunerated obligatory service to one’s lord. I will argue that, for a better understanding of this clause, we should approach it from the perspective of Portuguese feudal practices rather than try to make it fit neatly within a paradigm informed by Islamic law, and I will be drawing on information gleaned from the variant reading and the medieval Portuguese translations of the charter to support this argument.
Séminaire Moyen-breton et début du breton moderne. École pratique des hautes études, Paris. 12-13... more Séminaire Moyen-breton et début du breton moderne. École pratique des hautes études, Paris. 12-13 June 2014.
Three obscure terms for what appear by context to be persons of unsound mind are listed in the Old Irish legal text Bretha Nemed Dédenach’s discussion on sureties: “Ni ba raith friot boibre, na buicne, ná boicmheall, ar ní tualaing ionchoisiod i ccéin i gcuimhn”; “Let not a boibre, or a buicne, or a boicmell be a surety for you, for their memories cannot inform for long.” The etymological glosses on these three terms in manuscript marginalia and medieval glossaries are also obscure, and the published translations offer little help in understanding the meaning of these glosses and their lemmata.
In this paper, I will discuss how recourse to the entries on these terms in Dubhaltach Óg Mac Fhirbhisigh’s unedited legal dictionary in TCD MS 1401 (H 5 30) provides the additional information needed to understand the meaning and, in some cases, the humour behind the glosses in question. The dictionary also provides us with a clearer picture of the types of figures represented by each term and, significantly, how some of these figures may have functioned as entertainers.
Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies: Between Theory and Praxis. Casa Árabe, Córdob... more Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies: Between Theory and Praxis. Casa Árabe, Córdoba. 28-30 April 2014.
Although, in theory, there was a moratorium on inquiries into the religious comportment of New Christians in Portugal after the 1497 forced conversions, we have, in practice, a literary work by Anrique da Mota (his Farce of the Tailor) in which a judicial sentence is passed concerning the religious sincerity of a convert. Believed to have been composed sometime between 1497 and 1506, this comic dramatic dialogue proves to be a very serious polemic on the subject of apostasy that highlights the shame and alienation experienced by voluntary converts, scorned by both the Portuguese Old Christians and the forced New Christians. In view of this, the question of the dramatic work’s audience is a most interesting line of inquiry that will be pursued in this paper.
RELMIN Seminar. Authority and Fidelity: The Religious Minorities in Social Hierarchies. Maison de... more RELMIN Seminar. Authority and Fidelity: The Religious Minorities in Social Hierarchies. Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Ange-Guépin, Nantes. 20 March 2014.
This talk will focus on a group that receives little coverage in published discussions of the history of Jews in medieval Europe: the Jews of Ireland. Due to this lack of publicity, it is commonly assumed that no Semitic communities were established on Irish soil prior to the late fifteenth century. To dispel any misconceptions, I will present an overview of current scholarship on the Jews in Ireland (this scholarship is based mainly on English records such as the exchequer rolls), and I will provide some additional insight on the matter that can be gleaned from Gaelic sources. The aim of this discussion will be to raise the profile of this forgotten community—expulsed in 1290 along with its brethren in England—and to inspire future research on the topic. Such further work would enable historians to gain a fuller sense of the migration patterns and legacy of the Jews, who, as I will make clear, reached as far as the eastern fringes of Hibernia.
Teaching to Hate in Early Modern Europe: The Propagation of Hatred through Vernacular Print 1450-... more Teaching to Hate in Early Modern Europe: The Propagation of Hatred through Vernacular Print 1450-1800. Queen Mary College, University of London. 13 September 2013.
Anrique da Mota’s Farsa do Alfaiate, written in the wake of the general conversion of the Jews in Portugal (1497), appears at first glance to be an overt satire deriding New Christians: Mota uses the common dramatic form of the mock trial to pass judgement on a converso and, interestingly, the Old-Christian judge in his farce concludes that the plaintiff convert has no right to the property that was stolen from him since he won it without proper fear of God in the first place. In this paper, I will show that the text is in fact a serious polemic on the topic of conversion and, more specifically, apostasy. Informed by popular themes in contemporary hate literature such as the Libro del Alboraique, Mota has skilfully blended together aspects of Christian folklore, anti-Semitic stereotypes, and Jewish eschatological tradition in his sympathetic depiction of the converso’s state of alienation and the converso’s plight for social justice. The piece is a daring social commentary, and this raises interesting questions about its intended audience.
Journée d'études RELMIN: Droit et conversion dans les sociétés médiévales. Maison des Sciences de... more Journée d'études RELMIN: Droit et conversion dans les sociétés médiévales. Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Ange-Guépin, Nantes. 12 April 2013.
26th Irish Conference of Medievalists. University College Dublin. 5-7 July 2012.
The Old Irish ... more 26th Irish Conference of Medievalists. University College Dublin. 5-7 July 2012.
The Old Irish legal text headed Do Drúthaib 7 Meraib 7 Dásachtaib (“On Fools, Mad Persons, and Lunatics”) closes with a list of persons with no legal standing, including the “finelog báoth gáoth.” Attestations of this figure are limited to legal texts and glossaries, and spellings vary so widely that they defy any attempt at categorizing the term within a stem class. The editors of the Dictionary of the Irish Language opted for the headword ?finelach, fenelach, adding “form and primary meaning doubtful.” They define finelach as “a half-witted, weak-witted person, one legally irresponsible.” And s.v. foíndledach ‘vagrant, absconder,’ they cross reference the entry for finelach, noting possible overlap in meaning.
This paper will examine some glosses and glossary entries on foíndledach to explore whether attestations grouped under DIL headword ?finelach could reflect spellings of foíndledach that are inspired by etymological plays describing the fee of seven cumala that the fine had to pay the king in order to cleanse themselves of vicarious liability for absconding kinsmen.
5th Annual Workshop on Disease, Disability and Medicine in Medieval Europe. University of Notting... more 5th Annual Workshop on Disease, Disability and Medicine in Medieval Europe. University of Nottingham. 3-4 December 2011
Divergent readings have been put forward by modern scholars regarding the correct interpretation of the glosses go rath and gin rath in medieval Irish legal scholia elucidating two specific terms for persons of unsound mind: drúth and mer. While O’Donovan first translated go/gin rath as “one that can do work” and one “who can do no work,” Smith suggested “with/without talent.” Binchy disagreed, arguing for “with/without grace (of God).” In this paper, I will argue that there is some truth to all of the above-mentioned readings. The reason why there have been divergent interpretations of the glosses go/gin rath, and the reason why each interpretation can be supported by evidence found in the commentary tradition, lies in the fact that there are at least two different meanings of the term mer: in some contexts, it represents madman as opposed to a drúth ‘fool’; in others, it signifies a female fool as opposed to a male fool (drúth). As the meaning of mer will differ according to context, so too will the meaning of the labels go/gin rath.
The discussion in this paper addresses the topic of this year’s workshop (Economies of Disease & Disability) by describing what Old and Middle Irish legal commentaries have to say about the employability of the mentally impaired.
14th International Congress of Celtic Studies. National University of Ireland, Maynooth. 1-5 Augu... more 14th International Congress of Celtic Studies. National University of Ireland, Maynooth. 1-5 August 2011.
The term cáepthae, the participle of cáepaid 'throws clods,' is only attested in legal literature, where it represents a person who is legally dependent and presumably of unsound mind. There are four attestations of the word, including its appearance in the Old Irish tract Do Drúthaib 7 Meraib 7 Dásachtaib, where it is stated that a king is not liable for the crimes of a cáepthae until the latter has paid him seven cumala (CIH 1277.4-7). It also occurs in a Middle Irish reworking of an earlier text that schematizes twelve terms for drúith into three categories and includes the cáepthae in the category of the fer lethchuinn (CIH 955.27-28). The precise significance of the term cáepthae remains unclear, but some insight concerning this figure's social circumstances may be gained from a legal commentary with early citations discussing the offense of pelting a drúth with clods. Through information gleaned from the use of cáepaid in literature, legal evidence concerning the payment of seven cumala for protection, and the significance of other terms listed as fir lethchuinn in the above-mentioned Middle Irish passage, I will explore the possibility that the cáepthae was an outcast with no legal standing who, upon payment, could be adopted into a new túath.
The Celts in the Americas Conference. St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia. 29 June – 2 Jul... more The Celts in the Americas Conference. St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia. 29 June – 2 July 2011.
Among the tales collected last century from Angus Cù MacDonald of Mabou, Cape Breton, is the seemingly odd story of a fisherman who caught a herring and retained it for years as a pet until it accidentally slipped off a bridge and fell into a brook. This story is classified as a “humorous tale,” the apparent punch line being that the herring drowned when returned to the water. But for many unfamiliar with such herring tales, it is difficult to grasp the hilarity of the plot.
In this paper, aided by a medieval description of the herring in the ninth-century Irish text known as Cormac’s Glossary (Sanas Cormaic), as well as by insight gained from modern terms for herring such as the Welsh penwag ‘empty head,’ whose etymology reflects traditional perceptions of this fish, I will attempt to explain the joke in our narrative.
24th Irish Conference of Medievalists. National University of Ireland, Galway. 25-27 June 2010.
... more 24th Irish Conference of Medievalists. National University of Ireland, Galway. 25-27 June 2010.
Mór of Munster is most popular for her role in the tenth-century tale Mór Muman ocus Aided Chuanach meic Cailchíne, where she is believed to function as a personification of sovereignty. But many elements in the depiction of her madness hearken back to the bride of the Song of Songs as well as to ecclesiastical legends surrounding the Life of St Eustace, Nebuchadnezzar, and Mary of Egypt. This paper will present a close examination of the biblical and hagiographical motifs involved in Mór’s description, arguing that a tradition of ascetic pilgrimage can be read in association with her mad journey to Cashel. It will also explore the significance of the ecclesiastical dimension to sovereignty’s portrayal within the political context of tenth-century Munster.
Celtic Studies Association of North America 2010 Annual Meeting. University of Notre Dame. 9-10 A... more Celtic Studies Association of North America 2010 Annual Meeting. University of Notre Dame. 9-10 April 2010.
The text commonly referred to as Lailoken A describes the meeting of St Kentigern and the demoniac Lailoken. It is tenuously considered to have been extracted from a complete version of the now fragmentary Life of Saint Kentigern commissioned by Herbert, bishop of Glasgow, in the mid-twelfth century. Whether or not Lailoken A did, at one time, form part of a tale of Kentigern's life and miracles, the text that has come down to us hardly fits the bill of a short catalogue of anecdotes presenting Kentigern as a heroic saint. Rather, the text is centered on the moral-theological dilemma Kentigern is faced with when asked to give the Eucharist to a madman.
Scholarly discussion on the text has focussed on Lailoken's relation to the “wild man” figures Suibne and Merlin. Yet, in an unpublished undergraduate dissertation, J. E. E. Chandler has proposed that Lailoken A was composed with didactic intent as a homily on the efficacy of penitence with particular reference to the order of Mass for Maundy Thursday. This paper will build on Chandler's theory; close textual analysis will reveal Lailoken A to be a rich literary work replete with biblical and hagiographical tropes concerning penance that are woven together with allusions to exegetical tradition concerning the punishment of sinners and the purgative effects of madness and banishment. These textual echoes employed in the depiction of the “unworthy penitent” contribute to one of the overriding messages of the text in its invocation not to judge.
Séminaires du Centre d’études irlandaises. Université Rennes 2, Centre de recherche bretonne et c... more Séminaires du Centre d’études irlandaises. Université Rennes 2, Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique. 7 March 2013.
University of Liverpool, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 20 November 2013. Also give... more University of Liverpool, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. 20 November 2013. Also given at the Cardiff Law School, Centre for Law and Religion, 23 November 2013.
Atelier doctoral du Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique (Brest et Rennes). Université Rennes... more Atelier doctoral du Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique (Brest et Rennes). Université Rennes 2 and Université de Bretagne Occidentale. 23 March 2013.
Origins of Our Ideas Seminar Series. University of Wales (Bangor), School of History, Welsh Histo... more Origins of Our Ideas Seminar Series. University of Wales (Bangor), School of History, Welsh History, and Archaeology. 17 March 2010.
This thesis explores the biblical and hagiographical literary models that are drawn upon in depic... more This thesis explores the biblical and hagiographical literary models that are drawn upon in depictions of mad figures in pre-thirteenth-century Irish and “Scottish” sources. I show that an association between madness and vagrancy is widespread in medieval Irish texts, evidenced even in glossary entries for terms denoting mental derangement. In some literary tales, the wanderlust of the madman takes on a spiritual significance and indeed is presented as a form of penance, thereby aligning the madman with the ailithir or “pilgrim exile” of insular penitential tradition. Building on recent work by Brian Frykenberg, William Sayers, and Bridgette Slavin, I examine the extent to which ecclesiastical literary traditions concerning the madness of Nebuchadnezzar and the Coptic Lives of ascetic desert saints have influenced the depictions of the Irish madman Suibne in Buile Shuibne (“The Frenzy of Suibne”), the “Scottish” madman Lailoken in a text known as Lailoken A, and the madwoman Mór of Munster in the Irish tale Mór Muman ocus Aided Chuanach meic Cailchíne (“Mór of Munster and the Tragic Fate of Cuanu mac Cailchíne”). My main focus is on the latter two texts.
I demonstrate how the interactions between St. Kentigern and the mad Lailoken in Lailoken A closely mirror those between Zosimas and Mary in the Life of Mary of Egypt, a previously unrecognised influence in this tale. I show how cleverly the author drew upon Mary’s legend and the importance it places on her reception of viaticum in order to introduce into the text what was a lively theological debate in the medieval period: whether or not the mentally impaired are entitled to Communion.
My study of Mór presents a fresh approach to her character by focussing primarily on the spiritual implications of her madness rather than on the secular allegory of her marriage to the king of Munster. This angle has proven particularly fruitful, as it reveals that her derangement is introduced with clear eschatological purpose: it is inflicted by a voice in the air when she affirms that she would rather suffer in the beginning than in the end. Her depiction in this late-ninth- or tenth-century text is the earliest vernacular literary representation of madness as a form of penance, and it further attests to the influence of the ecclesiastical legends of Nebuchadnezzar and Mary of Egypt in the portrayal of a mad person. Predating Buile Shuibne and Lailoken A by two centuries, Mór’s tale proves to be a significant text through which we can track the thematic development of purgative madness in the literature of Britain and Ireland.
This study is prefaced by a general discussion on the depiction of mad and mentally disabled persons in medieval Irish sources. The breadth of terminology believed to denote varying forms of illness in the legal, historical, and literary texts has long been recognised as extensive and sophisticated, demanding further analysis and interpretation. In this first chapter, I therefore include a much needed study of the meanings of these terms and the mental states that they reflect.
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Papers by Anna Matheson
Discussion touches briefly on what the status of vizinho entailed, and it highlights the fact that not all Jews and Muslims were necessarily excluded from all of the associated privileges, regardless of whether they held the actual title of vizinho. The focus is on the principal economic benefit of vizinhança ‘municipal membership’: immunity from portagens (sg. portagem), toll payments on commercial activity involving the transportation of goods into a municipality. As a result, our study essentially compares the economic privileges extended to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian merchants.
A link to a PDF of the full article is available at http://www.mhra.org.uk/journals/PS .
Discussion touches briefly on what the status of vizinho entailed, and it highlights the fact that not all Jews and Muslims were necessarily excluded from all of the associated privileges, regardless of whether they held the actual title of vizinho. The focus is on the principal economic benefit of vizinhança ‘municipal membership’: immunity from portagens (sg. portagem), toll payments on commercial activity involving the transportation of goods into a municipality. As a result, our study essentially compares the economic privileges extended to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian merchants.
A link to a PDF of the full article is available at http://www.mhra.org.uk/journals/PS .
The answer to the question whether Jews and free Muslims were considered municipal members (vizinhos) in medieval Portugal is hardly a straightforward “no”: records show that the municipal status of religious minorities differed according to time, place, and the minority in question. This paper will consider what exactly the status of vizinho entailed and it will highlight that not all Jews and Muslims were necessarily excluded from all of the associated economic privileges, regardless of whether they held the actual title of vizinho. The discussion will focus mainly on the portagem, a toll payment from which vizinhos trading in their own municipality would have been exempted but which resident Jews and Muslims would theoretically have been obliged to pay.
As shall be seen, prior to the fifteenth century, a number of royal and municipal privileges issued to individuals and entire Jewish communities granted them municipal membership and exemption from the portagem. Interestingly, though records clearly indicate that resident Jews in many areas had the option of purchasing cartas de vizinhança ‘letters of membership’ from the municipality at the same price paid annually by local Christian inhabitants, little evidence survives to suggest that the Muslims of these same areas were granted the same privilege. Nevertheless, as shall be discussed, other evidence suggests that, though Muslims may not have held the title of municipal member, in certain areas they too had the same economic status as Christian vizinhos.
In the Early Modern Irish text O’Davoren’s Glossary, corrcrechda is defined as “a name for the lump that is wont to be in the forehead of the ammatán, ut est, ‘How is a drúth distinguished? This is the means of recognizing the drúth: the corrcrechda “lump” to be in his forehead.’” This entry has been interpreted as a medical description of a symptom associated with the drúth ‘natural fool,’ and, more specifically, as a reference to the European tradition of the stone of folly. Drawing on descriptions of satirists in early Irish literature, I will argue in this paper that the drúth in the citation here is actually a base poet, an itinerant entertainer who used the threat of satire to extort sustenance, and the lump is reflective of Irish traditions concerning the mark of Cain. The citation is therefore yet another attestation of Church opprobrium for base entertainers.
Manuscript copies of the charter to the free Muslims of Lisbon contain two altogether different readings of one particular clause—a contradiction that has not been addressed in published discussions of the text: according to one version, the Muslim inhabitants were to sell the king’s figs and olive oil just as the inhabitants of the villae sold them, minus one third which was to be reserved for the king; the other reading states that they were to sell the figs and oil just as inhabitants of a villa sold a third of the king’s wines. Though the reading with minus has been followed in all published studies of this charter, uinis reappears in the Latin copy of the charter to the mudéjars of Évora in Inquirições de D. Afonso III (book 4), and it is also reflected in the medieval Portuguese translation of the charter in Ordenações Afonsinas ii.99.
The taxes outlined in the Lisbon charter relate back to canonical Islamic taxes (jizya, al-zakāt, al-fitr), and it has therefore been suggested that the clause in question relates to the as-sukhra, a non-remunerated obligatory service to one’s lord. I will argue that, for a better understanding of this clause, we should approach it from the perspective of Portuguese feudal practices rather than try to make it fit neatly within a paradigm informed by Islamic law, and I will be drawing on information gleaned from the variant reading and the medieval Portuguese translations of the charter to support this argument.
Three obscure terms for what appear by context to be persons of unsound mind are listed in the Old Irish legal text Bretha Nemed Dédenach’s discussion on sureties: “Ni ba raith friot boibre, na buicne, ná boicmheall, ar ní tualaing ionchoisiod i ccéin i gcuimhn”; “Let not a boibre, or a buicne, or a boicmell be a surety for you, for their memories cannot inform for long.” The etymological glosses on these three terms in manuscript marginalia and medieval glossaries are also obscure, and the published translations offer little help in understanding the meaning of these glosses and their lemmata.
In this paper, I will discuss how recourse to the entries on these terms in Dubhaltach Óg Mac Fhirbhisigh’s unedited legal dictionary in TCD MS 1401 (H 5 30) provides the additional information needed to understand the meaning and, in some cases, the humour behind the glosses in question. The dictionary also provides us with a clearer picture of the types of figures represented by each term and, significantly, how some of these figures may have functioned as entertainers.
Although, in theory, there was a moratorium on inquiries into the religious comportment of New Christians in Portugal after the 1497 forced conversions, we have, in practice, a literary work by Anrique da Mota (his Farce of the Tailor) in which a judicial sentence is passed concerning the religious sincerity of a convert. Believed to have been composed sometime between 1497 and 1506, this comic dramatic dialogue proves to be a very serious polemic on the subject of apostasy that highlights the shame and alienation experienced by voluntary converts, scorned by both the Portuguese Old Christians and the forced New Christians. In view of this, the question of the dramatic work’s audience is a most interesting line of inquiry that will be pursued in this paper.
This talk will focus on a group that receives little coverage in published discussions of the history of Jews in medieval Europe: the Jews of Ireland. Due to this lack of publicity, it is commonly assumed that no Semitic communities were established on Irish soil prior to the late fifteenth century. To dispel any misconceptions, I will present an overview of current scholarship on the Jews in Ireland (this scholarship is based mainly on English records such as the exchequer rolls), and I will provide some additional insight on the matter that can be gleaned from Gaelic sources. The aim of this discussion will be to raise the profile of this forgotten community—expulsed in 1290 along with its brethren in England—and to inspire future research on the topic. Such further work would enable historians to gain a fuller sense of the migration patterns and legacy of the Jews, who, as I will make clear, reached as far as the eastern fringes of Hibernia.
Anrique da Mota’s Farsa do Alfaiate, written in the wake of the general conversion of the Jews in Portugal (1497), appears at first glance to be an overt satire deriding New Christians: Mota uses the common dramatic form of the mock trial to pass judgement on a converso and, interestingly, the Old-Christian judge in his farce concludes that the plaintiff convert has no right to the property that was stolen from him since he won it without proper fear of God in the first place. In this paper, I will show that the text is in fact a serious polemic on the topic of conversion and, more specifically, apostasy. Informed by popular themes in contemporary hate literature such as the Libro del Alboraique, Mota has skilfully blended together aspects of Christian folklore, anti-Semitic stereotypes, and Jewish eschatological tradition in his sympathetic depiction of the converso’s state of alienation and the converso’s plight for social justice. The piece is a daring social commentary, and this raises interesting questions about its intended audience.
The Old Irish legal text headed Do Drúthaib 7 Meraib 7 Dásachtaib (“On Fools, Mad Persons, and Lunatics”) closes with a list of persons with no legal standing, including the “finelog báoth gáoth.” Attestations of this figure are limited to legal texts and glossaries, and spellings vary so widely that they defy any attempt at categorizing the term within a stem class. The editors of the Dictionary of the Irish Language opted for the headword ?finelach, fenelach, adding “form and primary meaning doubtful.” They define finelach as “a half-witted, weak-witted person, one legally irresponsible.” And s.v. foíndledach ‘vagrant, absconder,’ they cross reference the entry for finelach, noting possible overlap in meaning.
This paper will examine some glosses and glossary entries on foíndledach to explore whether attestations grouped under DIL headword ?finelach could reflect spellings of foíndledach that are inspired by etymological plays describing the fee of seven cumala that the fine had to pay the king in order to cleanse themselves of vicarious liability for absconding kinsmen.
Divergent readings have been put forward by modern scholars regarding the correct interpretation of the glosses go rath and gin rath in medieval Irish legal scholia elucidating two specific terms for persons of unsound mind: drúth and mer. While O’Donovan first translated go/gin rath as “one that can do work” and one “who can do no work,” Smith suggested “with/without talent.” Binchy disagreed, arguing for “with/without grace (of God).” In this paper, I will argue that there is some truth to all of the above-mentioned readings. The reason why there have been divergent interpretations of the glosses go/gin rath, and the reason why each interpretation can be supported by evidence found in the commentary tradition, lies in the fact that there are at least two different meanings of the term mer: in some contexts, it represents madman as opposed to a drúth ‘fool’; in others, it signifies a female fool as opposed to a male fool (drúth). As the meaning of mer will differ according to context, so too will the meaning of the labels go/gin rath.
The discussion in this paper addresses the topic of this year’s workshop (Economies of Disease & Disability) by describing what Old and Middle Irish legal commentaries have to say about the employability of the mentally impaired.
The term cáepthae, the participle of cáepaid 'throws clods,' is only attested in legal literature, where it represents a person who is legally dependent and presumably of unsound mind. There are four attestations of the word, including its appearance in the Old Irish tract Do Drúthaib 7 Meraib 7 Dásachtaib, where it is stated that a king is not liable for the crimes of a cáepthae until the latter has paid him seven cumala (CIH 1277.4-7). It also occurs in a Middle Irish reworking of an earlier text that schematizes twelve terms for drúith into three categories and includes the cáepthae in the category of the fer lethchuinn (CIH 955.27-28). The precise significance of the term cáepthae remains unclear, but some insight concerning this figure's social circumstances may be gained from a legal commentary with early citations discussing the offense of pelting a drúth with clods. Through information gleaned from the use of cáepaid in literature, legal evidence concerning the payment of seven cumala for protection, and the significance of other terms listed as fir lethchuinn in the above-mentioned Middle Irish passage, I will explore the possibility that the cáepthae was an outcast with no legal standing who, upon payment, could be adopted into a new túath.
Among the tales collected last century from Angus Cù MacDonald of Mabou, Cape Breton, is the seemingly odd story of a fisherman who caught a herring and retained it for years as a pet until it accidentally slipped off a bridge and fell into a brook. This story is classified as a “humorous tale,” the apparent punch line being that the herring drowned when returned to the water. But for many unfamiliar with such herring tales, it is difficult to grasp the hilarity of the plot.
In this paper, aided by a medieval description of the herring in the ninth-century Irish text known as Cormac’s Glossary (Sanas Cormaic), as well as by insight gained from modern terms for herring such as the Welsh penwag ‘empty head,’ whose etymology reflects traditional perceptions of this fish, I will attempt to explain the joke in our narrative.
Mór of Munster is most popular for her role in the tenth-century tale Mór Muman ocus Aided Chuanach meic Cailchíne, where she is believed to function as a personification of sovereignty. But many elements in the depiction of her madness hearken back to the bride of the Song of Songs as well as to ecclesiastical legends surrounding the Life of St Eustace, Nebuchadnezzar, and Mary of Egypt. This paper will present a close examination of the biblical and hagiographical motifs involved in Mór’s description, arguing that a tradition of ascetic pilgrimage can be read in association with her mad journey to Cashel. It will also explore the significance of the ecclesiastical dimension to sovereignty’s portrayal within the political context of tenth-century Munster.
The text commonly referred to as Lailoken A describes the meeting of St Kentigern and the demoniac Lailoken. It is tenuously considered to have been extracted from a complete version of the now fragmentary Life of Saint Kentigern commissioned by Herbert, bishop of Glasgow, in the mid-twelfth century. Whether or not Lailoken A did, at one time, form part of a tale of Kentigern's life and miracles, the text that has come down to us hardly fits the bill of a short catalogue of anecdotes presenting Kentigern as a heroic saint. Rather, the text is centered on the moral-theological dilemma Kentigern is faced with when asked to give the Eucharist to a madman.
Scholarly discussion on the text has focussed on Lailoken's relation to the “wild man” figures Suibne and Merlin. Yet, in an unpublished undergraduate dissertation, J. E. E. Chandler has proposed that Lailoken A was composed with didactic intent as a homily on the efficacy of penitence with particular reference to the order of Mass for Maundy Thursday. This paper will build on Chandler's theory; close textual analysis will reveal Lailoken A to be a rich literary work replete with biblical and hagiographical tropes concerning penance that are woven together with allusions to exegetical tradition concerning the punishment of sinners and the purgative effects of madness and banishment. These textual echoes employed in the depiction of the “unworthy penitent” contribute to one of the overriding messages of the text in its invocation not to judge.
I demonstrate how the interactions between St. Kentigern and the mad Lailoken in Lailoken A closely mirror those between Zosimas and Mary in the Life of Mary of Egypt, a previously unrecognised influence in this tale. I show how cleverly the author drew upon Mary’s legend and the importance it places on her reception of viaticum in order to introduce into the text what was a lively theological debate in the medieval period: whether or not the mentally impaired are entitled to Communion.
My study of Mór presents a fresh approach to her character by focussing primarily on the spiritual implications of her madness rather than on the secular allegory of her marriage to the king of Munster. This angle has proven particularly fruitful, as it reveals that her derangement is introduced with clear eschatological purpose: it is inflicted by a voice in the air when she affirms that she would rather suffer in the beginning than in the end. Her depiction in this late-ninth- or tenth-century text is the earliest vernacular literary representation of madness as a form of penance, and it further attests to the influence of the ecclesiastical legends of Nebuchadnezzar and Mary of Egypt in the portrayal of a mad person. Predating Buile Shuibne and Lailoken A by two centuries, Mór’s tale proves to be a significant text through which we can track the thematic development of purgative madness in the literature of Britain and Ireland.
This study is prefaced by a general discussion on the depiction of mad and mentally disabled persons in medieval Irish sources. The breadth of terminology believed to denote varying forms of illness in the legal, historical, and literary texts has long been recognised as extensive and sophisticated, demanding further analysis and interpretation. In this first chapter, I therefore include a much needed study of the meanings of these terms and the mental states that they reflect.