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2014
Bibliography

Johnson, Máire, “Medicine and miracle: law enforcement in the Lives of Irish saints”, in: Wendy Turner, and Sara Butler (eds), Medicine and the law in the middle ages, 17, Leiden: Brill, 2014. 288–316.

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Citation details
Contributors
Article
“Medicine and miracle: law enforcement in the Lives of Irish saints”
Work
Wendy Turner (ed.) • Sara Butler (ed.), Medicine and the law in the middle ages (2014)
Pages
288–316
Year
2014
Description
Abstract (cited)
The nexus of law, medicine, and miracle lies at the heart of and serves to underline issues of status in the Lives of Ireland's saints. The Irish society visible in the vernacular law tracts of the seventh and eighth centuries is heavily stratified. One of the signal elements of status about which the Lives offer a merging of medicine, law, and miracle involves the expectations placed on women. Sovereignty is an issue on which the saints' acts frequently offer a miraculous and medical commentary. The saints of Ireland's medieval vitae and bethada move through a hagiographical society in which the tenets of vernacular law figure prominently. The present analysis has explored numerous cases in which saints inflicted medical miracles upon members of their community in the service of upholding and defining the laws of early Ireland, with particular emphasis on the proper recognition of the saint's position.
Subjects and topics
Headings
Irish hagiography Irish medicine and medical writing
Contributors
C. A., Dennis Groenewegen
Page created
October 2018, last updated: June 2020