Brides of Christ: Women and Monasticism in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland

Some of medieval Ireland’s religious women governed convents; others travelled, founded communities or lived religious lives outside formal orders. Their traces survive unevenly in archaeology, saints’ lives and institutional records, while the histories of male monasteries have generally been easier to follow. Brides of Christ brings those women into view from the early medieval period through the seventeenth century.

The essays investigate female saints and their foundations, Irish pilgrim nuns in Regensburg, family ties among abbesses and prioresses, and women whose religious commitments did not fit neatly into convent life. Later chapters follow religious women into the early modern period, when the institutions around them were changing. Edited by Martin Browne, Tracy Collins, Bronagh Ann McShane and Colmán Ó Clabaigh, the collection draws on both archaeology and written evidence to recover lives that rarely occupy the centre of Irish medieval history.