In attempting to bridge large gaps of knowledge across the Celtic world and among those who study it, this edited volume succeeds admirably. Its focus is on the importance of regional cults that developed and spread in honor of medieval saints. Featuring contributors primarily from departments of history, Celtic studies, and medieval studies at Scottish, Welsh, and English universities, most of its chapters began as conference presentations at the 2006 Leeds International Medieval Congress. While the "Celtic world" in most circumstances would be recognized as a linguistic term, it serves in this volume to establish a geo-religious network of locations that encompass regions within the British Isles, Ireland, and Brittany. Each case study has as its focus a different element that brought a saint's cult to a specific place, leading to the development of the saint as a local figure with a localized identity.
After a brief but engaging preface, the book launches directly into the individual chapters, which bring years of research and careful consultation to the light of day. Each one features a deep understanding of individual saints in situ, while simultaneously connecting the information about those saints to what scholars elsewhere have done. It represents an impressive web of influences, scholarly communication, and linguistic and geographic grounding. The footnoted materials in many cases take up half the page, including several passages in Latin and French, and at least one appendix offers fascinating historical accounts in translation. While several chapters locate saints in other places, the majority of these chapters are centered in the area of what is now northern England and southern Scotland. By focusing on Scotland, the volume addresses a gap in medieval studies. For this reason alone, it is an effective tool in addressing the lacunae.
The historical figures covered in this volume include St. Andrew in Britain; Sts. Patrick and Palladius in Scotland and Northumbria; Bishop Kentigern, Buthbert, David of Scotland, St. George in Scotland, the Three Kings of Cologne in Scotland; and St. Brendan. In exploring such features as place names, architecture, early hagiographies, genealogies, regional competition for supremacy in establishing a particular saint's provenance, and iconography, the contributors to the volume actively engage with scholars of the present as well as the past. How hagiographies of the past influenced the ways in which local believers connected with those saints appears in several chapters.
One of the most profound and worthy aspects of this volume is its focus on transmission:
the spread of saints' cults away from home. For example, Thomas Owen Clancy's chapter on
Sts. Patrick and Palladius in Scotland critically analyzes two diametrically opposed
Irish saints, their position in Ireland (and in medieval scholarship, over the years),
then locates them and their adherents in Scotland (specifically Strathclyde) through
statements, place names, and shared miracles. Similarly, Jonathan M. Wooding discusses
the famed voyager St. Brendan, whose
This volume would greatly benefit scholars in both religious studies and medieval studies; knowing about the historical connections between saint and place beforehand is crucial in translating the specific facts and original sources into usable information. Similarly, a basic understanding of the local languages--Irish- and Scots-Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton--helps the reader to understand the uses of those languages in establishing places, genealogies, and personal characteristics. The essays are challenging to read in their reliance on so much insider knowledge; however, it is time well spent. The work's engagement with folklore is connected to the intense regional popularity of these saints and the ways in which the saints became deeply connected to specific regions and the people of those regions, even when the saints themselves were away from their primary location.
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[Review length: 645 words • Review posted on April 5, 2018]