Four Irish saints performed abortions during medieval times, according to an American academic who has studied ancient Irish and Latin texts.
Her research also includes accounts of fornicating nuns and women whose virginity was miraculously “restored” by doing penance.
No other Christian country has produced saints who caused pregnancies to vanish, said Maeve Callan, an assistant professor of religion at Simpson College in Iowa, who carried out the research by examining medieval Irish “hagiography”. The analysis is published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality.
Callan lists four “abortionist saints” in her research: Ciarán of Saigir, a bishop also known as Ciarán the Elder; Aed mac Brice; Cainneach of Aghaboe or Saint Canice; and Brigid, the goddess of fertility and patroness of Ireland. All four saints lived in the 5th and 6th centuries.
In accounts of Ciarán’s life, an “exceptionally beautiful” girl called Bruinneach devotes her life to God by entering his religious community. Dímma, a local warrior, abducts Bruinneach from the monastery and takes her to his fortress where he forces himself upon her.
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Ciarán sought her out at the fortress to apply a miracle, thought to be unique to Irish saints. A translation of a Latin account of the saint’s life reads: “When the man of God returned to the monastery with the girl, she confessed that she was pregnant. Then the man of God, led by the zeal of justice, not wishing the serpent’s seed to quicken, pressed down on her womb with the sign of the cross and forced her womb to be emptied.”
The “most disturbing” account of a saint’s reaction to pregnancy relates to St Patrick, Callan found. A narrative believed to be from between the 9th and 12th centuries tells how the patron saint of Ireland became enraged when Lupait, a woman with whom he had an intimate relationship, became pregnant. After she threw herself before Patrick’s chariot, he ordered the vehicle to be driven over her three times.
Much of Callan’s research into the lives of abortionist saints derives from 13th and 14th century Latin texts based on older accounts. She also uses sources on medieval sexuality, such as penitentials: lists of sins from the 6th century that outline penance for everything from getting someone drunk to having an abortion. In the early Middle Ages, abortion was considered a “low-ranking” sin, punishable in the penitential of St Finnian by just six months of penance, she said.
Callan cautions we do not know the authorship of many texts, and some accounts were probably revised by scholars throughout the centuries.
In The Serpent and the Goddess, Dr Mary Condren of Trinity College lists texts that describe St Brigid carrying out abortions. Some academics dismiss these accounts as “mythological”, claiming they should not be interpreted literally.