Searchable Map For Ireland’s Mystifying Sheela-Na-Gigs

More than 100 ancient Irish sculptures of women brazenly baring their genitals have been plotted on an interactive map. The bizarre sculptures, found in medieval tower-houses, church sites and holy wells, have puzzled historians for decades.

Experts are still not quite sure what to make of the sheela-na-gig. The small, often stylized and exaggerated stone relief carvings of women exposing their genitals typically date to the medieval era, and can be found all across Ireland and the British Isles in churches, castles and other notable structures. And while the sheela-na-gig has recently become a recognizable symbol inextricably linked to Irish culture, its significance remains debated among experts.

Heritage Council head of policy and research Beatrice Kelly said in a release for the project: “Sheela-na-Gigs are very evocative symbols of the feminine in old Irish culture and their prominent positions in medieval churches and castles attests to the importance of the female in Irish society. 

Read more here @ the Observer and @ the Daily Mail and @ Irish Central

Access the map here @ Heritage Maps

Medieval Movement of Belgian Holy Women

The Medieval Movement of Holy Women That Shaped Belgian Cities | Atlas Obscura

Beguines were a religious movement of women who weren’t wives but also weren’t fully ordained in a religious order. There is a long history of Christian mystics, and they occupied a twilight zone in which they could move between the secular and religious worlds. They didn’t need to bear the burden of married life, but also weren’t forced to seclude themselves as nuns did, leading active and economically useful lives as single women. 

The movement founds its origin in 12th century when mulieres religiosae, holy women, began grouping together in cities of present day Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Northern France. Here they lived in voluntary poverty and preached sexual abstinence, while living lives in the service of the poor and marginalized. One such holy woman, the 23-year old widow Juetta of Huy, left her family in the city of Liege around 1181 to serve lepers. She then spent the last 36-years of her life immured as an anchorite.

Around 1230 these holy women had started to be called “beguines”, a term that was most likely initially used pejoratively, but whose original meaning is lost to history. Some of these communities formed separate, walled communities called beguinages, located just outside the city walls. 

Read More here at Atlas Obscura - Medieval Beguines

Mysterious Braided Hair May Belong to Medieval Saint

Mysterious Braided Hair May Belong to Medieval Saint : Discovery News

A braided head of hair found buried beneath a medieval abbey in England has given up some of its secrets, thanks to a scientist’s curiosity about the relic, which he first saw when he was a schoolboy.

Jamie Cameron, an archaeological research assistant at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, first visited Romsey Abbey, near the city of Southampton, on a school field trip when he was 7 years old.

Cameron said he became curious about the abbey’s display of a brightly colored and braided head of hair, which had been found in a lead casket buried beneath the abbey floor. But at the time, nothing was known about the identity of the hair’s owner. [See photos of the mysterious braided hair found at Romsey Abbey]

Monastic Orders in Medieval England

Here is a short list of the various Monastic Orders that were to be found in Medieval England.

Benedictines:

The Black Monks founded by St. Benedict or Benedict of Nursia (c.480 - 543). Benedict founded many monasteries, the most notable being at Subiaco.

Websites: Order of St. Benedict and St. Benedict on Wikipedia.

Cluniacs:

Foundations began at Cluny in France (910) by Abbot Berno and Count William of Auvergne. Their Rule was stricter than that of the Beneditines. The Cluniacs also supported the reforms of Pope Gregory VII. Widespread throughout England and France.

Websites: Cluny Abbey on Wikipedia and The Church in Britain - Cluniacs

Cistercians:

The White Monks were founded by Stephen Harding of Dorset and St. Bernard of Citeaux. They tended to inhabit lonely areas and toiled the land. The Order was considered austere and their Rule was considered strict.

Website: Cistercians on Catholic Encyclopedia

Carthusians:

Also called the Order of St. Bruno founded 1084 in the French Alps. Followed the Rule of St. Benedict but lived a more solitary life (strictly cloistered), meeting only in Church, in silence. Not particularly widespread in England.

Websites: Carthusian Monks & Nuns and Carthusians on Catholic Encyclopedia

Augustinians:

The Black Canons were founded by St. Augustine of Hippo (d.430). They were considered to be priests rather than monks, and preached in public. There was also a stricter Order of the White Canons or Premonstratensians.

Websites: Augustinians and Augustinians on Wikipedia

Gilbertines:

Founded by Gilbert, a Lincolnshire priest (1130) for monks and nuns with separate cloisters. This was a purely English Order.

Websites: Gilbertines on Catholic Encyclopedia and The Gilbertines

Other Websites:

* Religious Orders in Medieval Britain

Relics of Joan of Arc

From Discovery News:

The so-called "relics of Joan of Arc," overseen by the Archbishop of Tours in Chinon, France, do not contain the charred remains of the Catholic saint.

Rather, the artifacts consist of a mummified cat leg bone and human rib, both dating to the 6th-3rd century B.C., according to a new study.

The "relics," which have fooled onlookers for decades, did resemble burnt bones, in keeping with historical accounts of the death of Joan of Arc (ca. 1412-1431), who was convicted of heresy and executed by burning.

Medical examiners, pathologists, geneticists, biochemists, a radiologist, zoologist and archaeologist all participated in the extensive study, which was accepted for publication in the journal Forensic Science International.

The bottle containing the bones first surfaced at a pharmacy in 1867. Its label read: "Remains found under the pyre of Joan of Arc, maiden of Orleans."

Different techniques, including DNA analysis, several forms of microscopy, chemical analysis and carbon dating, were used to examine the bottle's contents.

A few years ago, Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist at Raymond Poincare Hospital in Garches, France, and his team first determined that the bottle contained an approximately 4-inch-long human rib covered with a black coating. It also housed part of a cat femur covered with the same coating, three fragments of "charcoal" and "a brownish textile scrap" about the same length as the rib.

From National Geographic 4th April 2007:

The charred bones that were long believed to be remains of St. Joan of Arc don't belong to the French heroine but are instead the remains of an Egyptian mummy, a new study has shown.

Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist at the Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Paris, France, obtained permission last year to study the relics from the church in Normandy where they are housed.

The Sarum Rite

From the Catholic Transcript:

Before the Protestant Reformation and King Henry VIII’s break with Roman Catholicism, the Sarum Rite was used in parts of England and Wales, as well as in Scotland and Ireland.

“Sarum” is the old English variant of the Latin Sarisburia; “Salisbury” in modern English. Salisbury is the site of the famed cathedral in which the Sarum Rite was observed. The Rite (i.e., manner of conducting the Liturgy and various ceremonies of worship) developed in Britain after the Norman Conquest. Efforts to revise the sacramentaries and ceremonials followed closely upon William the Conqueror’s Norman stamp on customs and practices. According to some historians, the changeover was especially evident from the time of St. Osmund, the second bishop of Salisbury (1077-99).

Father Joseph A. Jungmann, one of the greatest scholars of the history of the Roman Rite, notes in his opus magnum that following the Norman Conquest, “the Rite of Salisbury or Sarum was gradually developed as a distinct and, up to the Reformation, an essentially conservative and fixed arrangement, both for the entire service and more especially for the Mass. It was the standard not only in a great portion of the English Church but also here and there on the Continent.” (The Mass of the Roman Rite, 1949; English ed., 1959)

Now, of course, the Holy Father has elected to open up the doors of Catholicism to Anglicans not by establishing a new Rite, or by reviving the Sarum Rite, but rather by instituting a fresh structure within the Latin Rite in whole or in part, that of “personal ordinariates.”

However, in the authentic documents relating to these “personal odinariates,” reference is made to accommodating Anglicans desirous of embracing Rome by liturgical adaptations reflecting their own customs, some of which apparently do reflect the medieval English Sarum Rite.

St Bernard of Clairvaux

Ok - this has been nagging away inside my head for some time.

Why did Bernard of Clairvaux NOT go on Crusade.

Yes, he was busy whipping up support and shaming all and sundry into taking the Cross; he was closely associated with those who founded the Templars. And yet, to my limited knowledge, this man never stepped foot in the Holy Land - either as a pilgrim or crusader. Why?

Other notable Churchmen took up the pilgrim's staff - Adhemar of Puy is the most notable - and the entourages of the nobles of the First Crusade were chock full of ecclesiastics.

For a man who threw himself whole-heartedly behind the Crusading ideal - he is rather conspicuous in his absence.

He was 63 when he died in 1153 - however his age offered no hinderance to his constant travels throughout (modern-day) Europe drumming up support for the Crusades.

My question is: for one so fervant in his support - why did he not actively take the Cross??

Peters Pence - Orgins

Did you know:

"By the end of the eighth century the Anglo-Saxons felt so closely linked to the Bishop of Rome that they decided to send a regular annual contribution to the Holy Father. It was thus that the Denarius Sancti Petri (Alms of Saint Peter) originated and spread throughout Europe."

Source: Vatican website

Scotland: Medieval Celtic Psalter

From the Telegraph:

The pocket-sized book of psalms dates from the 11th century and has been described as Scotland's version of the celebrated Book of Kells in Dublin.

It contains hand-written psalms in Latin, with Celtic and Pictish illustrations of dragons and other “beasts” and is normally only available to scholars, although it was exhibited in 1967.

t is thought to have been produced at the monastery on the island of Iona and although the original binding has been lost, the script is clear and the text can still be read today.

The psalter will go on display in the main library at the University of Edinburgh for the next three months, with other items including an edition of Romeo and Juliet that was published during Shakespeare's lifetime.