Jane Cartwright's insightful collection of essays accentuates the uniqueness of female sanctity in medieval Wales and connects it to the broader traditions of religious women and female piety in medieval Europe. Although her expressed intent is “to investigate the roles women played in relation to religious life in Wales and highlight the wealth and variety of Welsh sources” (1), Cartwright's examination of hagiography, vernacular poetry, and material culture also demonstrates the important role played by local traditions and lay piety in the development of Welsh Christianity.
Cartwright invests the greater part of her examination in exploring how female saints functioned in medieval Welsh literature and culture. Drawing from Welsh versions of Marian texts, vernacular poetry, and images of the Virgin (such as Our Lady of Cardigan whose miraculous candle burned for nine years), she establishes that “internationally popular saints” such as the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Katherine of Alexandria were just as “fashionable” in Wales as they were in Europe (75). At the same, characteristics important to Welsh culture helped determine which saints would flourish in Wales and even flavored the appearance of European saints. For example, Cartwright argues that Mary's reputation as a generous intercessor for all people made her particularly attractive to the Welsh emphasis on lay piety. “Mary's humanity, her eagerness to intercede on behalf of all sinners, meant that she was particularly amenable and her local shrines, holy wells and images, helped reinforce the belief that Mary cared for ordinary folk” (66). Similarly, Katherine of Alexandria's Welsh Life neither emphasizes her extensive education (as found in the Legenda aurea) nor describes Christ as her lover or spiritual spouse (as occurs in most other English and Continental versions). Cartwright suggests that these omissions rendered the Welsh Catrin more accessible to a lay audience by minimizing her appearance as a professional religious woman.
Local female saints also played a critical role in the Welsh Church. Balancing their better-known and canonized sisters, the proliferation of local saints such as Non and Gwenfrewy buttress Cartwright's claims that, in Wales, sanctity was “locally conferred” and that, contrary to previous assertions, “there were in fact a significant number of Welsh women saints” (93)—even if they were not all canonized. On the one hand, the local female saints mostly reflect European patterns of holiness: focus on their virginity, beauty, femininity, and intercessory powers. On the other hand, there are some significant deviations from these standards. St. Non, who enjoyed much popularity in medieval Wales, is perhaps the most notable exception as she is one of the few raped female saints in Western Christianity. Cartwright argues that Non's subsequent maternity is the origin of her sanctity and popularity, as it made her “a more relevant role model for medieval Welsh women than some of the virgin martyrs” (121). Maternity was certainly not exclusive to Welsh saints (the Virgin Mary and St. Anne are two clear examples), but Cartwright notes that there are more maternal saints in Wales than elsewhere in Europe. She connects this emphasis on motherhood among Welsh saints with the limited role played by women religious in Welsh culture and the limited support provided by Welsh society to their negligible number of native nuns. “Bearing in mind that there were so few nunneries in medieval Wales, it seems likely that private devotion rather than claustration was the mode of religious expression generally preferred for Welsh women” (194).
In short, female sanctity and spirituality in medieval Wales was significantly influenced by the priorities of lay culture. The domestic and maternal qualities of female saints were accentuated, making their lives more accessible to, and more appropriate role models for, lay women. As Cartwright ably demonstrates, “The Life of Martha stresses the importance of being a good host/ess and emphasizes that Christ rewards generosity and hospitality in the Christian household. The most important miracle story in the Welsh Life of Mary Magdalene centres on a lay family, rewarded for their conversion and adherence to the Christian faith … Catrin herself, although she is a virgin martyr, is a religious heroine whose wisdom, faith and chastity provided an appropriate role model for lay women and adolescents in noble families” (174–75). This correlation between lay piety and female sanctity also helps explain the rather unusual—at least from a European perspective—absence of professional religious women in medieval Wales.
Although one certainly wished for a concluding chapter that would have provided greater synthesis for the material and an annotated manuscript bibliography that would have helped readers better follow the textual analysis, Cartwright's study achieves its goal: it gives us a much better understanding of how female sanctity and lay piety functioned in medieval Wales. It also underscores the importance of manuscript studies, brings into the historical conversation Welsh texts that have been overlooked by medieval scholars, illuminates interesting parallels among Welsh religious texts and both their European and English counterparts (such as John Mirk's Festial), and demonstrates the lay didactic purpose of vernacular hagiography. Thus Cartwright's study sheds important light on “the intersection of women's history and religion” both in medieval Wales and in the greater European context (2).
