The position of women in Celtic society has been a subject of intense scholarly and popular interest in recent decades, and one in which the Celtic tradition offers a remarkable contrast to the more familiar patterns of classical Mediterranean society. From the queens and prophetesses of late Iron Age Gaul and Britain, through the legally privileged women of the Brehon law of early medieval Ireland, to the abbesses and saints of the early medieval Celtic church, the historical and literary record preserves a rich and complex picture of women in Celtic society that has few parallels in the ancient and early medieval European world. The Celtic women of the Iron Age and the early medieval period enjoyed a range of legal, economic, and social rights that were not available to their Greek and Roman counterparts, and the women of the early medieval Celtic church played a leading role in the religious and intellectual life of their societies.
This page is part of the broader survey of Celtic society, law, and governance and examines the queens and prophetesses of the late Iron Age, the legal position of women under the Brehon law, the women of the early medieval Irish and Welsh tales, the saints and abbesses of the early Celtic church, and the transition to the more restricted position of women in the later medieval Celtic world.
Queens and Prophetesses of the Late Iron Age
The classical sources preserve the names and the deeds of a remarkable series of powerful Celtic women of the late Iron Age. The most famous is, of course, Boudicca, the Iceni queen who led the great revolt of 60-61 CE against Roman rule, but the other examples are no less striking. Cartimandua, the Brigantian queen of northern England, ruled as a Roman ally for many years and played a key role in the capture of Caratacus. Onomaris, a Gallic prophetess, led a migration of the Helvetii in the legendary past.
The classical writers were struck by the prominence of women in Celtic political and religious life. Caesar, in his account of the Gallic wars, mentions women as mediators and negotiators, and Tacitus describes the great religious festivals of the continental Celts as attended by women who held important positions in the religious hierarchy. The Celtic queens of the late Iron Age were not mere figureheads. They held land, commanded war bands, and played a leading role in the political and military life of their tribes. The presence of queens in the political life of the Celtic tribes, and the willingness of the Romans to negotiate with them as equal rulers, suggests that the position of women in Celtic society was substantially different from the position of women in the contemporary Mediterranean world.
The religious role of Celtic women was equally striking. The classical sources mention priestesses and prophetesses attached to major sanctuaries, and the famous Vix krater, the great Greek bronze vessel found in the late Hallstatt burial at Vix in Burgundy, was found in the grave of a Celtic woman of high status. The presence of women in the religious life of the Celtic world was not limited to the priestly functions: women also served as judges, as lawgivers, and as healers.
Women Under the Brehon Law
The legal position of women under the Brehon law of medieval Ireland was unusually strong by the standards of the contemporary European world. Irish women could own property, enter into contracts, and inherit land, and a married woman retained substantial rights over her own property throughout the marriage. The legal personality of the married woman was not merged with that of her husband, and the wife could bring legal actions in her own name and could be sued in her own name.
The rules of marriage and inheritance under the Brehon law are particularly striking. The basic form of marriage was the lánamnas comthinchuir, the marriage of an equal couple, in which the husband’s and wife’s property remained their own. The rules of inheritance gave the daughter a recognized share of the family land, and the rules of marriage and divorce gave the wife a recognized claim to support and to property in the event of the dissolution of the marriage. The honor price of a woman was lower than that of a man of the same class, but it was not negligible.
The economic role of women in early medieval Ireland is well documented. The Irish law texts give detailed accounts of the management of the household and of the farm, and they make it clear that the wife was a full economic partner in the enterprise. The cétmuintir or first wife had a recognized role in the management of the farm, the household, and the dairy. The position of women in the tuatha or tribal polities of early medieval Ireland is also well documented, and the historical sources record several examples of women who ruled the tuath in their own right.
Women in the Early Irish Tales
The early Irish tales, the great body of heroic and mythological literature preserved in manuscripts of the eighth to the twelfth centuries, preserve a rich and complex picture of the position of women in early medieval Celtic society. The women of the Ulster cycle, the Fenian cycle, and the Mythological cycle are not mere figures of romance; they are powerful actors in their own right, and the stories of their deeds, their loves, and their deaths are among the great achievements of medieval European literature.
The most striking female figure of the Ulster cycle is Medb, the queen of Connacht, whose war against the Ulstermen for the great bull of Cuailnge is the subject of the Táin Bó Cúailnge. Medb is a formidable figure: she is a queen who holds her position by her own power, she is a warrior who leads her troops into battle, and she is a sexual being who demands that her husband Ailill be no less sexually accomplished than she is. The opening of the Táin, in which Medb and Ailill compare their respective properties and Medb insists that she must have equal wealth, is one of the great opening scenes of medieval European literature.
Gráinne, the lover of Fionn mac Cumhaill in the Fenian cycle, is another striking figure. Her flight with the young hero Diarmuid, her pursuit of the hero, and her grief at his death are among the most memorable love stories of medieval European literature. Macha, the divine woman of the Mythological cycle whose curse condemned the Ulstermen to the birth pangs of women in their hour of need, is a third. The Welsh tales of the Mabinogion present a similar picture. Rhiannon, the great queen of the first branch of the Mabinogi, is a figure of royal authority and personal power. Blodeuwedd, the woman made of flowers in the fourth branch, is a more ambiguous figure, but her story of love, betrayal, and transformation into an owl is one of the great tales of the medieval world.
Saint Brigid and the Early Celtic Church
The most important woman of the early medieval Irish church is Saint Brigid of Kildare, traditionally said to have been born around 451 CE and to have founded the great monastery of Kildare in the late fifth century. The historical Brigid is partially obscured by the layers of legend that accumulated around her, but the basic facts of her life are clear: she was the daughter of a slave woman and a chieftain of Leinster, she founded the monastery of Kildare, and she became one of the most important religious figures of the early Irish church.
The monastery of Kildare, which Brigid founded, was a cél Dé or double monastery, in which a community of monks and a community of nuns lived under the rule of a single abbess. The abbess of Kildare, in the early period, was a woman who exercised authority over both the male and the female community, and the figure of the abbess of Kildare distinctive features of the early Irish church. The Life of Brigid, written by Cogitosus of Kildare in the seventh century, describes the abbess as exercising authority over the whole of Leinster, and the great cathedral church of Kildare, with its famous hanging lamps and its painted panels, important religious centers of the early medieval Celtic world.
Brigid is one of the three national saints of Ireland, along with Patrick and Columba, and her cult a significant element of Irish religious and cultural life since the early medieval period. The feast of Saint Brigid, on 1 February, is still celebrated in Ireland, and the Brigid’s cross, a simple cross made of rushes, is a familiar element of Irish folk religion. The other great woman of the early Celtic church is Saint Non, the mother of Saint David and the patron saint of Cornwall, traditionally said to have been the daughter of a Welsh chieftain and to have given birth to David on a cliff in Pembrokeshire.
Abbesses and Saints of the Celtic Church
The early Welsh and Irish churches, like the broader Celtic Christian tradition, included a remarkable series of women who exercised religious and political authority. The double monasteries of the early Irish and Welsh churches, in which a community of monks and a community of nuns lived under the rule of a single abbess, were an important institutional setting for the religious leadership of women. The most famous of these foundations is the monastery of Kildare, traditionally founded by Saint Brigid in the late fifth century and headed by an abbess who exercised authority over both the male and the female community. The role of the abbess in these double monasteries, and the strong literary tradition of powerful holy women in early Irish and Welsh Christianity, suggest a degree of continuity with the older Celtic traditions of female religious authority. The great monastic founders associated with the early Welsh church, including Saint Illtud of Llantwit Major and his disciple Saint David, are associated in the Welsh sources with a series of women saints, including Saint Non, the mother of David and the patron saint of Cornwall, traditionally said to have given birth to David on a cliff in Pembrokeshire.
The Middle Ages and the Decline of the Celtic Position
The position of women in the Celtic world changed substantially in the later medieval period, particularly in the British Celtic regions. The Norman conquest of England and the spread of Norman influence into Wales and Ireland brought the continental European legal and social patterns into closer contact with the older Celtic traditions, and the position of women in medieval Welsh and Irish society became progressively more restricted. The Welsh Cyfraith Hywel, although it continued to recognize a substantial legal personality for women, was gradually displaced by the English common law, and the English legal tradition, with its doctrine of coverture and its subordination of the married woman to the husband, became the dominant model.
The medieval Irish and Welsh tales, however, preserve a more conservative picture. The great Welsh tales of the Mabinogion, although they were written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, draw on a much older tradition in which women of the heroic age play a central role. The Irish tales of the Ulster cycle and the Fenian cycle similarly preserve a picture of women as full actors in the social, political, and sexual life of their communities.
The Breton tradition, although it is less well documented, also preserves a more conservative picture of women’s roles. The medieval Breton saints, including Saint Yves’s mother Saint Diboeta and Saint Budoc’s mother Saint Azenor, are figures of religious authority, and the Breton lais or short narrative poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries include a remarkable series of female characters who exercise agency, desire, and power.
The Modern Discovery of Celtic Women
The modern scholarly and popular interest in women in Celtic society is, in part, a product of the feminist movement of the late twentieth century and of the parallel revival of interest in the Celtic past. The work of scholars such as Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Donnchadh Ó Corráin, and Lisa Bitel in the Irish field, of Patrick Sims-Williams and Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan in the Welsh field, and of Léon Fleuriot and Pierre-Yves Lambert in the Breton field, has done much to recover the historical position of women in the Celtic world. The work of writers such as Mary Condren, Hilda Ellis Davidson, and Miranda Green has brought the results of this scholarship to a wider audience.
The popular interest in Celtic women has been particularly marked in the areas of the modern Celtic revival. The figure of Boudicca has been studied as major public discussion in Britain, and the controversies over the Westminster Bridge statue of Boudicca are examples of the political and cultural resonance that the figure still has. The image of the Celtic woman as warrior, queen, prophetess, and saint, as it has been developed today, is in some respects a romanticized version of the historical reality, but it has had a real historical basis in the evidence for the queens and the prophetesses of the late Iron Age, the legally privileged women of the Brehon law, the powerful heroines of the early Irish and Welsh tales, and the abbesses and saints of the early Celtic church.
Related Topics
- The Brehon law tradition of medieval Ireland is examined in detail, with attention to the legal rules that gave the married woman her recognized position.
- The tribal organization of the Celtic peoples is examined in detail, with attention to the place of women in the political system.
- The history of the Celtic civilization provides the chronological and political context for the development of women’s position.
- The Celtic religion, mythology, and spirituality pages treat the religious and mythological background of the position of women in Celtic society.
- The Celtic legacy today examines the modern reception of the figures described above, including Boudicca, Brigid, and the queens of the late Iron Age.