On February 20, Dr. Helen Phelan presented the lecture Full of Miracles from Childhood: Miracles in the Liturgies and Lives of Irish Medieval Saints in O’Connell House. Phelan is a Professor of Arts Practice at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland and a co-founder of the vocal group Cantoral. Phelan specializes in chants associated with religious rituals, and her discussion centered around the hagiographies of the saints from the late medieval period, or the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. She argued that these chants reveal the values of the Irish Catholics, allowing us to connect with their values as a society in new ways.
Phelan opened her presentation with a chant about St. Michael the Archangel and encouraged audience participation in her songs. Throughout her presentation, Phelan alternated discussion of medieval manuscripts with performances of chants.
Phelan discussed how early medieval saints would have a different understanding of miracles than her contemporary audience. Although many listeners might think that miracles signify the “occasional intervention of the supernatural into the natural order,” early medieval Irish saints would agree with St. Augustin that “all of life was infused with the miraculous” and only the holy could recognize these miracles. Phelan discussed the three categories of miracles that were generally associated with Irish saints: healing miracles, protection miracles, and miracles of hospitality.
Phelan then described how these miracles reveal much about Ireland’s unique transition from the pre-Christian Celtic tradition to Christian practice. She suggested that while many Christian sources in continental Europe associate women and food with the practice of fasting, the miracles surrounding St. Brigid are closely associated with milk and fertility. Additionally, devotions to the Mother Mary and the Christ Child appear in Ireland very early for the western European church, since Marion devotions were generally only found in Ireland in the early medieval period.
After concluding the Virgo Decoratur chant for Brigid as “Mary of the Gael,” Phelan discussed the predominance of miracles of hospitality in the Irish Catholic tradition, including St. Patrick turning water into honey for his mother. She suggested that there is something unique about Irish hospitality being featured in liturgical chants, crafting the belief that taking care of others is sacred.
While this emphasis on hospitality likely came from Ireland’s pre-Christian traditions, Phelan pointed out that there are many points of continuity bridging these Celtic practices to Christian traditions. Druids were some of the first figures in Ireland to recognize Christian saints. Furthermore, Irish saints often demonstrate an affinity for nature and animals, although nature is generally represented as a reminder of humanity’s sinfulness in continental Europe.
Phelan closed her presentation by reminding the audience that the common themes throughout these chants “shed a light on the values of the society who recorded these as wonders.” She noted that while our society might have conditioned us to consider the miraculous to be uncommon occurrences, medieval Irish Catholics considered acts of hospitality, an affinity with nature, and family relationships to be the most important miracles of all. Phelan suggested the audience should question “what counts as the miraculous and the wonderful in our time” in light of the values of a reciprocal society that even included humor and comeuppance in their religious tradition. Rather than “bolts from heaven… having a home, having your health, having a family– that’s what was miraculous.”
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