The mid-eighth-century Old Irish text known as the poems of Blathmac is a long devotional composition meditating on the mystery of Christ’s cross and its significance for salvation history. Since the discovery and subsequent publication of the text nearly six decades ago, the work has garnered considerable scholarly interest for its linguistic and socio-historical value, but many aspects of its devotional orientation remain less systematically explored. This article examines the poems’ devotional discourse by focusing on the intersections of martyrdom and memory in Blathmac’s composition. Taking as a starting point the text’s intended use as a prayer, the discussion considers how the text’s overarching interest in exemplary acts of self-sacrifice relates to the practices of ritual commemoration, and how these strategies of collective memory work to convey and sustain a shared understanding of Christian identity.
Some of the earliest references to ritual lamentation or keening in the early Irish sources are found in the penitential handbooks dated to around the seventh and eighth centuries. In previous scholarship, these passages have commonly been interpreted as evidence of the continuous attempts of the Church to curb pagan practices among the ‘nominally Christian’ populace, thus assuming that such regulations were primarily used as a means of social control. This article examines the wider theological and intellectual context of these texts, by focusing in particular on the influence of the Old Testament on early Irish ecclesiastical writing. It will be argued that the demonstrable preoccupation of these sources with issues such as ritual purity and proper religious observance suggests that the stipulations pertaining to lamentation were not solely intended to regulate lay behavior.
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