Gender, Social Status and the Late Medieval Pilgrimage to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory

About

The Ideology, Society and Medieval Religion seminar series is delighted to present Tara Shields (Queen's University Belfast) as our November speaker. She will be speaking on "Beyond Elite Men: Gender, Social Status and the Late Medieval Pilgrimage to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory"

Saint Patrick’s Purgatory was one of late medieval Europe’s most remote, yet most famous, pilgrimage destinations. This paper challenges the supposition that the site was reserved exclusively for the male elite, by demonstrating how access to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory extended beyond noblemen to include pilgrims of both genders and diverse social and professional backgrounds. Situating the Purgatory within the broader context of late medieval Irish pilgrimage, this study challenges assumptions about gender, social status, and access, offering a more inclusive understanding of the medieval pilgrimage experience, and the diverse communities who participated in this important devotional practice.

'Tara Shields is a medieval historian who received her PhD from Queen’s University Belfast in July 2026. Her thesis, Power and Pilgrimage on the Periphery: Gaelic Lords, European Pilgrims and the Networks of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, c. 1350–c. 1550 explores the relationships between Gaelic lordship, pilgrimage, and the international networks surrounding Saint Patrick’s Purgatory in late medieval Ireland. She has lectured at Queen’s University Belfast on medieval travel, and her recent open-access article, ‘“Courting disaster”?: pilgrim mobility in late medieval Ireland through the lens of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, c. 1350–c. 1550’, has been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Her broader research interests include pilgrimage, mobility, cultural exchange, borders, and the connections between Ireland and Europe in the later Middle Ages.'

This seminar will last approximately 90 minutes including a Q&A, and will begin at 18:00 GMT/13:00 EST on Monday 23 November 2026. This is an online event, which will be broadcast on Zoom; a link will be emailed to you upon registration. Please check your spam/junk folder for this email if you cannot find it. The talk will not be recorded.

This seminar is part of the Ideology, Society, and Medieval Religion: Impositions and Negotiations series - for more info, see here or email Tess Wingard (tess.wingard@rochester.edu) or Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow (emmie.price-goodfellow@york.ac.uk)