Realizing that the traditional view has managed to hang on, she starts by debunking that view, yet she does so in a sympathetic way, acknowledging that it enjoys longevity largely because most books on Celtic Christianity for popular audiences are not written by scholars. She also puts to rest the notion that pagan attitudes toward women as powerful figures and avatars of earth religion influenced Christian attitudes. Yet if the sources of Irish Christian attitudes toward women were Christian, they were not the usual ones. Irish women had a freedom of movement as well as an acceptance by men unheard of on the continent. Why? Because "the builders of the new Irish Church adopted foreign ideas about women and holiness more selectively than has hitherto been imagined" (48). Harrison effectively demonstrates that the apocryphal Acts, known both early and well in Ireland, determined the view of women. Thus, Thecla and other women who evangelized, moved among the people, and worked with the male apostles provided the toposi for women's hagiography rather than the submissive, sheltered virgins of the continent.

This attitude maintained itself for centuries. Harrison focuses on Brigit, the best known of the women Irish saints and the one about whom the most was written. The vitae portray Brigit as an abbot of a double monastery, as an abbess who held her own and won the respect of male monks and as the superior of men who worked at the monastery or on its lands. Brigit's influence gave her church, Kildare, a status second to only one other church, Armagh, and Brigit's successors, both monastic and episcopal, managed to keep Armagh's primatial hopes at bay so effectively that an unknown Armagh writer composed a life in which Saint Patrick, traditional founder of the see, acknowledges that Brigit is supreme in the Kildare area. The Irish frequently settled controversial matters by literarily transferring them back to the time of the founders. This way the successors of Patrick could acknowledge Kildare's independence by following the saint's example. Indeed, so extensive was Brigit's posthumous influence that later hagiographers actually claimed that she had been consecrated a bishop. Significantly, the male hierarchy did not condemn these vitae, although they also avoided giving them credence.

This more open attitude toward women manifested itself in another very salubrious way. The great Irish male saints were all virgins, as one would expect, and every so often they encountered temptresses to their virtue. As Harrison points out, during the drive for celibacy in the eleventh century, continental hagiography frequently treats these women as hopeless harlots who deserve the beatings they get and who sometimes risk eternal perdition. But in the Irish lives, the male saints, after safely preserving their virtue, forgive the women, talk with them, urge them to a better life, and, in some cases, convince them to enter nunneries. Unlike Peter Damian, Irish reformers of this period managed to introduce celibacy without denouncing the lawfully married wives of priests as "whores, prostitutes . . . and chambers of filthy spirits" (270).

A substantial body of legal literature survives from early Christian Ireland, and Harrison writes considerably about the legal status of women. Much of it deals with property and family rights, such as whether a family could install one of its own as abbess and how the family could maintain the succession. Since headship of a monastery or nunnery brought great prestige to a family, issues of rank and stature also appeared in the law tracts. As continental influences grew, they threatened the status of the abbesses. In general, the abbesses held their own, relying upon a centuries-old tradition of active women who bore ecclesiastical responsibilities.

Harrison has done a very thorough job. She has researched extensively in the primary source material, and her bibliography shows her to be current with the secondary literature. She clearly demonstrates that the Irish Church followed the general trend of Latin Christianity-for example, there was no real thought of ordaining women-but it also gave women a leeway unknown in Romanist circles. Irish ecclesiastics seem to have avoided the petty, stupid misogyny that harassed so many Medieval women on a daily basis.

The book has only two real shortcomings, one stylistic, one historical. In her attempt to be thorough, Harrison has included material that does not advance her case, for example, the vita of Saint Gobnat or the abbey of Clonburren, which she could have relegated to an appendix and thus not detract from the main themes. She also could have spent more space than she does-and could have done so much earlier in the book-on the notion of Woman in Irish Christianity. The reader is uncertain what was the ideal held by both women and men in the Irish Church, and thus by what standard were women imaged. There are inevitably some small points about which one might quibble-why was Ian Bradley's superb Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams (1999) not included in the discussion of "modern Celts"-but these do not detract from Harrison's overall achievement.

This book has great value for students of Irish and Celtic Christianity; Anglo-Saxonists will also find it helpful as will all those interested in Medieval women's history. Alas, the price will deter many scholars; may we hope for a paperback edition?