Movie star Ashley Judd is to make a film about a 14th-century Kilkenny priestess who was condemned by the Catholic Church.
Judd said this week that she has bought the rights to The Burning Time, a novel by feminist writer Robin Morgan about 14th-century Kilkenny woman Dame Alice Kyteler, who was condemned by the Bishop of Ossory.
The book portrays Kyteler sympathetically as a practitioner of both Catholicism and paganism until the anti-heretic inquisition arrived in Ireland. She was placed on trial in 1324.
Judd, star of DeLovely, Kiss The Girls and Double Jeopardy, said she would be seeking advice from screenwriters. The film will depict Ireland as successfully mixing Catholicism and paganism until the European inquisition arrived in Ireland.
Kyteler, a priestess who was on her fourth husband when the inquisition arrived, was accused by the newly installed bishop, Richard de Ledrede, of indulging in the occult and forming herself into a black cat and, occasionally, a black man.
She ignored threats from Bishop Ledrede, but fled as other supporters came under attack. One, Petronilla de Meath, was flogged and burned at the stake.
The bishop wrote to the Chancellor of Ireland, Roger Outlawe, to have her arrested but the chancellor, Kyteler's brother- in-law, had him jailed.
Judd, a supporter of feminism, said in New York she was taken with the story and believed it would show how organised religion had suppressed women's spiritual role in society.