The Invention of Saintliness

The Invention of Saintliness PDF

Author: Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-08-29

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1134498659

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Interest in late antique saints is growing Takes an approach which combines historical and literary studies - will appeal cross disciplines to both groups, as well as appealing to scholars of religion International range of eminent contributors

The Invention of Saintliness

The Invention of Saintliness PDF

Author: Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-08-29

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1134498640

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This volume discusses, from an historical and literary angle, the ways in which sanctification and the inscription of saintliness take place. Going beyond the traditional categories of canonization, cult, liturgical veneration and hagiographical lives, the work raises fundamental issues concerning definitions of saints and saintliness in a period before the concept was crystallized in canon law. As well as discussing sources and methodology, contributions cover contextual issues, including relics and veneration, life and the afterlife, and examinations of specific sources and texts. Subjects raised include the idea of hagiography as intimate biography, perceptions of holiness in writings by and about female mystics, and bodily aspects of the Franciscan search for evangelical perfection.

A Companion to Middle English Hagiography

A Companion to Middle English Hagiography PDF

Author: Sarah Salih

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9781843840725

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The saints were the superheroes and the celebrities of medieval England, bridging the gap between heaven and earth, the living and the dead. A vast body of literature evolved during the middle ages to ensure that everyone, from kings to peasants, knew the stories of the lives, deaths and afterlives of the saints. However, despite its popularity and ubiquity, the genre of the Saint's Life has until recently been little studied. This collection introduces the canon of Middle English hagiography; places it in the context of the cults of saints; analyses key themes within hagiographic narrative, including gender, power, violence and history; and, finally, shows how hagiographic themes survived the Reformation. Overall it offers both information for those coming to the genre for the first time, and points forward to new trends in research. Dr SARAH SALIH is a Lecturer in English at the University of East Anglia. Contributors: SAMANTHA RICHES, MARY BETH LONG, CLAIRE M. WATERS, ROBERT MILLS, ANKE BERNAU, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, MATTHEW WOODCOCK

Rewriting Saints and Ancestors

Rewriting Saints and Ancestors PDF

Author: Constance Brittain Bouchard

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2014-10-13

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0812246365

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Thinkers in medieval France constantly reconceptualized what had come before, interpreting past events to give validity to the present and help control the future. The long-dead saints who presided over churches and the ancestors of established dynasties were an especially crucial part of creative memory, Constance Brittain Bouchard contends. In Rewriting Saints and Ancestors she examines how such ex post facto accounts are less an impediment to the writing of accurate history than a crucial tool for understanding the Middle Ages. Working backward through time, Bouchard discusses twelfth-century scribes contemplating the ninth-century documents they copied into cartularies or reworked into narratives of disaster and triumph, ninth-century churchmen deliberately forging supposedly late antique documents as weapons against both kings and other churchmen, and sixth- and seventh-century Gallic writers coming to terms with an early Christianity that had neither the saints nor the monasteries that would become fundamental to religious practice. As they met with political change and social upheaval, each generation decided which events of the past were worth remembering and which were to be reinterpreted or quietly forgotten. By considering memory as an analytic tool, Bouchard not only reveals the ways early medieval writers constructed a useful past but also provides new insights into the nature of record keeping, the changing ways dynasties were conceptualized, the relationships of the Merovingian and Carolingian kings to the church, and the discovery (or invention) of Gaul's earliest martyrs.

The Cults of Sainte Foy and the Cultural Work of Saints

The Cults of Sainte Foy and the Cultural Work of Saints PDF

Author: Kathleen Ashley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-28

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1000396789

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Bringing together artifacts, texts, and practices within an interpretive framework that stresses the cultural work performed by saints, Kathleen Ashley presents a comparative study of the cults of the medieval Sainte Foy at a number of the sites where she was especially venerated. This book analyzes how each cult site produced the saint it needed, appropriating or creating whatever was required to that end. Ashley’s approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, incorporating visual, religious, medieval, and women’s and gender studies as well as literary studies and social history. She uses the theoretical framework of "cultural work" to analyze how the cult of Sainte Foy was sponsored and received by specific groups in different locales in Europe. The book is comprehensive in terms of historical as well as geographical range, tracing the history of the cult from the early Middle Ages into the present day. It also includes historiographical analysis, examining the way the cults of Sainte Foy have been represented in various historical accounts. Ashley’s narrative challenges the boundary between "elite" and "popular" culture and complicates the traditional vernacular vs. Latin language binary. A chief aim of the study is to show how "art" objects always operated in conjunction with other cultural texts to construct a saint’s cult. The volume is heavily illustrated, showing artifacts such as stained-glass windows and wall paintings which are not readily available from any other source. This book will be of special interest to scholars in art history, medieval history, gender studies, and religion.

Constructing a Cult

Constructing a Cult PDF

Author: Joanna Skórzewska

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-01-27

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9004194975

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Based on a variety of extant written sources, this study offers a comprehensive reevaluation of Guðmundr Arason’s popularity in medieval Iceland. It presents a new perspective on the saintly fame and veneration of this controversial and interesting individual.

More Than a Memory

More Than a Memory PDF

Author: Johan Leemans

Publisher: Peeters Publishers

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9789042916883

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Throughout its history, persecutions and martyrdom have been Christianity's faithful companions. Remarkably enough, Christians have always valued martyrdom in a positive way. This positive evaluation of martyrdom most certainly has to do with the absolute, uncompromising nature of it. The martyrs' lives and deaths represent the most uncompromising of answers to the divine call. The focus of the contributions in this volume is not in the first place on reconstructing the historical events of the martyr's life and death "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist," but on the discourse generated by this event as mediated in texts. More than a Memory aims to explore the reciprocal relationship between this discourse of martyrdom and the construction of Christian identity. It will do so by presenting a number of test cases in which this dynamic can be seen at work. They will lead the reader through the entire history of Christianity, starting with the Martyrdom of Lyons and Vienne in the second century and ending in the Latin America of the 1960's. Each article will present a test case of discourse-analysis, attempting to explore the issue of how a document or coherent group of documents contributed to create a distinct Christian identity. Taken together, the essays provide an array of examples of how martyrdom impinged on the way Christian identity has been negotiated in the Christian past. In doing this, the volume at the same time illustrates the sheer importance of martyrdom and the reflection and writing about it throughout the history of Christianity until today.

Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development

Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development PDF

Author: Elizabeth M. Dowling

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 0761928839

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Focuses on the developmental process of religion and spirituality across the human life span.This encyclopedia joins a recent trend in research and scholarship aimed at better understanding the similarities and differences between world religions and spiritualities, between expressions of the divine and between experiences of the transcendent.

Saints, Scholars, and Politicians

Saints, Scholars, and Politicians PDF

Author: Mathilde van Dijk

Publisher: Brepols Publishers

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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Over the past eighteen years, gender has become a major analytical tool in medieval studies. The purpose of this volume is to evaluate its use and to search for ways in which to improve and enhance its value. The authors address the question of how gender relates to other tools of medieval research. Several articles criticize the way in which an exclusive focus on gender tends to obscure the impact of other factors, for instance class, politics, economy, or the genre in which a source is written. Other articles address 'wrong' ways of using gender, for instance monolithic or anachronistic views of what constitutes differences between men and women.