Creating Holy People and Places on the Periphery
Holy people have been venerated in various forms by all religions and ideologies throughout history. Christianity is no exception with the development of the cults of saints beginning shortly after its formation.
Episcopal Virginity in Medieval England
The literature on medieval sainthood is substantial, rich and varied, but on one point it is almost unanimous: sexuality, and in particular virginity, was of far greater significance to female saints than to their male counterparts.
St. Theodore, Euchaïta and Anatolia, c. 500-1000 CE: Landscape, Climate and the Survival of an Empire
St Theodore ‘the recruit’ was one of the most important military saints of the Byzantine and wider medieval world, and his cult center, at Euchaïta in northern Turkey, was famous from the fifth century on.
700-year-old ring bearing the image of St. Nicholas discovered by a gardener in Israel
A rare impressive, intact bronze ring from the Middle Ages, bearing the image of St. Nicholas, was discovered by chance during recent landscaping work in the garden of a home in the Jezreel Valley community of Moshav Yogev.
Bringing Out the Saints: Journeys of Relics in Tenth to Twelfth Century Northern France and Flanders
This dissertation examines the practice of taking relics on out-and-back journeys to explore the consequences of temporarily removing these objects from the churches in which they were housed and displayed.
Are These the Bones of Santa Claus?
A new radio carbon analysis of a relic claimed to be part of St. Nicholas’ pelvis suggests the bone could possibly be authentic.…
Across the North Sea and Back Again: A Comparative Study between the Cults of St. Olav and St. Edmund
This thesis serves to examine the transmission of royal missionary saints between Norway and England during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, focused on the cult of St. Olav and the cult of St. Edmund.
Piety and Poor Relief: Confraternities in Medieval Cremona, c. 1334-1499
This dissertation focuses on confraternal piety and poor relief in the northern Italian city of Cremona between the mid-fourteenth century and the end of the fifteenth century.
Cinema Paradiso: Re-Picturing the Medieval Cult of Saints
Cinema is not, of course, a medieval cultural form but its evolutionary trajectory can perhaps be seen as rooted in aspects of medieval material culture, particularly the plastic arts, manuscript illumination and printing and the performing arts, particularly religious drama with its propensity for movement.
Saint Eadburh, Daughter of King Edward the Elder
By Susan Abernethy Eadburh, daughter of King Edward the Elder and grand-daughter of King Alfred the Great, was dedicated to the Nunnaminster at…
Jeanne de Valois, Queen of France and Duchess of Berri
By Susan Abernethy Jeanne de Valois was the daughter, sister, and wife of kings. She was born with disabilities and suffered through a…
Katherine of Alexandria: Decline of an Empire
According to hagiographers, (C)Katherine was a princess, the daughter of Roman governor named Constus. She was well educated, beautiful and highly intelligent. She converted to Christianity at the age of 13 or 14 and caught the eye of the Roman Emperor, Maxentius (278-318 AD).
Miracula, Saints’ Cults and Socio-Political Landscapes: Bobbio, Conques and post-Carolingian society
Despite the centrality of monastic sources to debates about social and political transformation in post-Carolingian Europe, few studies have approached the political and economic status of monasteries and their saints’ cults in this context, to which this thesis offers a comparative approach.
Saints’ Cults in Medieval Livonia
Saints’ cults played a crucial role in medieval society. Although we know very little about the beliefs and rituals of the indigenous peoples of Livonia, either before or after the thirteenth-century conquest, we may assume that the process of Christianization must have caused major changes in their religious practices.
Saints, Tradition and Monastic Identity: The Ghent Relics, 850-1100
The extraordinary story ofthe Ghent relics was first told by Oswald Holder- Egger in an article published in 1886. During his work on part two of volume 15 of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores series, which Holder- Egger had just finished, he had come across the hagiographie literature produced at the abbeys of St Baafs and St Pieters in Ghent.
Childbirth Miracles in Swedish Medieval Miracle Collections
The chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth was very real for medieval women, and still is in many Third World countries. In Medieval Catholic Western Europe, including Scandinavia, these risks, and the absence of medically schooled persons who could give efficient help, led many women to turn to the saints for intercession.
St. Patrick’s Irish Pride
In honour of the day, it seems fitting to throw out some interesting facts about St. Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint.
The Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers and its Latin Source
The earliest extended treatment of the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus in a
western vernacular language is the anonymous Old English prose version preserved
in British Library MS Cotton Julius E vii…
Under the aegis of the saints. Hagiography and power in early Carolingian northern Italy
This article gives an overview of the features, choices, tastes and models of sanctity characteristic of Italian hagiography, against the background of local contexts and political competition.
Looking in the Past for a Discourse of Motherhood: Birgitta of Sweden and Julia Kristeva
This essay explores two parallel trajectories of mythic retrospection: medieval “myths” of the Biblical past (like Birgitta’s prophetic visions), and modern “myths” of the medieval past (like Kristeva’s survey).
“I, too, am a Christian”: early martyrs and their lives in the late medieval and early modern Irish manuscript tradition
This paper examines part of that future: late medieval and early modern Gaelic Irish devotion to the early Christian martyrs as evidenced in the vernacular manuscript tradition.
The Lives of St Samson: rewriting the ambitions of an early medieval cult
In the middle of the ninth century, at the monastery of Dol in Brittany, the Life of the sixth-century saint Samson was rewritten. The rewriter evidently perceived a defi- ciency in the existing Life of St Samson, and one that many modern historians would come to share: the fact that it had very little to say about Brittany.
The Anna Selbdritt in late medieval Germany : meaning and function of religious image
The Anna Selbdritt in late medieval Germany : meaning and function of religious image Virginia Nixon Doctor of Philosophy, Concordia University, School of…
“Becoming Mary of the Gael”
This paper focused on the comparison of St. Brigit and the Virgin Mary in early Irish texts.
The Virgin Mary in High Medieval England, A Divinely Malleable Woman: Virgin, Intercessor, Protector, Mother, Role Model
This thesis examines the significance of the Virgin Mary in England between the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century. The primary sources selected indicate the variety of ideas circulating about her during this period. Strictly religious texts such as the Bible and early Christian writings ground Late Medieval beliefs about Mary in their historical context.