Where the Middle Ages Begin
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).
Saint Catherine of Alexandria and her wheel have been well recognized symbols since the beginning of the Middle Ages. Here are 10 interesting tidbits about Saint Catherine:
This paper investigates the social, political, and religious changes and tensions which surrounded the cult of St. Cuthbert in medieval Northumbria. Specific comparisons are made between the Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods in English history, and how St. Cuthbert’s cult responded to the Norman Conquest in 1066.
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 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.
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.
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.
In honour of the day, it seems fitting to throw out some interesting facts about St. Patrick, Ireland’s patron saint.
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…
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.
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).
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.
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 Virginia Nixon Doctor of Philosophy, Concordia University, School of Graduate Studies, Montreal, Canada (1997) Abstract In the decades between 1480 and 1520 the production of images of Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child increased in Germany and the Netherlands in […]
This paper focused on the comparison of St. Brigit and the Virgin Mary in early Irish texts.
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.
“Yes by Saint Patrick …. Touching this vision here It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5)
This dissertation investigates narratives of the saintly body in Anglo-Saxon England. Specifically, it examines the ways in which the bodies of holy men and women were constructed through such narratives and read in local appropriations of emblematic vitae and passiones.
How was the historical figure of the worldly chancellor reconciled to the saintly archbishop who was martyred for his faith on the floor of Canterbury Cathedral? One of the most important vehicles of expression in the Middle Ages was the liturgy.
The traditional image of St Christopher, which was particularly frequent in the Middle Ages, portrays him crossing the waters of a river while he is carrying the child Jesus on his shoulder.
This thesis will question this premise and provide the first indepth study of the cults of St Andrew, Columba of Iona/Dunkeld, Kentigern of Glasgow and Ninian of Whithorn in a late medieval Scottish context, as well as the lesser known northern saint, Duthac of Tain.
Visions flourish within particular domestic contexts and disciplines, and Christina enables us to glimpse a sub-culture of visionary experience in twelfth-century England, which rarely shows up in sources and is given little authority in the dominant narratives.
European mummies occupy a significant place among the world known mummies.
Chief among the stories contained in these miracle stories are tales of escapes from captivity. Almost forty percent of the reports in the two Munich Latin miracle collections deal with liberations from imprisonment and escapes from captivity of various sorts.
Edmund was said to have been crowned at the age of just fourteen years by St Humbert on 25 December 855 in the then royal capital Burna, (probably Bures St Mary, Suffolk). Almost nothing is known of his life and reign, though he was recorded as a just and uncompromising ruler, the embodiment of the Greek ideal of the kalòs kai agathòs – that is, the right balance of the Good and the Beautiful, the combination of virtues that could create the perfect nobleman.
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