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Hagiography Archive
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Joan of Arc: Christian Heretic, Christian Saint
Posted on December 30, 2012 | No CommentsJoan of Arc was the French hero of the Hundred Years War and the catalyst who tipped the war in favor of the French after a series of disheartening English victories. -
Pilgrimage and Embodiment: Captives and the Cult of Saintsin Late Medieval Bavaria
Posted on December 24, 2012 | No CommentsChief 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. -
St Edmund of East Anglia and his miracles: variations in literature and art
Posted on December 23, 2012 | No CommentsEdmund 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. -
The Murder of St. Wistan
Posted on December 18, 2012 | No CommentsThere is more than one ghost story connected with the quiet hamlet of Wistow, which lies off the London road about seven miles from Leicester. -
Suicide in the Middle Ages
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsAll three types of source need careful interpretation. Suicide is notoriously elusive to records even in modern times, and more so for the Middle Ages. Once due allowances have been made for each genre, however, it is some reassurance that they agree on certain basics, and that these, in turn, agree with estimates from better-recorded centuries... -
Reading “The Revelations of Elizabeth of Hungary” as a Devotional Text
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsIn this thesis I would like to move beyond the discussions of authorship for The Revelations and begin to examine the text itself. In fact, I neither attempt to question the arguments for Elizabeth of Töss’s role as the visionary in the text, nor do I deny that someone in the community acquainted with Elizabeth, either first-hand or close to it, wrote her visions down. -
Holy Women in the British Isles: A Survey
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsRepresentations of holy women appear in a wide variety of textual, dramatic, and iconographic forms across medieval Europe during the central and late Middle Ages (c.1100-1530). -
The Production and Planning Process of the Book of Kells
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe Book of Kells is one of Ireland’s greatest treasures, although its origins— location and date—cannot be definitively determined. The gospel book earned its name from the monastery in which it was last housed before its move to Dublin (circa 1654) for safekeeping during the Cromwellian period when Catholic establishments were dissolved and property was either looted or destroyed. -
The Pagan Heritage of St George
Posted on December 8, 2012 | No CommentsIn this paper, I want to look at the legend of St George and at possible pagan and pre-Christian sources for the legend, as well as some of the other literary descendants that may be associated with him. -
Hincmar of Reims on King-making: The Evidence of the Annals of St. Bertin, 861–882
Posted on December 5, 2012 | No CommentsThe Histories and Chronicles Hincmar had in mind were presumably Frankish ones; and Lothar II, succeeding his father, thus clearly came into this section of Hincmar's third category. But of the timing or form of Lothar's becoming king, Hincmar said not a word, preferring, instead, to spell out the Biblical lesson that a bad king (and he hastily disclaimed any allegation that Lothar's father had been a bad king) would see the succession depart from his line. -
Love and Saint Francis of Assisi: A Performer in the Middle Ages
Posted on December 2, 2012 | No CommentsIn “spending most of his life out of doors, in all seasons” Francis defies the basis of what we call civilized existence; if history is about progress in terms of making human life secure from nature’s vagaries, Francis rejects such a conception of history, along with its false sense of security, in order to situate human life in and as the natural world. -
An 11th-Century Scandal
Posted on November 18, 2012 | No CommentsComplaints from Damian about the church’s unwillingness to confront the sexual behavior of the clergy, however, met with inaction. In 1049 Damian wrote to Pope Leo IX (1048-54) about the cancer of sexual abuse that was spreading through the church: boys and adolescents were being forced and seduced into performing acts of sodomy by priests and bishops; there were problems with sexual harassment among higher clergy; and many members of the clergy were keeping concubines. -
“The Eucharist and the Negotiation of Orthodoxy in the High Middle Ages”
Posted on November 15, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper is part of Adam Hoose's dissertation. It examined the differences between Waldensians and Franciscans in their treatment of the Eucharist. It also explored why the Waldensians were unsuccessful in their bid to become a legitimate religious order and were eventually marginalized as heretics. -
Britain’s Medieval identity Crisis
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsClare Downham considers how a set of saints’ lives written by a13th century monk in Cumbria help us understand how national allegiances were understood in medieval Britain. -
Against the Heathen: Saints and martyrs in late Anglo-Saxon literature
Posted on November 6, 2012 | No CommentsIn this essay I will argue that the militarised martyrs and saints in Anglo-Saxon England are both a shining example to Saxon Christians and an enticing lure to encourage the Scandinavian settlers to adopt the Catholic faith like King Cnut did. -
“Kings as Catechumens: Royal Conversion Narratives and Easter in the Historia Ecclesiastica” by Carolyn Twomey (Boston College)
Posted on November 3, 2012 | No CommentsThis is the first paper from the Haskins Conference at Boston College - it focused on Bede's narratives of Royal conversion. -
Holy Body, Wholly Other: Sanctity and Society in the Lives of Irish Saints
Posted on October 24, 2012 | No CommentsThe core of hagiography, whatever else may accrete around it, is therefore the depiction of what defines a saint as a saint in the eyes of the hagiographer and his intended audience. Ireland’s hagiography must then encompass the Irish author’s understanding of an Irish saint. -
History and Hagiography in Matthew Paris’s Illustrated Life of Edward the Confessor
Posted on October 12, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis focuses on the Life of Edward the Confessor and explores the way in which Matthew visually represents the lengthy historical sequences that he has added to the more traditional account of the saint. -
The Life and Miracles of St. Margaret of Cortona (1247 – 1297)
Posted on September 26, 2012 | No CommentsMargaret’s extraordinary career brings the historian closer to the early development of the Franciscans and the Order of Penance; it tells us much about how women saints were described, and about how civic cults of saints emerged. -
Charles IV: Religious Propaganda and Imperial Expansion
Posted on September 23, 2012 | No CommentsThe Bohemian Charles IV (1316 – 1378) was crowned King of Bohemia in 1347, King of the Romans in 1349, and Holy Roman Emperor in 1355. -
The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study
Posted on September 16, 2012 | No CommentsWhat is this story and why is Egeria reading it at the shrine in Seleukeia? -
The cult of saints in the early Welsh March: aspects of cultural transmission in a time of political conflict
Posted on September 6, 2012 | No CommentsThe last mark of subjection … touched the realm of sentiment merely and yet was none the less keenly felt by a people so imaginative as the Welsh. -
Ciceronian rhetoric and the art of medieval French hagiography
Posted on September 2, 2012 | No CommentsIn the lives of the saints, it is clear that medieval hagiography reflects the statement, 'Antiquity has a twofold life in the Middle Ages: reception and transformation.' -
The Chaste Erotics of Marie d’Oignies and Jacques de Vitry
Posted on August 30, 2012 | No CommentsIn this article I would like to look at Marie's ascetic and devotional practices and how Jacques, as both confessor and hagiographer, implicates himself into these practices. -
Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend
Posted on August 7, 2012 | No CommentsThe prime example of the prostitute saint was Mary Magadelen, probably the most popular saint (after the Virgin Mary) in all of medieval Europe.