The Case of a Married Female Saint: Rutebeuf’s Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) was a married saint who was canonized in 1235. This paper focuses on the portrayal of Elizabeth by Rutebeuf as a female married saint and her piety within the bounds of marriage.
Prehistoric Annals and Early Medieval Monasticism: Daniel Wilson, James Young Simpson and their Cave Sites
Caves marked with early Christian motifs on Scotland’s western and eastern coasts have attracted scholarly attention for over a hundred years, where they have been associated with early medieval monastic communities.
The vita of Douceline de Digne (1214-1274): Beguine spirituality and orthodoxy in thirteenth century Marseilles
Amongst these is Douceline de Digne (1214-1274) whose life as a mystic and a beguine provides evidence for a new perspective on the influence and participation of women in the spirituality of the mid-thirteenth century.
VAGANTES: Between Tradition and Change: Monastic Reform in Three fifteenth-century German Redactions of the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt
Using the life of St. Mary of Egypt, this paper will consider three different Middle High German versions produced by reform communities and will analyze how the reform ideologies and goals manifest in the texts.
VAGANTES: Necessary Imperfection: The Body of Sainte Marie l’Egyptienne
This paper seeks to examine the role of the body and its relationship to the world around it in the “vie de sainte” of Marie l’Egyptienne, who is an excellent example of a female saint who begins life as a sinner and transforms her body into something holy. This presentation will focus on the version of Marie l’Egyptienne’s life written by Rutebeuf in the 13th century, but will also bring in elements of other versions and of the stories of other female saints who transform their bodies for comparison.
VAGANTES: What the Body Said: The Corpse-as-Text in St. Erkenwald
This paper will consider how the speaking corpse of the pagan judge should be read, especially in light of the hagiographic context and medieval theological writings on the resurrection of the body.
Temptation and Redemption: A Monastic Life in Stone
The monks who wrote the legend of Eugenia and those of the other transvestite women/monks were explicitly including a female in an all male monastic milieu. Women, as a rule, were not allowed in male monastic enclosures; the Rule at Cluny strictly forbade any women to enter the grounds.
Writing the Order: Religious-Political Discourses in Late Anglo-Saxon England
The issue of how authority was created, maintained and defined in religious terms by the written word is therefore the main concern throughout this study.
Olaf Haraldsson’s Relics – an Example of ‘Hagiocracy’ in Scandinavia
The model of “the suffering leader” was quite a common model of saint-hood in the medieval North. Throughout the Middle Ages, the majority of the saints venerated in the West (especially in non-Mediterranean countries), were kings and princes.
Was St Patrick a slave-trading Roman official who fled to Ireland?
With St Patrick’s Day upon us, a new study asks whether the saint fled his native Britain to escape a career as a Roman tax collector, only to arrive in Ireland and sell slaves.
The Irish Christian Holy Men: Druids Reinvented?
The druids as members of the pagan ‘priestly class’ were an important, high-status force in Celtic society. This class of druids was one of the most formidable groups that early Christian saints and missionaries had to face and overcome in order to establish firmly the roots of Christianity in pagan Celtic Ireland.
The Conversion to Christianity in Medieval Ireland: St. Patrick vs. St. Bridget
Both St. Bridget and St. Patrick are patron saints of Ireland, but each had very different methods of converting people to Christianity from paganism during medieval times in Ireland.
The Culture Shock of St Patrick
This article will shed new light on the Confession of St Patrick by examining it through the prism of the culture shock model.
Relic Robbing: Church’s Medieval Treasures in Jeopardy?
The theft of the a medieval relic from a church in Ireland earlier this week is raising questions about the security of these places of worship and the safety of the items held within it.
Tradition and Transformation in the Cult of St. Guthlac in Early Medieval England
Do the variations reflect changes in purpose, patronage, doctrine, liturgy, or intended audience? Are they due to differences in authorship, geographical origin, or regional preferences? Analysis of the variations introduced into the corpus of materials, both narrative and visual, for a given saint over the course of the Middle Ages in England can elucidate the social, cultural, and historical significance of these changes.
Boniface’s Booklife: How the Ragyndrudis Codex Came to be a Vita Bonifatii
The most recent addition to the family of literary genres may be the booklife. Finding its origin in Roland Barthes’s Roland Barthes and now taught in English departments, the booklife proposes a union of sorts of writing and living. Whether the genre will be long-lived is an open question, that it can be fruitful is not in doubt. But medievalists already knew that the dividing line between book and life is always thin, especially if that life has been lived in and among books.
Miracle Stories and the Primary Purpose of Adomnán’s Vita Columbae
Adomnán, the author of the VC, was Columba’s ninth successor to the abbacy at Iona. 1 A great deal about his career, concerns and life can be found in contemporary literary evidence.
Medieval Saint’s relic stolen from Dublin church
The preserved heart of St Laurence O’Toole, Dublin’s patron saint has been stolen from the city’s Christ Church Cathedral. The theft occurred sometime between Friday night and noon on Saturday.
Jaunts, Jottings, and Jetsam in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts
In British Library, MS Egerton 1993, a collection of Middle English saints’ lives, a late hand has entered in ink a memorable drawing that proudly displays its own rubric: “this is man” (fig. 1). Precisely what manner of beast man was occupied the attention of a number of doodlers who laid hands on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts.
Who gave King Arthur “a crippling blow”? It was St. George, argues scholar
One of the key figures associated with the Middle Ages in England has been King Arthur, the legendary ruler who was made popular in medieval romances and chronicles. But in a recent lecture, Professor Henrietta Leyser argues that the Arthurian legend declined sharply in the later Middle Ages, replaced by a new hero emerged for the English people – St.George the Dragonslayer.
The Staff, the Snake and the Shamrock: St Patrick in Art
The image of a bearded man wearing a mitre and carrying a staff or crozier has become almost synonymous with the patron saint of Ireland, in particular when his vestments are green and adorned with shamrocks and a snake slithers around his feet.
St Fursa, the genealogy of an Irish saint the historical person and his cult
As it turns out, Fursa’s differing genealogical affiliations mirror the subsequent shifts in political and ecclesiastical developments in Irish medieval history.