Hagiography

The reforms of Carolingian kings and emperors, and the controversies that arose from these reforms, subtly but profoundly shaped the biographies of holy men and women as they were revised during the ninth century. A number of revised saints' lives and their earlier versions survive and a close comparison of the earlier versions with their revisions reveals that the revisers made far more important changes to the content than has been recognized. This study uncovers a wealth of previously unnoticed ninth-century evidence whose deep significance emerges from comparison with contemporary sources. The rewriting phenomenon, which is explored through historical and literary approaches to rewriting and translation, appears as the embodiment of the Carolingian goal of correcting learning and behavior.

The dissertation looks at reforms from ca. 800 to ca. 870 in several areas: orthodox belief, monastic reform according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, and kingship, specifically the heightened moral expectations for rulers' behavior in the bedroom and on the battlefield. In addition to new constructions of sanctity, the revisers changed other aspects of the saints' worlds that they invented: bishops, monks, kings, queens, and even the landscape. Hagiography appears deeply influenced by the author, audience, and events at the time of revision and different retellings of the same story allow us to track changing ideals from century to century as well as decade to decade. My work sheds new light on the reform movement and on some of its most prominent exponents (Alcuin, Jonas of Orléans, Walafrid Strabo, Lupus of Ferrières, and Ado of Vienne) from the largely neglected perspective of their hagiographical work. Their revisions reveal that some are far more creative, clever, and controversial than previously thought and highlight the interests that characterized each successive generation of the Carolingian renaissance. My conclusion suggests that the study of thematic rewriting helps us to learn more about the authors of anonymous texts like those of saints Balthild and Genevieve.

This note on the interpretation of some Danish Romanesque frescoes was originally without an English summary. Because the text may contain some information of wider interest I have supplied an extensive summary with some additional comments, which was not in the Danish text concerning the Winchester College MS with the collection of Thomas Becket miracles from the 1170s by William of Canterbury, later Archbishop of Canterbury.

Often simply called the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos was the most famous center of Byzantine monasticism and remains the spiritual heart of the Orthodox Church today. This volume presents the Lives of Euthymios the Younger, Athanasios of Athos, Maximos the Hutburner, Niphon of Athos, and Philotheos. These five holy men lived on Mount Athos at different times from its early years as a monastic locale in the ninth century to the last decades of the Byzantine period in the early fifteenth century. All five were celebrated for asceticism, clairvoyance, and, in most cases, the ability to perform miracles; Euthymios and Athanasios were also famed as founders of monasteries.

Holy Men of Mount Athos illuminates both the history and the varieties of monastic practice on Athos, individually by hermits as well as communally in large monasteries. The Lives also demonstrate the diversity of hagiographic composition and provide important glimpses of Byzantine social and political history.

All the Lives in this volume are presented for the first time in English translation, together with authoritative editions of their Greek texts.

«The Latin versions of the Passio s. Demetrii»
The article examines and publishes some Latin versions of the legend of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki. The analysis of the Latin dossier shows that, alongside the translation by Anastasius, there is another version of the first Greek passio, spread in Northern Italy at least since the 13th century (BHL 2124d, whose two witnesses are published here for the first time). Of the second Greek form there existed an initial translation, made in Byzantine territory in the 11th century, from which derive both the form BHL 2124 (published here on the basis of the six witnesses found), and BHL 2125 (of which the editio princeps is given from the only witness). The northern version is the primary source for the double entry on Demetrius (in turn published here) of the Legendae de sanctis by Pietro Calò, who integrated it with the form BHL 2124; from that of Calò, Pietro Nadal drew the entry for his Catalogus sanctorum, also using a different witness of BHL 2124.

Reviewed in: BUKSZ--Budapesti Könyvszemle (Beatrix F. Romhányi), Catholic Historical Review (Katherine L. Jansen), Collectanea Franciscana (Aleksander Horowski), Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters (Veronika Lukas), Hungarian Historical Review (Dorottya Uhrin), Il Santo (Eleonora Lombardo), Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken (Ralf Lützelschwab), Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique (Michael Robson), Speculum (Thomas F. Luongo)

This paper explores how tales of difficult births found in medieval miracle narratives can contribute to our understanding of the experience of pregnancy and childbirth in twelfth-century England. While rare in the early collections, pregnant and parturient women are increasingly visible in the miracula from the later twelfth century. This paper seeks to explain why childbirth miracles began to appear more frequently and became more medical in character. The discussion centres on the two miracle collections belonging to St Thomas of Canterbury, written by Benedict of Peterborough and William of Canterbury in the 1170s. Explanations for the more frequent appearance of childbirth miracles are found, not in the changing relationship between humans and saintly intercessors, nor in the contemporary interest in the maternity of the Virgin Mary but in the specific context of the cult of St Thomas and the new emphasis given to lay testimony.

A Saint in Seattle is the inspiring and unlikely life story of a modern Buddha. In 1960 the Tibetan lama Dezhung Rinpoche (sGa Thar lam sDe gzhung sprul sku, 1906-87) arrived in Seattle after being forced into exile from his native land by the Communist Chinese.


The eminent Sakyapa historian gDong thog bstan pa’i rgyal mtshan, a.k.a. T. G. Dhongthog Rinpoche (1933-2015), translated the present English biography of Dezhung Rinpoche into Tibetan as you can find in the TBRC website (www.tbrc.org):

sDe gzhung kun dga' bstan pa'i nyi ma rin po che'i rnam thar, Biography of the Tibetan mystic Dezhung Rinpoche Jampa Kunga Tenpai Nyima (1906-1987).
bstan pa'i rgyal mtshan; 1 volume; 622 p.. W00KG09975. [sa pan bshad grub gling nas par du bskrun], shoreline, wa. 2006.

The focus of this article is the hagiographies and novenas to San Benito de Palermo that circulated in the territories of New Spain, most of which were produced locally in the 18th and 19th centuries. While these devotional books can be used as a means of taking the measure of official holiness during the years of their publication, upon closer analysis this body of religious literature reveals the virtues and attributes of this Sicilian Saint that descended upon, among others, people of African descent. For this reason, the discussion surrounding his «skin color» constituted the principal obstacle against which this Negro Franciscan found himself struggling constantly. In the final section, the paper highlights the role of the Franciscans in New Spain during the colonial period in America as the community that, through the medium of the printing press, most strongly promoted the cult of this illustrious figure.

The kings of East Anglia and Northumbria both died at the hands of the Great Heathen Army in the late 860s; one became a renowned martyr saint and one a villain. The latter, the Northumbrian Ælla, also became the antagonist in legends concerning the ancestors of the Uí Ímair, principal successors of the northern Great Army and leaders of the tenth-century Insular Norse.  According to a previously neglected text, 'De Northumbria post Britannos', another of northern England’s great dynasties claimed descent from Ælla. The Eadwulfings of Bamburgh were based in northern Northumbria, and appear to have gained leadership of their political community in the late ninth or early tenth century. With the rival position held by the Uí Ímair in the south, it is possible that Ælla’s later reputation and associated legends arose as a bi-product of tenth-century political conflict.

Siaburcharpat Con Culaind is a great cross-over saga. Cú Chulainn, the greatest of pagan heroes, helps Patrick in his mission to convert the king of Ireland. What does this story tell us about conversion? What role is played by the pagan past? Why is telling stories so important?

Published in: CSANA Yearbook 1 (2001) 109–25

Die deutschen Übersetzungen der lateinischen Hedwigslegende lassen sich fast ausnahmslos in den Kontext der Legitimation deutscher und österreichischer Adelshäuser stellen. Der Beitrag zeichnet diese Zusammenhänge nach und konzentriert sich dabei besonders auf die bislang wenig untersuchte Schleusinger Hedwigslegende.

Depictions of the fantastic in modern literature established the fear oft he supernatural. Premodern literary texts lack such targeted evocations of horror. To find them, one must turn instead to Christian exempla, which seek to frighten readers in teaching them a lesson. Imaginations of Fear discusses the hitherto unappreciated significance of the “merveilleux chrétien” for the fantastic genre from its beginnings through the 20th century.

Die Phantastik etablierte die Angst vor dem Übernatürlichen in der Literatur. In vormodernen literarischen Texten sucht man hingegen vergeblich nach dem gezielt evozierten Horror. Er findet sich stattdessen in christlichen Exempla: Sie evozieren den Schrecken aus didaktischen Gründen. Von diesem Befund ausgehend, wird die in der Forschung konsequent negierte Bedeutung des christlichen Wunderbaren für die Phantastik bis ins 20. Jh. erörtert.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/505534

This paper proposes a deconstructive reading of Flores ni Maria Santisima, a Hiligaynon novena written by Padre Raymundo Lozano and printed in 1867. Set against the economic bustle of nineteenth-century Iloilo after it opened port to foreign trade,the novena demonstrates a homological relationship between capitalism and the practice of spiritual accumulation in the Flores. Nevertheless,teasing out the liminality of this text undermines its self-assurance as a monologic triumph of signification.A recurrent word in the novena, gihapon (always) plays an important transactional role in the promise of a happy death.  As an incalculable event which subverts anticipation, death is a call towards faith without the consolation of certainty. The alterity of death beckons us to respond with Derrida’s perhaps, a trace of gihaponrevealed in the three stories from pananglit(hagiographical narrative): the deathbed experience of St John of God, the Emmaus-like encounter of two priests, and the acquittal of a convicted robber.

This Russian language article investigates the polemical orientation of the hagiographical Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself in relation to the author’s earlier works, The Answer of the Orthodox, and other texts that were included together with the Life in the Pustozersk Collection. An analysis of the creative evolution of Avvakum’s thought will demonstrate that the Life’s appeal to holy foolishness at its narrative climax was its strongest ideological weapon against the new Church elite (the Nikonians). This appeal gave rise to an  unprecedented emphasis on the author’s personal life experience that was meant to be proof of the  “theoretical” arguments against Nikonian rationalism in the The Answer to the Orthodox. As a demonstration of a mystical-experiential approach to knowledge of God, his dramatized  holy foolishness justified his choice to present his  own biography as a publicistic  hagiographical narrative.

La littérature hagiographique d’époque tardo-antique et byzantine conserve le souvenir, historique ou légendaire, de nombreux martyrs, en particulier en Asie Mineure où fut déclenchée la dernière persécution générale des chrétiens par l’empereur Dioclétien. Il faut remarquer que les femmes sont beaucoup plus nombreuses dans les Passions que dans les Vies de saintes qui se placent après cette persécution. Quand elles ne sont pas des figures inconsistantes, les femmes martyres, réelles ou fictives, appartiennent en priorité aux catégories supérieures de la société romaine. Pourtant, sans distinction d’origine et de fortune, elles transmettent toutes un message uniformisé qui exalte les vertus chrétiennes de chasteté et d’obéissance systématisées par le monachisme.

The hagiographical literature of late Antiquity and Byzantium preserves the historical or legendary memory of many martyrs, particularly in Asia Minor where Emperor Diocletian launched the last general persecution of Christians. It should be noted that there are many more women in Passions than in the Lives of female saints written after this persecution. When they are not insubstantial characters, real or fictitious female martyrs mostly belong to the upper classes of Roman society. However, irrespective of origin or fortune, all of them deliver a standardized message which extols the Christian virtues of chastity and obedience that monachism had made systematic.

Based on a chapter in my book, Patrons and Patron Saints, this article argues in making genius loci figures--or "spirits of place"-central to both Lycidas and Comus, Milton offers a counter to the countless saints of both medieval and early modern Catholicism

The death of the martyr was one of the primary features of early Christian hagiographical literature. Indeed it was specifically the act of dying that made a martyr different, special. Despite the centrality of the martyr’s death, the role of the executioner was not uniform. In his writing on martyrs Tertullian barely mentioned the executioners, it was almost as if the martyrs died by divine providence without human assistance. Three hundred years later Prudentius presented the executioners, and judges sentencing the martyrs, as fully developed characters. They were not all the same, but rather some were sympathetic reluctant parties to the execution of Christians, others were blood thirsty diabolical elements who developed ever more ingenious ways to torture and execute their victims. This paper will examine varieties in which the executioners are remembered in the (re)telling of hagiographical narratives.

""Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Latin Bibles survive in hundreds of manuscripts, one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. Their innovative layout and organization established the norm for Bibles for centuries to come. This volume is the first study of these Bibles as a cohesive group. Multi- and inter-disciplinary analyses in art history, liturgy, exegesis, preaching and manuscript studies, reveal the nature and evolution of layout and addenda. They follow these Bibles as they were used by monks and friars, preachers and merchants. By addressing Latin Bibles alongside their French, Italian and English counterparts, this book challenges the Latin-vernacular dichotomy to show links, as well as discrepancies, between lay and clerical audiences and their books.
Contributors include Diane Reilly, Paul Saenger, Richard Gameson, Chiara Ruzzier, Giovanna Murano, Cornelia Linde, Lucie Doležalová, Laura Light, Eyal Poleg, Sabina Magrini, Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet, Guy Lobrichon, Elizabeth Solopova, and Matti Peikola"


LIVE(!) table of contents:


Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 
Eyal Poleg and Laura Light

The Bible as Bellwether: Manuscript Bibles in the Context of
Spiritual, Liturgical and Educational Reform, 1000–1200  (http://www.academia.edu/3742204/The_Bible_as_Bellwether_Manuscript_Bibles_in_the_Context_of_Spiritual_Liturgical_and_Educational_Reform_1000-1200_in_Form_and_Function_in_the_Late_Medieval_Bible_eds._Eyal_Poleg_and_Laura_Light
Diane J. Reilly

The Twelfth-Century Reception of Oriental Languages and
the Graphic Mise en page of Latin Vulgate Bibles Copied
in England............................................................................................................ 31
Paul Saenger

Durham’s Paris Bible and the Use of Communal Bibles in a
Benedictine Cathedral Priory in the Later Middle Ages ......................... 67
Richard Gameson

The Miniaturisation of Bible Manuscripts in the
Thirteenth Century. A Comparative Study ............................................... 105
Chiara Ruzzier

The Epistles of St. Paul of the Convent of San Domenico
(Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria, MS 1545).......................................... 127
Giovanna Murano

John Pecham on the Form of Lamentations ................................................. 147
J. Cornelia Linde

The Summarium Biblicum: A Biblical Tool both Popular and Obscure............................................................................................................... 163
Lucie Doležalová

The Thirteenth-Century Pandect and the Liturgy:
Bibles with Missals .......................................................................................... 185
Laura Light

The Interpretations of Hebrew Names in Theory and Practice ............... 217
Eyal Poleg

Vernacular Bibles, Biblical Quotations and the Paris Bible in
Italy from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century: A
First Report........................................................................................................237
Sabina Magrini

Vernacular Bible Manuscripts in Late Medieval Italy: Cultural Appropriation and Textual Transformation ............................................. 261
Sabrina Corbellini

The Medieval Vernacular Bible in French as a Flexible Text:
Selective and Discontinuous Reading Practices...................................... 283
Margriet Hoogvliet

The Story of a Success: The Bible historiale in French
(1295-ca. 1500)................................................................................................307
Guy Lobrichon

Manuscript Evidence for the Patronage, Ownership and Use
of the Wycliffite Bible ..................................................................................... 333
Elizabeth Solopova

Tables of Lections in Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible ......................... 351
Matti Peikola

Epilogue................................................................................................................... 379
Peter Stallybrass "

Although modest in numbers narratives concerning the life of saints and translation of their relics, present in Adriatic during the early Christian and early medieval time, are important testimonies of the vivid relations between Adriatic and other Mediterranean ports. They also confirm perdurance of the ancient maritime routes. The first examined record is related to the group of Christians came from Italy to Durrës at the beginning of the 2nd c, in order to avoid Trajan persecution. Important testimony on the absence of Christians at the second half of 4th c. is opserved in the Vita of St. Hilarion, who came from Sicily to Epidaurus (near Dubrovnik), looking for the peaceful refuge. On the other hand, Christianity came in Apulia by the Sea, when St. Leuco debark in Brindisi on his voyage from Alexandria. It was, as well, possible to retrace migrations of the saints’ relics from Pannonia and Dalmatia in Rome and Constantinople, when due to the barbaric invasions refugees from the destroyed cities carried them away on the safer places. In the 6th c, during the Justinian reconquest, the transfer of the relics from the byzantine capital in the important Adriatic ports, such as Ravenna and Siponto, are recorded. Similar process happened at the begging of the 9th century, when most of the Adriatic re-entered in the byzantine political sphere. It was in that peculiar moment that the relics of St. Anastasia were brought to Zadar, of St. Tryphon to Kotor, and of the prophet Zaccaria to Venice.

The rise of the Capetian dynasty across the long thirteenth century, which rested in part on the family's perceived sanctity, is a story most often told through the actions of male figures, from Louis IX's metamorphosis into "Saint Louis" to Philip IV's attacks on Pope Boniface VIII. In Courting Sanctity, Sean L. Field argues that, in fact, holy women were central to the Capetian's self-presentation as being uniquely favored by God. Tracing the shifting relationship between holy women and the French royal court, he shows that the roles and influence of these women were questioned and reshaped under Philip III and increasingly assumed to pose physical, spiritual, and political threats by the time of Philip IV's death.

Field's narrative highlights six holy women. The saintly reputations of Isabelle of France and Douceline of Digne helped to crystalize the Capetians' claims of divine favor by 1260. In the 1270s, the French court faced a crisis that centered on the testimony of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, a visionary holy woman from the Low Countries. After 1300, the arrests and interrogations of Paupertas of Metz, Margueronne of Bellevillette, and Marguerite Porete served to bolster Philip IV's crusades against the dangers supposedly threatening the kingdom of France. Courting Sanctity thus reassesses key turning points in the ascent of the "most Christian" Capetian court through examinations of the lives and images of the holy women that the court sanctified or defamed.

Chi non ricorda l’episodio dell’incontro di Francesco col lebbroso? Ma dietro quella scena ce ne sono molte altre simili, a partire da quella evangelica, che erano ancora ben presenti all’uomo del Duecento. Ne sono protagonisti personaggi diversissimi: dall’imperatore Costantino al monaco Iosafat, figura occidentale del Buddha; dall’ex soldato Martino, vescovo di Tours, alla principessa d’Ungheria Elisabetta, fondatrice di un ospedale; fino al leggendario «saint Ladre» (ovvero «san Lebbroso») o ad Aleydis di Schaerbeek, monaca lebbrosa dalle folgoranti esperienze mistiche. Le loro storie raccontano i diversi modi in cui la lebbra, forma estrema della malattia e dunque paradigma della fragilità umana, è stata messa in rapporto con la santità, offrendo uno spaccato di oltre mille anni di spiritualità cristiana.

With his solemn canonisation in 1450, Bernardin of Siena was officially presented as a model for preachers and as a re-founder of the Franciscan Order. His tireless commitment to preaching and his virtues as a friar made him a perfect model for the religious. However, his life before entering the Franciscans permitted to present him also as a saint in which the lay people could find an inspiring example for their own lives. This paper highlights this less studied aspect of the formation and evolution of the cult of St Bernardin by considering the earliest Vitae and sermons in honour of this saint as well as a peculiar cycle of frescos in Lodi. This allows to investigate in which way the hagiographical image of St Bernardin’s adolescence and youth was constructed, which episodes of his life in seculo received more attention and which virtues were put at the forefront. It emerges a vivid and multifaceted portray of a felix adulescentia, in which piety and charity had a central role in shaping the profile of the new saint, whose life was strictly connected with both the love of the Virgin and the active service in the city. In this way, the paper shows that St Bernardin was not only presented as a perfect preacher, but also as a perfect layman who lived with charity and chastity in the secular world.