Silver Saints
Silver Saints

Author: Hanneke van Asperen

Publisher:

Published: 2021-06-30

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 9782503580203

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Late medieval books served as treasure chests for all kinds of religious keepsakes, notably small metal badges. Devotees sewed these religious badges and pilgrimage souvenirs to the parchment of their treasured devotional books and manuscript illuminators depicted silver and gilt badges in the margins as if they are sewn to the pages. Medieval manuscripts are often admired for their aesthetic qualities, but many of them also served a practical use as instruments for the physical and mental wellbeing of the owners and their families. Manuscripts and incunabula containing metal badges illustrate how the owners used their books, which texts they favored, but also who collected badges and why. The depicted badges that only appear in richly illuminated and expensive manuscripts expand the knowledge of these metal objects that have been passed down in small numbers only. The painted motifs that have a more decorative and structuring role in the book fulfilled different functions than the original badges. 'Silver Saints' discusses the religious life of lay people in the late Middle Ages and the meaning of badges in books, both the painted motifs in beautifully decorated manuscripts and many traces of original badges.

Medieval Saints and Modern Screens
Medieval Saints and Modern Screens

Author: Alicia Spencer-Hall

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Published: 2018-01-23

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 9048532175

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This ground-breaking book brings theoretical perspectives from twenty-first century media, film, and cultural studies to medieval hagiography. Medieval Saints and Modern Screens stakes the claim for a provocative new methodological intervention: consideration of hagiography as media. More precisely, hagiography is most productively understood as cinematic media. Medieval mystical episodes are made intelligible to modern audiences through reference to the filmic - the language, form, and lived experience of cinema. Similarly, reference to the realm of the mystical affords a means to express the disconcerting physical and emotional effects of watching cinema. Moreover, cinematic spectatorship affords, at times, a (more or less) secular experience of visionary transcendence: an 'agape-ic encounter'. The medieval saint's visions of God are but one pole of a spectrum of visual experience which extends into our present multi-media moment. We too conjure godly visions: on our smartphones, on the silver screen, and on our TVs and laptops. This book places contemporary pop-culture media - such as blockbuster movie The Dark Knight, Kim Kardashian West's social media feeds, and the outputs of online role-players in Second Life - in dialogue with a corpus of thirteenth-century Latin biographies, 'Holy Women of Liège'. In these texts, holy women see God, and see God often. Their experiences fundamentally orient their life, and offer the women new routes to knowledge, agency, and belonging. For the holy visionaries of Liège, as with us modern 'seers', visions are physically intimate, ideologically overloaded spaces. Through theoretically informed close readings, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens reveals the interconnection of decidedly 'old' media - medieval textualities - and artefacts of our 'new media' ecology, which all serve as spaces in which altogether human concerns are brought before the contemporary culture's eyes.

Gendered Voices
Gendered Voices

Author: Catherine M. Mooney

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-01-14

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1512821152

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"These studies . . . not only illuminate the past with a fierce and probing light but also raise, with nuance and power, fundamental issues of interpretation and method."—from the Foreword, by Caroline Walker Bynum Female saints, mystics, and visionaries have been much studied in recent years. Relatively little attention has been paid, however, to the ways in which their experiences and voices were mediated by the men who often composed their vitae, served as their editors and scribes, or otherwise encouraged, protected, and collaborated with the women in their writing projects. What strategies can be employed to discern and distinguish the voices of these high and late medieval women from those of their scribes and confessors? In those rare cases where we have both the women's own writings and writings about them by their male contemporaries, how do the women's self-portrayals diverge from the male portrayals of them? Finally, to what extent are these portrayals of sanctity by the saints and their contemporaries influenced not so much by gender as by genre? Catherine Mooney brings together a distinguished group of contributors who explore these and other issues as they relate to seven holy women and their male interpreters and one male saint who claims to incorporate the words of a female follower in an account of his own life.

A Short Reader of Medieval Saints
A Short Reader of Medieval Saints

Author: Mary-Ann Stouck

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2009-01-01

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1442600942

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"Mary-Ann Stouck's short reader stands apart in offering an abbreviated but judicious selection of saints' lives perfectly suited as a brief introduction. It fills a particular need with an elegant sufficiency." - Cynthia J. Hahn, Hunter College and the Graduate Center-CUNY

Patron Saints of Early Medieval Italy Ad C. 350-800 Ad
Patron Saints of Early Medieval Italy Ad C. 350-800 Ad

Author:

Publisher: Durham Medieval and Renaissanc

Published: 2016-12-27

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780888445650

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This book provides the first translation into English of the Latin biographies of nine holy men and one archangel who became the patron saints of the areas where they evangelized, documenting the conversion of pagan Roman Italy to Christianity at the dawn of the Middle Ages. These Lives or Passions recorded for early medieval audiences the difficulties their local patron saints encountered in promoting the new religion, and their sufferings at the hands of resistant pagans and Roman authorities -- ordeals that qualified these saints as special protectors or guardians over their cities or regions. Full of tales of courage, torture, assistant angels, mischievous devils, dragons, and monsters, these earliest Lives also served as literary and devotional touchstones for later elaborations, medieval and modern, on the saints? lives, careers, and cults. With a comprehensive introduction and historical commentary to each biography, Patron Saints of Early Medieval Italy provides new evidence for understanding the transition from the ancient Roman world to the Middle Ages. In assessing the technical problems relating to the origin and date of composition of each text, Patron Saints also contributes to redeeming these valuable but neglected sources for the history of medieval Italy. It also discusses the historical and literary significance of these biographies within the contexts of hagiography as a literary genre and early medieval religious life.

Treasures of Heaven
Treasures of Heaven

Author: Martina Bagnoli

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 9780714123301

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Keynote A magnificent study of the beautifully crafted Medieval reliquaries that enshrined holy relics, and their wider historical, cultural, political and religious context Sales points Published in conjunction with Walters Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art to accompany a major touring exhibition, at the British Museum 23 June 9 October 2011 No equivalent book on this fascinating subject An important reference work drawing on the latest scholarship, which will be of value far beyond the exhibition Description Drawing on three major museum holdings as well as featuring iconic pieces from other international public and private collections, this richly illustrated book looks at the phenomenon of holy relics in the Middle Ages. Thematic essays and object entries by leading scholars trace the history and development of the cult of relics, from its beginnings in late Roman funerary practices to its rise in both the Byzantine East and the West. Contributors Derek Krueger, Eric Palazzo, Arnoldt Angenendt, Martina Bagnoli, Holger A. Klein, Barbara Boehm, Guido Cornini, Cynthia Hahn, James Robinson, Alexander Nagel, C. Griffith Mann

Medieval Saints' Lives
Medieval Saints' Lives

Author: Emma Campbell

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1843841800

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Contending that the study of hagiography is significant both for a consideration of medieval literature and for current theoretical debates in medieval studies, this book considers a range of Old French and Anglo-Norman texts, using modern theories of kinship and community to show how saints' lives construe social and sexual relations. Focusing on the depiction of the gift, kinship and community, the book maintains that social and sexual systems play a key role in vernacular hagiography. Such systems, along with the desires they produce and control, are, it is argued, central to hagiography's religious functions, particularly its role as a vehicle of community formation. In attempting to think beyond the limits of human relationships, saints' lives nonetheless create an environment in which queer desires and modes of connection become possible, suggesting that, in this case at least, the orthodox nurtures the queer. This book thus suggests not only that medieval hagiography is worthy of greater attention but also that this corpus might provide an important resource for theorizing community in its medieval contexts and for thinking it in the present. EMMA CAMPBELL is Associate Professor of French at the University of Warwick.

The Late Medieval Cult of the Saints
The Late Medieval Cult of the Saints

Author: Carmen Florea

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-11

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1000460851

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This is a book that explores the nature of sainthood in a region at the margins of medieval Latin Christendom. Defining the model of sanctity that characterized Transylvania between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the study considers how the cults of saints functioned within specific local social and cultural contexts. Analyzing case studies from a multi-ethnic region influenced by both the Latin and Eastern Christian traditions, this book provides a close reading of little-surveyed primary sources and offers a comprehensive understanding of sainthood in Transylvania, enhancing the broader study of medieval saints’ cults and their relationship to social power structures. It will be of great interest to scholars of medieval religion, researchers in medieval studies, and religious studies scholars engaged in comparative research.

Medieval Saints and their Sins
Medieval Saints and their Sins

Author: Luke Daly

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2024-08-30

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1399050664

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Explore the vibrant tapestry of the Middle Ages through the lives of medieval saints, revealing intimate perspectives on faith, fear, and societal change, while delving into topics resonant with today's world. Step into the captivating world of the Middle Ages with Saints and Sinners, a groundbreaking exploration of history like no other. In this remarkable narrative, each chapter takes you on an immersive journey through time, unveiling the vibrant tapestry of events that shaped the medieval era told through the stories of Medieval Saints who experienced them. Gone are the distant voices of emperors and kings; instead, we hear from ordinary people who witnessed the world around them, sharing their intimate thoughts, fears, and attitudes towards world-changing events. Experience the gripping anxiety, fear, and paranoia that accompanied threats to the kingdom of heaven, as these saints fought to defend and restore their faith. But, as the Church solidifies its position, discover how saints were then utilised as instruments of control to shape public order. Saints and Sinners goes beyond a mere historical account, delving into topics that resonate with today's world. Uncover the incredible history of Ethiopia, once a magnificent empire that fell into despair at the hands of Christianity, shedding light on Black History; delve into the history of gender and sexuality through the misogynistic St Cuthbert and worship of ‘trans-saint’ Wilgefortis; and witness the fight for equality in indigenous populations in the Americas through St Louis Bertrand. Through these stories, saints become a lens to examine the attitudes and complexities of their time. Prepare to be enthralled as Saints and Sinners weaves together engaging narratives, captivating miracles, and enthralling stories of saints to produce a masterful retelling of the Middle Ages which not only satisfies the curiosity of general readers but also offers a deep understanding of the Middle Ages and Christianity's evolution.