Soldiers of Christ
Author: Thomas F. X. Noble
Publisher: Penn State Press
Published: 2010-11-01
Total Pages: 432
ISBN-13: 0271043350
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Saints' Lives in Middle English Collections
Author: Anne B Thompson
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
Published: 2005-04-01
Total Pages: 393
ISBN-13: 1580444075
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume is conceived as a complement to another Middle English Texts series text, Sherry Reames' Middle English Legends of Women Saints. This selection is intended to be broadly representative of saints' lives in Middle English and of the classic types of hagiographic legend as these were presented to the lay public and less-literate clergy of late medieval England.
Anglo-Saxon Saints Lives as History Writing in Late Medieval England
Author: Cynthia Turner Camp
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 1843844028
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA groundbreaking assessment of the use medieval English history-writers made of saints' lives. The past was ever present in later medieval England, as secular and religious institutions worked to recover (or create) originary narratives that could guarantee, they hoped, their political and spiritual legitimacy. Anglo-SaxonEngland, in particular, was imagined as a spiritual "golden age" and a rich source of precedent, for kings and for the monasteries that housed early English saints' remains. This book examines the vernacular hagiography produced in a monastic context, demonstrating how writers, illuminators, and policy-makers used English saints (including St Edmund) to re-envision the bonds between ancient spiritual purity and contemporary conditions. Treating history and ethical practice as inseparable, poets such as Osbern Bokenham, Henry Bradshaw, and John Lydgate reconfigured England's history through its saints, engaging with contemporary concerns about institutional identity, authority, and ethics. Cynthia Turner Camp is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Georgia.
Sanctity in the North
Author: Thomas Andrew DuBois
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2008-01-01
Total Pages: 417
ISBN-13: 080209130X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSanctity in the North features English translations of texts from Latin or vernacular Nordic languages, in many cases for the first time. The accompanying essays complement the translations and reflect the contributors' own disciplinary groundings in folklore, philology, medieval, and religious studies.
Women Saints Lives in Old English Prose
Author: Leslie A. Donovan
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 160
ISBN-13: 9780859915687
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTranslations of eight saints' lives, giving an insight into women's religious culture in Anglo-Saxon England. Devout, virtuous and independent, the heroines of Old English saints' lives (one of the most popular literary genres of the middle ages) provided exemplars of personal and public inspiration for medieval Christians. The eight lives translated here are the earliest known vernacular accounts of the biographies of Æthelthryth, Agatha, Agnes, Cecilia, Eugenia, Euphrosyne, Lucy, and Mary of Egypt. They depict women escaping unwanted marriages, communicating with male relatives, acquiring an education, living autonomously as hermits, and achieving positions of leadership; such lives document not only the importance of spiritual faith to early Christian women, but also testify to how these women (and their audience) employed faith as a tool for empowerment. Each life is preceded by a brief description of the saint's cult from its early Christian origins to its presence in Anglo-Saxon culture. The translationis accompanied by an introduction establishing the general background for the genre, the conventions of women saints' lives, and women's religious culture in Anglo-Saxon England; and an interpretive essay exploring the relationships between explicit presentations of the female body and the strength of spiritual authority as exhibited in these texts completes the volume. LESLIE A. DONOVAN is Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico.
Thomas of Cantimpré
Author: Thomas (de Cantimpré)
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 342
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMedieval saints' lives have only recently begun to be studied for what they say about the society in which they were written rather than as examples of medieval religious belief. The four lives translated here are the work of a Flemish monk of the thirteenth century, Thomas of Cantimpre. These lives demonstrate the variety of definitions of holiness in the Low Countries at this time. Three of the four tell of holy women, only one of whom, Lutgard of Aywieres, was a professed nun. The lives show Thomas' respect and admiration for the women he knew and the influence that holy laywomen had. Newman (English, Northwestern University) sets the stage on which Thomas acted, explaining in clear prose, the background to the stories and giving a biography of Thomas. Both Newman and King are well known for their scholarship on medieval women and for their lucid and accurate translations. This work is highly accessible and would be excellent for classroom use, especially the section on Christina the Astonishing, which would intrigue both historians and psychiatrists. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
The Saints' Lives of Jocelin of Furness
Author: Helen Birkett
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 344
ISBN-13: 1903153336
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFirst comprehensive study of four important medieval saints' lives, setting them in their political and ecclesiastical context.
Medieval Saints
Author: Mary-Ann Stouck
Publisher:
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 637
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSacred Biography
Author: Thomas J. Heffernan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1992-10-01
Total Pages: 348
ISBN-13: 019536001X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThough medieval "saints' lives" are among the oldest literary texts of Western vernacular culture, they are routinely patronized as "pious fiction" by modern historiography. This book demonstrates that to characterize the genre as fiction is to misunderstand the intentions of medieval authors, who were neither credulous fools nor men blinded by piety. Concentrating on English texts, Heffernan reconstructs the medieval perspective and considers sacred biography in relation to the community for which it was written; identifies the genre's rhetorical practices and purposes; and demonstrates the syncretistic way in which the life of the medieval saint was transformed from oral tales to sacred text. In the process, Heffernan not only achieves a more contextually accurate understanding of the medieval saints' lives, but details a new critical method that has important implications for the practice of textual criticism.
Gendered Voices
Author: Catherine M. Mooney
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2016-01-14
Total Pages: 292
ISBN-13: 1512821152
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"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.
