Saint-Laurent review of Culte des saints et littérature hagiographique: accords et désaccords, Vincent Déroche, Bryan Ward-Perkins, and Robert Wiśniewski (EDS) (original) (raw)

Exploring the borders of hagiography and saints’ offices

vIMC: International Medieval Congress, 2020

Composing a liturgical office and writing a vita were two of the essential steps in the creation of a saint’s cult. This paper will examine the interconnections between these two elements of cult formation using the examples of St Edmund of Bury (d. approx. 869) and John of Bridlington (d. 1379). The two case studies will explore how vitae and offices drew on similar imagery, examine which came first, office or vita, and how later cult events, such as translations helped to maintain or revive cults over time.

The Relationship Between Hagiography and Cult: Some Thoughts from the 'Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity' Project

Culte des saints et litterature hagiographique, ed Vincent Déroche, Bryan Ward-Perkins & Robert Wiśniewski, 2020

Hagiographical texts were centrally important in the encouragement of the cult of saints, but with a degree of variation in the emphasis they place on the specific location of each saint's cult. This paper, using the evidence collected in the 'Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity' database, explores this issue across the various hagiographical genres: Miracles Stories, Martyrdoms, and Lives. Some texts are focused on a single cult-site (the resting place of the saint's body), but others encourage a certain amount of diffusion of the saint's cult. The extent to which successful (and durable) cult required the existence of written hagiography is also discussed.

R. MARTORELLI (2021), Saints, Cults, Sanctuaries, and Monasteries

A. Metcalfe, H.Fernández-Aceves, and M. Muresu eds., The Making of Medieval Sardinia (The Medieval Mediterranean, 128), Leiden-Boston: Brill, pp. 88-125. , 2021

FOLKLORIC HAGIOGRAPHY AND THE POPULAR CULT OF SAINTS FORMATION OF BELIEFS AND PLOTS. In: Scrinium. Journal of Patrology, Critical Hagiography and Ecclesiastical History. Vol. 10. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2014. P. 219-229

Scrinium. Journal of Patrology, Critical Hagiography and Ecclesiastical History. Vol. 10. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2014

The article introduces and motivates the concept of “Popular hagiography,” discusses the features of the vernacular cult of saints, the relationship between the literary and folkloric hagiography, specific conception of holiness, sources of hagiographic plots and texts in folk culture. Folk saints cult and the knowledge about saints are based on the reception of the literary hagiography, on the interpretation of iconographical detailes, on the semantization of saintsʹ names or the names of their feasts. The popular hagiographic legends may be based on other folkloric genres. Folk cult of the saints is formed with hagiographical texts: ritual practices either repeat saintsʹ actions described in legends, or realize communication with them, as well as communication between alive and deceased is being realized during funeral ceremonies.

'An Angel's Power in a Bishop's Body: The Making of the Cult of Aubert of Avranches at Mont-Saint-Michel'

Journal of medieval history, 2003

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Benedictine monks of Mont-Saint Michel promoted the cult of Aubert of Avranches, the abbey’s legendary co-founder, and used his newly rediscovered relics as a means of accessing the patronage and power of the elusive, incorporeal archangel Michael, the community’s other founder. Texts, images, the strategic placement of Aubert’s relics throughout the abbey church reinforced the association between these two saints, rendering Aubert more powerful and Michael more accessible. This local study of the interaction between these two cults at the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel suggests that medieval monastic uses of relics were more creative and varied than is generally recognized and that relationships between saints within a single cultic environment could be extremely complex and unstable.

Cults of saints

From Michail Dmitriev, Marek Derwich (Ed.) Fonctions sociales et politiques du culte des saints dans les sociétés de rite grec et latin au Moyen Âge et à l'époque moderne. Approche comparative. Sous la dir. de M. Derwich et M. Dmitriev. Wroclaw: LARHCOR, 1999, 401-418 Dmitry I. Polyviannyi (Ivanovo University, Russia)

Saints and Hagiography

Prepublication version of ‘Saints and Hagiography’, in P. F. Esler (ed.), The Early Christian World, second edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 501-514.

The Development of the Practice and Doctrine of the Cult of Saints in the Catholic Tradition

The practice of the veneration of saints is integral in the understanding of the Catholic faith. People who are outside the Catholic tradition dismiss this religious custom because they are ignorant of the meaning and the truths that it communicates. In order to give proper explanation of the cult of saints, an inquiry about the development of its theology and the signi cance that it introduces to Catholic worship is discussed in this paper. What the Scriptures and the Church Magisterium say about the cult of saints and what is the faith that people profess to believe when upholding this practice are just some of the questions that this article attempts to answer. The discussion commences with the biblical foundations of the cult, then locates its emergence from the early Christian community, enunciates it as it was continued and cultivated by succeeding generations of Christians, and nally complements its understanding with the of cial proclamations of the teaching of ce of the Church.