Authorial Intention In The Middle Ages. An overview of The Golden Legend by Jacopo of Varazze (original) (raw)
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Understanding Hagiography. Studies in the Textual Transmission of Early Medieval Saints’ Lives
Edited by Paulo Farmhouse Alberto, Paolo Chiesa, Monique Goullet 🔗 https://bit.ly/2NAL0YL PART I. THEORY AND METHODS: P. Chiesa, Le ‘edizioni scientifiche’ di testi agiografici fra teoria e prassi – M. Lapidge, Problems in Editing the passiones martyrum of Late Antique/ Rome – G. Philippart, L’hagiographie entre croyance et dérision – M. Goullet, Déconstruire l’hagiographie – A. A. Nascimento, Hagiographie, un genre littéraire. PART II. CASE STUDIES: A. Lampadaridi, Lire saint Jerôme en grec: le cas de la Vie d’Hilarion (BHG 752) – L. Franco, Rewriting the Life of Euphrosyne (BHG 625, BHG 626) – F. Dolbeau, Deux récits latins de translation: une traduction d’Anastase et son adaptation catalane – C. Codoñer, La transmisión de algunas vitae visigóticas: la Vita Fructuosi – P. Henriet, Remarque sur les origines et sur l’importance des recueils de Vitae patrum dans le monde latin – P. F. Alberto, A Collection of Vitae Sanctarum in Tenth-Century Northern Spain – E. Ferrarini, Troppi agiografi per un santo? Il dossier di Medardo di Noyon e la questione attributiva di BHL 5864 – M. Pavoni, Osservazioni sulla paternità della Vita e del Liber de virtutibus sancti Hilarii attribuiti a Venanzio Fortunato – M. Lanza, La Vita sancti Germani Parisiensi episcopi di Venanzio Fortunato in una riscrittura ritmica del IX secolo – G. S. Sajani, La Passio XII fratrum. Storia di un testo e delle sue riscritture – M. Cerno, Adam of Paris’ Rewriting(s): a Revolution in the Hagiographical Dossier of Domnius of Salona – L. Buono, Pietro Diacono, san Marco di Atina e un testimone cassinese ritrovato – L. Saraceno, Dal santo vivente al santo da canonizzare. Una rilettura del dossier agiografico romualdino. Indici.
To Jerusalem and Beyond: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Latin Travel Literature, c.1200-1500, 2023
Burchard of Mount Sion's 'Descriptio Terre Sancte' is a Latin account of the Holy Land composed in the 1280s. Its detailed nature as well as its carefully crafted structure made it popular in late medieval and early modern times. The 'Descriptio' was not only widely read and cited, it was also constantly re-edited, first by its author and later by generations of scribes and editors. Following a recent study which resulted in the production of a stemma codicum of the so-called 'long version' of the 'Descriptio', the present paper further investigates such editorial processes, aiming to provide new insights into both the nature of Burchard's own efforts to revise his work, and the ways in which, intentionally and unintentionally, later scribes brought about changes in this popular treatise. Inter alia, this study traces the ways in which the cultural gap between Burchard and some of these scribes-for example with regard to their acquaintance with the Holy Land's geography-shaped the development of the 'Descriptio' and its reading from the time of its original composition until the present.
The hagiographical Experiment: Developing Discourses of Sainthood, ed. by Christa Gray and James Corke-Webster, 2020
This paper deals with late antique vitae whose heroes belonged to the clergy, and particularly with the questions of for whom and for what these texts were written. In order to introduce this issue, however, I will begin with monastic hagiography. While this volume argues that it would go too far to say that the lives of holy monks gave rise to the very idea of writing the stories of the Christian saints, there is not much doubt that they started the interest in those personages whose merits lay in their life, and not in their martyrdom. What was the purpose of these writings? Hippolyte Delehaye, whose name we still quote with reverence and justly so, defined hagiography as literature written in order to launch, promote, or maintain the cult * The research on this article has been supported by a grant from the National Science Centre (Poland, DEC-2013/10/E/HS3/00202) and by the ERC Advanced Grant The Cult of Saints: a Christendom-wide study of its origins, spread and development up to 700 (COS) run by Bryan Ward-Perkins at the University of Oxford with partnership at the University of Warsaw. of a saint. 1 Interestingly, this definition does not fit well with majority of the earliest lives of holy monks. In the Life of Antony, written most probably in the 360s, which set the rules for the genre, we find neither an exact date of its hero's death nor the localisation of his grave which, as the author tells us, remains hidden. 2 Thus two pieces of information essential for the development of the cult, two coordonées hagiographiques, as Delehaye calls them, are missing. Moreover, there are only few miracles in this text and none of them is posthumous. 3 Thus, the Life of Antony was certainly not written to start a cult. Athanasius tells about his purpose directly -he writes in order to provide an example of virtue and askēsis to be followed by those who entered upon a noble rivalry with the monks of Egypt. 4 And the contents of the Life of Antony, including a long sermon addressed to his pupils, show that this was really the goal that the author had in mind. 5 The cultic ambitions, which can be found in several early martyrdoms, are absent from other early vitae as well. There is no trace of them in Jerome's lives of Paul and Malchus, both written not long after the Life of Antony. 6 Only in the last of his monastic vitae, that of Hilarion, dating from the early 390s, does Jerome try to construct the cult of his hero, but even here the parenetic function is dominant. 7 It does not mean that the lives of the holy men of the desert were composed just for the training of the monks, but the monks were certainly an important, intended, and real audience which sought this kind of literature. It suffices to mention the Rule of Benedict, which recommended them to read the vitae patrum, which are 'the instruments whereby well-living and obedient monks attain to virtue '. 8 In this article, I want to raise the question of whether the lives of saintly clerics had a similar function; whether they were written in order to provide their colleagues or followers with a role model. The writing of clerical vitae started quite early. The first life of a bishop, the Vita Cypriani, was composed probably shortly after its protagonist's death in AD 258 and so somehow preceded the heyday of hagiography by over hundred years. Its author, Pontius of Carthage, explains that he aims to describe the life of a man who, not only in his death, but also in his life was an incomparable example to others. 9 Pontius emphasises the priesthood of his hero and claims that since Cyprian was a martyr and bishop he should be honoured more than those martyrs who were simply lay people and catechumens. 10 Still, Cyprian did suffer 1 Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Légendes hagiographiques (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1955, 2nd ed.), 2. 2 Athan. V. Anton. 90-2. 3 Athan. V. Anton. 54-65. 4
New Blackfriars, 2008
The exemplum is a short edifying tale that uses a historical person's positive or negative character traits to make a moral point. Its homiletic suitability ensured the genre's widespread use throughout premodern Europe. Not only were exempla effective preaching instruments on which a travelling friar could rely, but they also were extremely elastic in their application. A closer look at two late thirteenth-century English texts, Ralph Bocking's Latin Life of St Richard of Chichester (Vita sancti Ricardi) and the Life of St Dominic in the anonymous South English Legendary, a Middle English cycle of saints' lives, will explore two original ways in which mendicant hagiographers attempt to conceal and yet betray their intentions through their choice of hagiographic exempla. The first, I argue, petitions the patron, Isabella of Arundel, for a gift to the Order of Preachers, whereas the second text shows evidence of having been composed by a Dominican friar.