Hagiography and the History of Latin Christendom, 500–1500

Samantha Kahn Herrick, Ph.D. (2002), Harvard University, is Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University. She has published widely on medieval hagiography, including Imagining the Sacred Past: Hagiography and Power in Early Normandy (Harvard, 2007).

• AcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsList of AbbreviationsNotes on Contributors IntroductionSamantha Kahn HerrickPart 1Creating and Transmitting Texts1 Constructing the Text: a Comparative Study of Two Saints’ Lives Written c.1200Helen Birkett2 From “Real Life” to Saint’s Life: Biography and Hagiography in the Vitae of Bernardino of Siena and Vincent FerrerLaura Ackerman Smoller3 Understanding Pictorial Hagiography (with Comments on the Illustrated Life of Wandrille)Cynthia Hahn4 Saints’ Lives on the Move: the Circulation of Apostolic LegendsSamantha Kahn Herrick5 Thirteenth-Century Legendae Novae and the Preaching Orders: a Communication SystemGiovanni Paolo MaggioniPart 2Constructing Religious Life, History and the Self6 Vita Vel Regula: Multifunctional Hagiography in the Early Middle AgesAlbrecht Diem7 Bishops, Monks and Priests: Defining Religious Institutions by Writing and Rewriting Saints’ Lives (Francia, 6th–11th centuries)Charles Mériaux8 Singing the Lives of the Saints: Hagiographical-Historical Intersections in Music and WorshipCatherine Saucier9 “Impressed by Their Stamp”: Hagiography and the Cultivation of the SelfIneke van ’t SpijkerPart 3Power and Violence10 Gaul’s Insiders: Hagiography and EntitlementJamie Kreiner11 St Gerald of Aurillac, Sex and Violence in Medieval HagiographyMathew Kuefler12 The Unconvincing Martyrdom of William Longsword, Norman Count of Rouen (r. 928–42)David Defries13 Hagiography, Relics and Secular Politics in Western Europe 6th–13th CenturiesEdina BozókyPart 4/b>Urban Life and the Natural World14 Hagiography and Inter-Urban Rivalry: the Vita of St Eucharius, First Bishop of Trier, and Its Use in “Political” Quarrels during the Tenth CenturyKlaus Krönert15 Hagiography and Urban Life: Evidence from Southern ItalyPaul Oldfield16 Hagiography and the Exotic: “Foreign Saints” in High Medieval LuccaAdrian Cornell du Houx17 Environmental History and HagiographyEllen ArnoldPart 5/b>Gender, Health and Beauty18 Hagiography, Gender, and the Power of Social NormsEmma Campbell19 A King, Not a Servant: the Prose Life of St Katherine of Alexandria and Ideologies of Masculinity in Late Medieval EnglandKatherine J. Lewis20 Health, Healing, and Salvation: Hagiography as a Source for Medieval HealthcareSara Ritchey21 The Beautiful Dead: Materiality, Resurrection and the Aesthetics of Holy CorpsesJ.K. KitchenHagiography Index

"Bilan bienvenu des avancés de la recherche dans le domaine des textes hagiographiques, souvent anonymes et mal datés, mais qui nous renseignent sur la ville, la violence, l’autre, le monachisme ... et l’évolution de l’idéal de sainteté qui reflète l’évolution de la société.Les chapitres écrits par les spécialistes qui résument leurs travaux s’organisent dans des thématiques: création des textes, développement des pratiques, efforts des hagiographes pour moraliser la politique, place des cités et de l’environnement". Anne Wagner, in Francia Recensio, 2020 | 3. "In this book, Samantha Kahn Herrick offers a brief and invaluable introduction to modern critical encounters with the genre [of hagiography], starting with Hippolyte Delehaye, and collecting insights from Marc Bloch, Peter Brown, Patrick Geary, and Felice Lifschitz, to set a platform for the chapters to follow. The book doesn’t disappoint in showcasing current trends in the study of the hagiography of Latin Christendom, understood in its broadest sense, from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries. [...] A strong theme of the book is that medieval politics was in considerable part a liturgical phenomenon, a fact that only increases our need to engage with this vast literature as evidence for political history, as well as ecclesiastical history and the history of religious cultures. In all three areas, the book makes a satisfying contribution." Simon Yarrow, in The Medieval Review, 23.03.21. See the full review here.