Abstract
This reflection derives from a discussion that took place at the 2018 “Comparative Hagiology” pre-conference workshop of the American Academy of Religion. The goal during that meeting was to articulate points of dialogue for the comparison of exemplary figures in various historic, geographic, and faith traditions. Here, I offer an open-ended descriptive index as a heuristic device for beginning a comparative study, whether collaborative or single-authored. After positioning my inquiry from within my own field of study, medieval European Christianity, I offer a brief “test case” for the portability of the index by using its terms to think through a text that is widely-regarded within my subfield as deeply complicated and difficult to interpret, the Life of Christina Mirabilis. I conclude by re-describing some of the terms of the index and by inviting further re-description.
Highlights
Pre-conference workshop of the American Academy of Religion
As I show at the end of this brief essay, they are subject to re-description even when employed in a single historic faith tradition; in my case, late medieval European Christianity and its production of living saints
How do exemplary figures establish their extra-ordinary qualities? What are the degrees of astonishment: when does an astonishing event become a miracle? How do the extra-ordinary stories perpetuated about exemplary figures serve to affirm social, political, or theological agendas? What is the role of the extra-ordinary story in the construction of the community who shares that story?
Summary
“Comparative hagiology” offers a method of productively destabilizing the assumptions and expectations that we, scholars working within specific intellectual, geographic, or confessional traditions, bring to our sources. This destabilization has the potential to make meaning across differences, and in the process, to generate new insights and understandings in our own areas of specialization. Undertaken with a genuine sense of humility and a will to listen and revise, the comparative approach to hagiography as we have outlined it in this collaborative undertaking is an ethical endeavor at heart It insists on conversation, learning, and entering into relationships with other scholars, other faith traditions, and other ways of being in the world. I chose to use the term “hagiography” in this essay, because my focus remains fairly fixed on methods of analyzing culturally-embedded artifacts, as opposed to concerns in the philosophy of religion While these two endeavors are by no means exclusive, and both are absolutely necessary for the comparative project, the former term offers greater precision for the issues I address in this essay. As I show at the end of this brief essay, they are subject to re-description even when employed in a single historic faith tradition; in my case, late medieval European Christianity and its production of living saints
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