Hagiographies: Histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1500, ed. M. Goullet, vol. 8. Brepols: Turnhout, 2020, 777 pp.

Abstract

Abstract When the first volume of Hagiographies: Histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1500 appeared in 1994, it heralded an exciting new series that promised to present in eight volumes the history of Latin and vernacular hagiography produced in Europe (including Scandinavia) between the fourth and the sixteenth centuries. The appearance of the eighth volume in the series in 2020 represents an important milestone in this ambitious enterprise, but it is not the end of the story. It is clear that a ninth volume will be necessary to gather all the loose ends of a project that has, from the beginning, adopted an unorthodox ap­proach to the presentation of its findings. While the Hagiographies series boasts over one hundred articles in its eight volumes, the contents of each book were published in the order in which they were received. This lends a bricolage character to each volume, in which studies of medieval hagiography at diverse times, in different locations, and in distinct linguistic traditions become unlikely neighbors due to the serendipity of their submission dates. While this does nothing to diminish the value of individual articles, it does make the series as a whole somewhat unwieldy to use, as it often requires readers to switch between volumes to find studies relevant to a particular time or region.