The Life as Vita: Reading The Lady Falkland Her Life as Hagiography

Abstract

Elizabeth Cary is of interest to scholars of hagiography primarily because she is the subject of The Lady Falkland Her Life, a mid-seventeenth-century spiritual biography by her daughters that this essay argues is modeled structurally on the medieval virgin martyr passiones. Its authors appropriate this structure not only to call attention to their mother's piety but to emphasize Cary's participation in literary culture as a Catholic reader and writer. The attention given to Cary's involvement with textual culture also represents a confluence between the values of the Reformation and those of the Benedictine convent at Cambrai, where the text was produced. The use of a medieval form thus works to legitimate the piety of an English Catholic woman writer and to establish the relevance of a Catholic convent in post-Reformation Europe.