Christian Hagiography Research Articles

Pericles , Paul, and Protestantism

Thanks to decreasing concerns that its episodic plot contains stale, moldy relic, Pericles has been lately rehabilitated. Its design now seems right for play that prioritizes politics and political theory over psychological and dramatic consistency, as in nondramatic romances. (1) However, questions of politics and power remind us that theology framed early modern discussions of political theory. (2) Feminist analyses and studies of specific female characters also bring us to theological matters. (3) Marina's speech marks her as saintly figure of eloquentia derived not just from Senecan Controversiae but also from Christian hagiography. (4) The recent surge of speculation about Shakespeare's Catholic roots has made readers sensitive to latent Catholic discourses in the plays. (5) Indeed, with sources in medieval (Catholic) chivalric romance, similarity to saints' plays, possible Marian references, and depictions of effective rituals by Cerimon, some tones in Pericles sound like the old religion. (6) However, more than one kind of theology circulates throughout the play, most likely because the sixteenth century nurtured imprecise, mixed belief systems. Perhaps because, as literary scholars turned to cultural history, Eamon Duffy showed that ongoing Catholic practices persisted after the Reformation, we have focused more on material than on theological continuities. (7) In fact, Protestant anxieties about the relationship between word, image, and meaning derive from Christian traditions as old as Augustinian thought. (8) The pre-Reformation cult of the Holy Name becomes the Protestant emphasis on one's personal relationship with the savior; medieval traditions that see the crucifix as the central Christian truth become the Reformation focus on direct communication with the Word. (9) In Alexandra Walsham's words, both articulations of Christianity reinforce the idea of sacramental and moralized universe. (10) And both draw extensively on Paul's writings. For example, although doctor of the Church, Augustine's conversion in book 8 of Confessions explicitly follows the narrative of Paul's experience in Acts 9, fact made clear by Augustine's praise of Paul and extended engagement with Romans. (His ultimate conversion comes after he hears child's voice, rushes into his house, and reads that epistle from his Bible.) Continuities also exist because the consequences of Catholic and Protestant positions do not always diverge widely, especially if we see Paul and many early modern Protestants influenced by him less as dualists than as universalists (rhetorically bridging texts from multiple faiths to envision the fulfillment of God's all-inclusive design), as Gregory Kneidel does. (11) In general, Shakespeare's romances engage rhetorically with more than one theological design. (12) Although comparing parts of Pericles to medieval saints' plays, Howard Felperin could be describing Protestant saints like those in John Foxe when he says that unlike tragic heroes, who try until the end to redeem themselves, heroes in romance stripped of all hope or illusion of redeeming themselves ... and this is essential to their redemption. (13) If Felperin's statement is indeed true of romance heroes, then that essentially medieval, Catholic form shows surprising compatibility with Reformation arguments that individuals can do little to shape their fate. As he does for other issues, such as power, in Pericles Shakespeare often uses perspectives like those of the old religion to critique the new. (14) It is not just overlap between medieval and early modern theology that makes the theology of Pericles difficult to categorize. Among Reformation theologians there was considerable variation on issues that concerned Paul. Even an emphasis on providence need not be specific marker for Calvinism; as Walsham says, it was not a monopoly of the hotter sort of Protestants. (15) There are variations, too, within individual writers, even one as consistent as Calvin. …

Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History by Timothy D. Barnes

Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History by Timothy D. Barnes

The Elegiac Puella as Virgin Martyr

This paper explores the ideological currents running through Maximianus's subversive revival of the genre of Augustan love elegy in the beleaguered Rome of the mid-sixth century. The third elegy narrates an apparent childhood reminiscence of the poet, a failed romance with a young girl, Aquilina. But it soon becomes clear that, in the character of Aquilina, Maximianus has deliberately blurred the literary archetypes of the elegiac puella and the virgin martyr from Christian hagiography. This bizarre configuration allows the elegist simultaneously to provoke questions about the representation of female figures in both genres. By likening the elegiac puella to the martyr, Maximianus highlights the latent violence of elegiac topoi. By likening the martyr to the elegiac puella , Maximianus highlights the eroticism that often has a prominent place in accounts of virgin martyrdom. Not merely a formal experiment or the product of Augustan nostalgia, Maximianus's elegies represent a real attempt to reinvent elegy's questioning stance in a new social and religious context.

Storia della santità nel cristianesimo occidentale, and: Il tempo dei santi tra Oriente e Occidente: Liturgia e agiografia dal tardo antico al concilio di Trento (review)

Reviewed by: Storia della santità nel cristianesimo occidentale, and: Il tempo dei santi tra Oriente e Occidente: Liturgia e agiografia dal tardo antico al concilio di Trento E. Ann Matter Storia della santità nel cristianesimo occidentale. By Anna Benvenuti, Sofia Boesch Gajano, Simon Ditchfield, Roberto Rusconi, Francesco Scorza Barcellona, and Gabriella Zarri. [Sacro/Santo, 9.] (Rome: Viella. 2005. Pp. 427. €28.00 paperback.) Il tempo dei santi tra Oriente e Occidente: Liturgia e agiografia dal tardo antico al concilio di Trento. Edited by Anna Benvenuti and Marcello Garzaniti. [Atti del IV Convegno di studio dell'Associazione italiana per lo studio della santità, dei culti e dell'agiografia. Firenze, 26-28 ottobre 2000.] (Rome: Viella. 2005. Pp. viii, 501. €39.00 paperback.) No academic culture is more welcoming to the study of sanctity and holy people in Christian history than that of Italy, where even some secular universities have faculty chairs dedicated to hagiography, and where faculty in general departments of history can make careers based on the study of saints and sainthood. Anna Benvenuti, the force behind these two volumes, a professor of medieval history at the University of Florence, has long been an expert on the role of holy people in medieval Italy, just as her colleague at Florence, Gabriella Zarri, has blazed a trail for the study of different forms of Christian sanctity in the early modern period. Sofia Boesch Gajano and Roberto Rusconi, who teach, respectively, medieval history and the history of Christianity at the Università di Roma Tre, are also well known for their work on Christian saints and the role of sanctity in Christian culture, especially in medieval Italy. The first volume under review here, Storia della santità nel cristianesimo occidentale (The History of Sanctity in Western Christianity) brings this remarkable quartet together with Francesco Scorza Barcellona, who teaches the history of Christianity at the Università di Roma Tor Vergata, and Simon Ditchfield, who teaches modern history at the University of York in England, to offer a detailed and thoughtful overview of changing ideas of holiness and the roles of those we call the saints in Christian history from the beginning of the Christian cultus to the pontificate of John Paul II. The material is divided chronologically, and to some inevitable extent, by theme. Francesco Scorza Barcellona begins with a chapter entitled "Origins," that brings the discussion up to the beginning of the fourth century. This chapter [End Page 105] starts with the idea of martyrdom in Second Temple Judaism and earliest Christianity, and traces the development of the Christian holy person through the beginnings of church hierarchy, the rise of the ascetic communities, and the development of sacred biography, pilgrimage, cults, and iconography specifically associated with saints. The second and third chapters cover the Middle Ages. In the second chapter, Sofia Boesch Gajano considers the "structuralization" of Christian hagiography after the development of Christian political states, from the fourth to the twelfth centuries, as seen in monastic reforms, the role of the Papacy, holiness associated with visionary activity, and the rise of new forms of sanctity associated with holy war. Anna Benvenuti then takes over for a chapter on her specialty, late medieval urban life, in which she develops themes of local patronage as opposed to the centralized authority of Rome, new forms of religiosity among the laity, the rise of the Mendicants, and the development of a formal system of canonization. The fourth and fifth chapters focus on Renaissance and early modern Christianity. Gabriella Zarri takes the story to the late sixteenth century, through the Council of Trent, focusing on the christianization of society and the rise of Christian Humanism, the development of formal hagiographical literature, the rise of Marian cults, and the role of political prophecy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including the "Sante Vive" of Renaissance courts, and culminating in the figure of Girolamo Savonarola. In the fifth chapter, "The World of the Reform and the Counter-Reform," Simon Ditchfield considers how ideas of Christian sanctity were formed by confessional identity (considering briefly, and for the only time in this volume, Christian sanctity in a Protestant context). Ditchfield's essay focuses on the development of saintly cults, the Congregation of...

The Search for Idols and Saints in Colonial Peru: Linking Extirpation and Beatification

The Search for Idols and Saints in Colonial Peru: Linking Extirpation and Beatification

The Struggle over Arabisation in Medieval Arabic Christian Hagiography

The process of Arabisation and Islamisation that began shortly after the Muslim conquests in greater Syro-Palestine was still in full swing well after the ‘Abbāsid revolution. One of the neglected sources for unravelling the nuances of the cultural transformations that were taking place is the Christian hagiography of the period. This article argues that the contrast between Byzantine and Arab Christian hagiography from the late eighth through the ninth century provides an important window in the process of Arabisation and Islamisation in the Early Islamic period. In particular when the Byzantine account of the Twenty Martyrs of Mar Saba is compared to the Arabic account of the Martydom of Rawḣ al-Qurayshī, an Arab Christian, many of the significant features of the process of cultural change come to the fore.

Death Twice over: Dualism of Metaphor and Realia in 12th-Century Hebrew Crusading Accounts

This article analyzes the peculiar phrase "being killed a second time" referring to the Jews, which is found in the Hebrew accounts of the First Crusade in 1096. Through a comparison with and analysis of Christian hagiography and medieval Latin documents using the same phrase, the study shows that there is a dual meaning of this metaphor. On the one hand, the phrase conveys the Jewish martyrs' strong commitment to their God by showing their willingness to die twice at the hands of crusaders; on the other hand, it alludes to ambiguous and questionable behavior of forced converts or to indecisive Jewish behavior in the face of forced conversion. Converts were perceived as dead once they left Judaism. Their first "death" could have been reversed either by martyrdom or by returning to their original creed. Second death, therefore, could refer to martyrdoms of converts. Through a second death these Jews achieved their atonement and exoneration. Most of the converts, however, "came back to life" upon their return to Judaism. The metaphor reveals that conversion to Christianity constituted a far more serious and common problem than the Jewish authors could admit openly. At the same time, "being killed a second time" discloses the sources' polemical and apologetic tone. Despite the rigid image held of the Ashkenazic community in several modern studies, the analysis of the metaphor reveals a compassionate community, with a sympathetic attitude and realistic approach toward the converts.

The Palladium and the Pentateuch: Towards a Sacred Topography of the Later Roman Empire

H ISTORIANS OF RELIGION IN LATE ANTIQUITY tend to adopt one of two perspectives. Either we seek to understand Christianization, a process ultimately reducible to acts of individual choice whose aggregate effects can be described in purely demographic terms, or we investigate the demise of paganism, a set of discrete rituals and practices, some of which survived in Christian Europe, robbed of their religious significance through cult acts and conciliar decrees. Understood in these terms, the Christianization of the Roman empire passed a milestone in the early fifth century, the last age attesting a senator who publicly professed paganism. Similarly, paganism was either dying from the moment of its conception, as its constituent practices fell into abeyance, or it survives to this day.1 The self-understandings of these religions, developed in fractious dialogue with each other, thus yield incompatible narratives and inconsistent periodizations. Assuming rather than interrogating the ontological integrity of their taxonomies, historiography grounded in these perspectives can be erudite but it cannot explain anything.2 If we are now to forge histories of religious change in late antiquity that do more than count Christian conversions or pagan survivals, we must avoid conceptual categories derived from the failed apologetics and willfil misconstruals of pagan-Christian dialogue. We must also shun easy reliance on the distorted and misleading claims to novelty of Christian hagiography, a modern counterpart to the faith that late-antique ecclesiastical historians placed in Providence. We should have asked long ago whether the transfer of charisma from one individual to another did in fact constitute a change in the locus of the sacred. Insofar as that transfer did not require contemporaries to reconceptualize the holiness of individuals or the nature of divine immanence, the answer is no. Change in the religious mentality of late-antique Europe should instead be charted first at an epistemological level, one prior, as it were, to religious or doctrinal commitment. This essay adumbrates such an approach by juxtaposing and conjoining two famous problems: the surge in antiquarianism in the west in the early fifth century and the contest for supremacy between Rome and Constantinople. Scholars have tended to assume that Christians and pagans thought about the sacralization of landscape in very different ways: insofar as paganism consisted of rites bereft of theological significance, pagans (it is assumed) sacralized space through ritual

Caravaggio’s ‘Story of St Matthew’: A Challenge to the Conventions of Painting

It is a convention of European painting that we expect a picture to be a clear visual display of meaning for the benefit of the viewer. Yet this convention is not absolute: artists can deviate from it, even undermine it. Caravaggio’s paintings in the Contarelli Chapel in San Luigi de’ Francesi in Rome have generally been regarded as relatively clear in terms of their overall composition. The questions they have given rise to were concerned instead with the nature of Caravaggio’s realism, his use of light and shade, or his frequent breaches of decorum. However, the traditional ‘readings ’ of the Calling of St Matthew and his depiction of the saint’s Martyrdom are contradicted by two important kinds of evidence: the well‐established significance of both events in Christian hagiography; and a number of details in the paintings which, while not immediately obvious, are nevertheless clear. The traditional readings of the works could only be maintained if one was to argue that (a) Caravaggio had no understanding of the religious significance of the subject matter he had been asked to paint, and (b) he did not care whether the details he chose to include in his compositions had any bearing upon their meaning. It is argued here that the saint himself in the Calling, and the assassin in the Martyrdom, have, in the past, been misidentified. A detailed examination of both works, in the light of the major written sources of the saint’s life (which were easily available both in The Golden Legend and in the Roman Breviary), leads to results which contradict their first, overall effect on the viewer. Why should Caravaggio have adopted such an unusual way of ordering his pictures? The answer is probably twofold: in general, Caravaggio dismissed the orderliness of art, its easy and ostentatious display of subject matter, in favour of a more ‘realistic ’ sense of confusion which needs to be sorted out by the viewer. And more specifically, Caravaggio insisted on the fundamental difference of revelatory divinity: for those to whom it is not revealed it remains obscure and enigmatic, until we work ourselves out of the dark and misleading reality of the first glance to a higher truth.

The Stern Master and His Wayward Disciple: a "Jesus" Story in the Talmud and in Christian Hagiography

L'analyse comparee des differentes versions juives et chretiennes de l'histoire du maitre et de son disciple montre que les versions chretiennes se sont inspirees dans leur forme litteraire et dans leur contenu historique d'une anecdote celebre du Talmud

L'hagiographie : un «genre» chrétien ou antique tardif?

The present study, an updated French version of the final lecture delivered at the 1986 Nimegue-congress on the cult of the saints in the first centuries of the Christian era, is a re-examination of the old problem of the originality of the Christian hagiography. It introduces an answer which is no longer based on the concept of literary genres but on the concept of hagiographical This hagiographical discourse was a common feature of the culture of the (later) Roman Empire but a specifically Christian hagiograhical discourse appears to have established itself within this general discourse.

The legend of Rābi ca of Ba [formula omitted]ra: Christian antecedents, Muslim counterparts

Rābi ca of Ba s ̇ ra (d.801?) appears in texts which suggest that her legend is modelled on those of early Christian penitent courtesans. In contrast, Rābi ca of Syria, who is presented as having lived in the early ninth century, is shown as a married woman who does not have intercourse with her husband: she seems to be a reflected image of Mary the mother of Jesus. The pair of Rābi cas corresponds to various pairs of Marys. A sixteenth-century collection of biographies of Muslim mystics, composed in East Turkestan, contains legends of four obviously imaginary women. Two resemble Mary the mother of Jesus, while a third is a penitent courtesan and a fourth is a singer who repents to become a sexually abstinent wife. More echoes of Rābi ca of Ba s ̇ ra's legend are found in India and North Africa. The opposition between two types of women is rooted in the pre-Christian past, before being found in the New Testament, Christian hagiography and Goethe's Faust.

Personality Structure and Response to Adversity in Early Christian Hagiography

Personality Structure and Response to Adversity in Early Christian Hagiography

Personality Structure and Response To Adversity in Early Christian Hagiography

Personality Structure and Response To Adversity in Early Christian Hagiography