Sacred Biography Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages

by Heffernan, Thomas J.

• ISBN13: 9780195079074
• ISBN10: 0195079078
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-10-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Though medieval "saints' lives" are among the oldest literary texts of Western vernacular culture, they are routinely patronized as "pious fiction" by modern historiography. This book demonstrates that to characterize the genre as fiction is to misunderstand the intentions of medieval authors, who were neither credulous fools nor men blinded by piety. Concentrating on English texts, Heffernan reconstructs the medieval perspective and considers sacred biography in relation to the community for which it was written; identifies the genre's rhetorical practices and purposes; and demonstrates the syncretistic way in which the life of the medieval saint was transformed from oral tales to sacred text. In the process, Heffernan not only achieves a more contextually accurate understanding of the medieval saints' lives, but details a new critical method that has important implications for the practice of textual criticism.

Author Biography

Thomas J. Heffernan is Professor of English and teaches in the Medieval Studies Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Table of Contents

From Logos to Canon: The Making of a Saint's Life	p. 3
Sacred Biography as Historical Narrative: Testing the Tradition, Gibbon to Gadamer	p. 38
Sanctity in the Cloister: Walter Daniel's Vita Sancti Aelredi and Rhetoric	p. 72
A Theology of Behavior: Communio Sanctorum and the Use of Sources	p. 123
The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas and the Imitatio Christi	p. 185
Virgin Mothers	p. 231
Select Bibliography	p. 300
Index	p. 319
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