The Invention of Saintliness

by Mulder-Bakker,Anneke B.

• ISBN13: 9780415267595
• ISBN10: 0415267595
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-08-09
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This volume discusses, from a historical and literary angle, the ways in which sanctification and the inscription of saintliness take place. Going beyond the traditional categories of canonization, cult, liturgical veneration and hagiographical lives, the work raises fundamental issues concerning definitions if saints and saintliness in a period before the concept was crystallized in canon law. As well as discussing sources and methodology, contributions cover contextual issues, including relics and veneration, life and the afterlife, and examinations of specific sources and texts. Subjects raised include the idea of hagiography as intimate biography, perceptions of holiness in writings by and about female mystics, and bodily aspects of the Franciscan search for evangelical perfection.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors	vii
Foreword	ix
Han J. W. Drijvers†
PART I Introduction	1	(24)
The invention of saintliness: texts and contexts	3	(22)
Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker
PART II Contexts: the cult of saints and the invention of saintliness	25	(52)
Relics and their veneration in the Middle Ages	27	(11)
Arnold Angenendt
Saints without a past: sacred places and intercessory power in saints' Lives from the Low Countries	38	(20)
Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker
Life and afterlife: Arnulf of Oudenburg, bishop of Soissons, and Godelieve of Gistel. Their function as intercessors in medieval Flanders	58	(19)
Renee Nip
PART III Texts: the Lives of saints and the invention of saintliness	77	(142)
``Whither runnest thou?'': the conception of saintliness in Philostratus' Life of Apollonius	79	(14)
Maaike Zimmerman
The West European Alexius legend: with an Appendix presenting the medieval Latin text corpus in its context (Alexiana Latina Medii Aevi, I)	93	(52)
Lock J. Engels
Bernward of Hildesheim: a case of self planned sainthood?	145	(18)
Bernhard Gallistl
Dealing with Brother Ass: bodily aspects of the Franciscan sanctification of the self	163	(22)
Bert Roest
Saints arid despair: twelfth-century hagiography as 'intimate biography'	185	(21)
Ineke Van `T Spijker
Literary genre and degrees of saintliness: the perception of holiness in writings by and about female mystics	206	(13)
Werner Williams-Krapp
Index	219