This thesis examines the relationships between royal convents and rulers in Saxony from 852 to 1024. The spate of female monasteries founded in Saxony in the ninth and tenth centuries, alongside the close relationships of major convents to the Ottonian dynasty, has led to Saxon female monasticism being described as unique. As such, Saxony's apparently peculiar experience has been used to make comparisons with other regions about the nature of female monasticism, commemoration and the role of women in early medieval societies. This thesis interrogates these ideas by tracking the development of two major royal convents: Gandersheim and Quedlinburg. By reassessing the origins of these convents, and their later rewriting in sources produced by these monasteries, we can consider how their relationships with the rulers of Saxony developed over time, and how their identity and function as royal monasteries evolved as the tenth century progressed. In doing so, this thesis challenges the dominant understanding of these convents as homes of the Ottonian memoria and provides a detailed view of how these institutions became so prominent in Saxony. The thesis is divided into four sections. After introducing the historiographical importance of this topic in the first chapter, in chapter two I assess the origins of the convent of Gandersheim in Carolingian Saxony. Chapter three turns to the rewriting of these origins by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim in the 970s. Chapter four reconsiders the early history of the convent of Quedlinburg from 936 to 966. Chapter five tracks how the origins of Quedlinburg evolved into a new narrative across the tenth century, culminating in the version provided by the Quedlinburg Annals in 1008. Finally, the concluding section outlines the significance of this thesis for our understanding of early medieval female monasticism and the history of the Ottonian Empire.

Lʼobjectif de cette étude est de saisir le but dʼun discours hagiographique, en fondant lʼanalyse sur la tradition, lʼauteur, le style et le public de certains textes de l'Antiquité tardive. Les auteurs de ces textes, écrits en prose grecque et illustrés par lʼÉloge de Saint Anastase de Georges de Pisidie, suivaient les préceptes de la rhétorique et réélaboraient les canons de la littérature hagiographique. La thèse est divisée en cinq chapitres. Le premier trace une histoire de la réécriture et montre lʼévolution de la technique paraphrastique entre le sixième et le septième siècle après J.-C. Lʼanalyse se prolonge jusqu'aux soixante-dix Miracles de Cyr et Jean par Sophrone de Jérusalem et à lʼÉloge de Saint Anastase par Georges de Pisidie, une métaphrase des actes du martyre, dont le but était de propager les victoires de lʼEmpire chrétien contre la Perse. Dès le deuxième chapitre, lʼattention se concentre uniquement sur lʼÉloge, dont une première traduction italienne est proposée. Le troisième chapitre traite de la diffusion du culte de Saint Anastase après son martyre, advenu le 22 janvier 628 après J.-C. Le quatrième chapitre se focalise sur la technique utilisée par Georges pour réécrire les actes du martyre de Saint Anastase. Le dernier chapitre analyse la structure de lʼÉloge, en essayant de montrer les points où la prose de Georges suit les préceptes de la rhétorique ancienne tardive. Ce travail espère ainsi souligner lʼimportance de lʼÉloge dans la production panégyrique de Georges, dans le contexte de lʼhistoire littéraire du septième siècle après J.-C. et, plus généralement, de lʼAntiquité tardive. / The aim of the thesis is to understand the purpose of an hagiographic discourse, basing the analysis on the tradition, the author, the style and the public of certain texts. These texts (exemplified by the Encomium of Saint Anastasius by George of Pisidia) were written in Greek prose during the period of Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium. Their authors increasingly tended to follow the precepts of rhetoric and to rework the canons of hagiographic literature. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first traces the history of rewriting and shows the evolution of the paraphrastic technique between the sixth and seventh centuries AD. The analysis extends up to the seventy Miracles of Cyrus and John by Sophronius of Jerusalem and to the Encomium of Saint Anastasius by George of Pisidia, a metaphrase of the acts of martyrdom, whose aim was to propagate the victories of the Christian Empire against Persia. From the second chapter, the attention is focused only on the Encomium, of which is offered a first Italian translation. The third chapter is a discussion on the spread of the cult of Saint Anastasius, after his martyrdom on January 22, 628 AD. The fourth chapter focuses on the technique used by George to rewrite the acts of the martyrdom of Saint Anastasius. The last chapter analyzes the structure of the Encomium, trying to highlight the points where the prose of George seems to follow more closely the dictates of late antique rhetoric. It is hoped with this to emphasize the importance of a text as the Encomium, within the panegyric production of George of Pisidia, but also the literary history of the seventh century AD and, more generally, of Late Antiquity.

Au XIIIe siècle, les premières mulieres religiosae fondent un phénomène spirituel dont l’ambigüité préoccupe autant les contemporains qu’il interroge les historiens des béguines et plus largement de l’Église médiévale et des femmes. À travers un corpus de Vitae et d’exempla provenant ou traitant des Pays-Bas méridionaux, cette thèse souhaite renouveler la question du rôle de ces dévotes atypiques dans une démarche comparative fondée sur l’analyse d’hommes et de femmes pieux, menant une vie religieuse, dans ou en dehors d’une communauté, permettant ainsi de convoquer les acquis de l’histoire du genre pour éclairer cette réflexion. La première partie de l’étude s’attache à déconstruire les topoi de la sainteté mystique pour mettre au jour les rebuffades dont les mulieres religiosae ont été les victimes jusqu’à l’exclusion sociale. Néanmoins, cette mise à l’écart est contredite par les hagiographes eux-mêmes qui brossent dans le même temps le portrait de femmes œuvrant dans le siècle. La première partie de ce travail ouvre l’analyse sur les modalités d’insertion sociale développée par et autour des mulieres religiosae. Économiquement, politiquement et surtout spirituellement, en raison de leur sainteté, elles participent activement au monde et s’insèrent dans différents réseaux, dont un bilan sériel permet d’appréhender la richesse. Ces éléments permettent d’étendre la recherche au fonctionnement de ces sociabilités. En prenant appui sur une analyse sémantique, il s’agit de saisir leurs principes de mise en œuvre, articulée autour de la caritas, ainsi que leurs limites qui sont de plus en plus visibles après la deuxième moitié du XIIIe siècle. / In the thirteenth century, the first mulieres religiosae founded a spiritual phenomenon whose ambiguity preoccupied the contemporary as much as it fascinates the historians of the Beguines and more broadly those interested in studying the relationships between women and the medieval Church. Through a corpus of Vitae and exempla originating or dealing with Southern Low Countries, this thesis aims to renew the question of the role of these atypical devouts, in a comparative approach based on analysis of pious men and women, leading a religious life, in or outside of a community, thus enabling the use of the knowledge acquired by gender history to enlighten this exposé. The first part of this study focuses on the deconstruction of the topoi of mystical sanctity to uncover the troubles which mulieres religiosae fell victims, leading to social exclusion. However, this marginalization is contradicted by the hagiographers themselves, who paint at the same time a portrait of women fully integrated in their century. The first part of this work opens the analysis of the means by which social integration is developed, by and around mulieres religiosae. Economically, politically and especially spiritually, because of their holiness, they participate actively in the world and are part of different networks, whose richness can be assessed through a detailed summary. These elements extend the scope of the research to the workings of these social interactions. Building upon a semantic analysis, it aims at grasping their principles of implementation, centered around the caritas, while the limits of these networks are becoming more visible after the second half of the thirteenth century.

À la charnière des XIIIe et XIVe siècles un long cycle épique s’est constitué autour de Huon de Bordeaux. Ce que la critique appelle la Chanson d’Yde et Olive, pour indiquer la troisième continuation, regroupe en réalité trois unités narratives distinctes, Yde et Olive I, Croissant et Yde et Olive II, consacrées aux aventures de la petite fille et de l’arrière-petit-fils du héros bordelais. Dans ma thèse je propose une nouvelle édition critique, un commentaire et une étude de la réception en Italie de ces textes qui, quoique méconnus, constituent un échantillon représentatif de la plasticité de l’épopée, notamment tardive, puisant dans le même réservoir narratif que les contes, les légendes hagiographiques, les romans et les pièces dramatiques. De plus, Yde et Olive I a sans doute contribué à transmettre la fabuleuse histoire d’Yde au-delà des Alpes, comme en témoignent les cantari d’Antonio Pucci et de Piero de Sienne qui reprennent le même schéma narratif. Ainsi, à la lisière entre oralité et écriture, la Chanson d’Yde et Olive dialogue avec d’autres textes appartenant à des genres et à des langues différents, tout en nourrissant un imaginaire littéraire partagé et en suscitant un questionnement sur l’ordre établi de la société qui entre en résonance avec notre époque qui se dit moderne. / A long epic cycle written at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries built up the chanson of Huon de Bordeaux. What scholars call the Chanson d’Yde et Olive, to intend the third sequel, unites three different episodes, Yde et Olive I, Croissant and Yde et Olive II, which relate the adventures of the granddaughter and the great-grandson of the hero of Bordeaux. In my thesis, I propose a new critical edition, a commentary and a study of the transmission in Italy of these heretofore unrecognized texts which represent a typical sample of the late chansons de geste. In the 13th and 14th centuries, epic draws from the same narrative patterns as the tales, the hagiographic legends, the novels and the dramas. Furthermore, Yde et Olive I has undoubtedly contributed to transmit Yde’s fabulous history beyond the Alps, as the plot of the Italian cantari of Antonio Pucci and Piero da Siena seems to prove.So at the boundary between orality and writing, the Chanson d’Yde et Olive interacts with several texts belonging to different literary genres, enriches an imaginary which does not know any border, interrogates the established order and finally confronts us with the boundary of male/female divides.

This study analyzes the contribution of Teresa de Cartagena, a deaf Spanish nun and author of the first known piece of writing by a Spanish woman. First, the work is put into its cultural and literary context. Second, the term "autohagiography," a hybrid of "autobiography" and "hagiography" is applied in order to understand that the figure that Teresa de Cartagena employs to express her spiritual fight against sadness. It is conclueded that Teresa de Cartagena constructs herself as if she were a saint, and she uses herself as a model for the faithful and the infirm.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Comparative Religion, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p.57-61).

In Celtic religious studies, it is often difficult to find reliable textual sources if you are working with pre-Christian religion, since all text is written in a Christian context. As a result, Celtic scholars have to look outside of the pre-Christian Celtic context, to search for knowledge elsewhere. For example, one may use texts from Classical writers (such as Caesar) who wrote about Celts they encountered, or look to Christian material (in particular saints’ lives) to search for clues of pagan traditions which may have survived into Christianity. This has resulted in that certain Celtic pagan deities which we do not have a lot of information on, are compared to or even equated with other religious figures from outside of the pagan Celtic context. One such example is the pagan, Irish goddess Brigid, who is frequently equated with the Roman goddess Minerva, and also said to be the predecessor of the Christian Saint Brigid. Some also make comparisons between Minerva and the saint. This thesis aims to make an extensive textual analysis where all of these three characters are compared and discussed. Are they actually ‘the same’, and if not, how similar or different are they? Is the equating valid, or do we need to take another approach within the Celtic field? Using discourse theory and a comparative method, the research eventually shows that some of the characters’ most important traits are lost when we do equate them with each other.

Ce sujet propose de déconstruire les discours qui ont conduit à fixer dès le Moyen Age une mémoire officielle des origines chrétiennes du diocèse. Cette lecture est essentielle dans la mesure où l'historiographie a longtemps utilisé les récits hagiographiques sans réfléchir au contexte de leur genèse et de leur diffusion. Des travaux récents ont montré combien l'hagiographie était en fait un genre littéraire qui reproduisait un certain nombre de modèles et que l'historicité des vies de saints reposait seule dans le contexte qui les avait vu naître.Il s'agit d'étudier les saints évêques supposés avoir vécu avant l’an mil, et s'intéresser à l'évolution de leur figure jusqu'à la fin du Moyen Age pour étudier la mémoire épiscopale dont l'hagiographie est le principal-mais non unique- vecteur. La question de la dimension politique de la sainteté, du culte des saints et de l'écriture hagiographique est en outre en plein renouvellement. Le Languedoc permet de conduire une première étude de cas régionale pour tester les constatations qui ont été faites ailleurs dans ce domaine. La problématique centrale de la thèse est donc la question de la mémoire et de ses enjeux politiques. Un inventaire raisonné servira de fondement à une synthèse permettant de comprendre dans quelle mesure la sainteté locale a participé à la construction d’un discours mémoriel sur les origines chrétiennes du diocèse. Ainsi, on comprendra ce qui, à plusieurs périodes du Moyen Age, a pesé dans la perception du passé mais on pourra appréhender également, une fois les différentes strates des discours sur le passé collectif du diocèse analysées, la réalité des changements politiques et territoriaux dans le Languedoc de l'Antiquité Tardive et du haut Moyen Age. / In order to study the relationship between hagiographic production and the formation of a memory of Christian origins, it is necessary to update the sources by analyzing the transmission of hagiographic texts and the establishment of new editions of these texts. What emerges in a study of fifteen dioceses in the South of France is a pattern which demonstrates that since Late Antiquity, the traditions that founded local churches were put into writing with the goal of shaping a memory of these events that was meaningful in the present time. Hagiographic tales were elaborated in periods of crisis, as if hagiography could pacify the present by evading the past's turpitudes at the service of competing powers who invented their own history. The Medieval period was marked by several phases of deeper embellishment of the hagiographic memory, as the figures of bishop saints was useful to both clergy and laymen. In particular, the relationship between cultural memory and hagiography crystallizes around places, marked by the presence of the saint through its relics, whose location in urban space often allows to explain the origin and the uses of Christian memory. This connection with sacred space forms a hagiographic productionwhich can be seen as a local adaptation of sacred history up to the 14th century, when the papacy's move to Avignon marked the last great phase of hagiographic production in the Southern France of the Medieval Period.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-02Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:27:33Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 esteves_gmf_me_assis.pdf: 595118 bytes, checksum: 0554c6e3d5286bafc20e44f2e6d50856 (MD5) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / A partir de estudos sobre a criação e permanência do reino Visigodo na Hispânia, séculos V a VII, procuramos trabalhar com um curto período, final da segunda metade do século VI e a primeira do VII, com atenção dirigida em especial a dois objetos: a Religiosidade e a Monarquia. Como fonte principal da pesquisa, teremos nossa análise voltada à Hagiografia da Vida e Martírio de São Desidério escrita pelo monarca que governou a Hispânia dentre os anos de 612 a 621, o rei Sisebuto. Ver nesta fonte um testemunho das relações de poder político em sua imbricação com o sagrado, ou seja, com o cristianismo, pode-nos mostrar como Sisebuto utilizou-se da Vita mais para suas circunstâncias ideológicas e políticas, legitimando seu poder, do que para o santo mesmo, tornando-se este último, e sua santidade, mais um coadjuvante que um protagonista / Starting from studies of the creation and permanence of the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania, centuries V-VII, we work with a short period, final of the second half of the VI century and the first half of VII century, with special attention to two objects: The Religiosity and the Monarchy. As the main source of the research we will have our analysis turned to Hagiography of the Life and Martyrdom of Saint Desiderius, wrote by the monarch that governed the Hispânia by the years of 612 to 621, king Sisebut. See in this source a testimony of the relationships of political power in its relation with the sacred (Christianity) can show us like Sisebut used the Vita more for his ideological and political circumstances, legitimating his power, for the life’s saint properly, becoming this last one, and his sanctity, more a coactive that a protagonist

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-02-17Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:34:10Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 charrone_jp_me_assis.pdf: 1334911 bytes, checksum: 069a011e6cd7c34771820ce8fc5fbb9f (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O nome Venantius Fortunatus é bem representado nas coleções bibliográficas, mas quase todos os trabalhos concentram se em sua produção poética. Assim, parecem-nos bastante esquecidos pela crítica os escritos hagiográficos em prosa desse autor. O presente estudo pretende sob um ângulo que nos sugere ainda insuficientemente considerado, devido ao vasto campo de estudos que permitem as referidas fontes documentais analisar a adaptação hagiográfica de uma idealizada identidade episcopal construída em favor dos bispos gauleses do último quarto do sexto século, que pretendiam utilizar as imagens dos santos predecessores que ocuparam as suas respectivas sés, para afirmarem e/ou construírem sua autoridade religiosa e política frente à sua comunidade de fiéis e às autoridades públicas do reino franco. / Venantius Fortunatus is well represented in bibliographical collections, but most literature concentrates on his poetic production. As a consequence, little attention has been paid to his hagiographyc writings in prose. This work intends to analyse –even if it is from a still insufficiently developed perspective, due to the vast array of studies that these documental sources may prompt-- how Gaulish bishops' of the last quarter of the sixth century built an idealized Episcopal identity through the images of those saints who had previously occupied their respective cathedrals. This was done in order to build up and/or strengthen their religious and political authority before their community of faithful and the public authorities of the Frankish kingdom.