This thesis undertakes a close study of a single manuscript of the early 1320s, written at the priory of Fineshade, Northamptonshire. The manuscript contains a short chronicle and several documents related to the failed baronial rebellion of 1321-22. I argue that, in collaboration with the priory’s patrons, the Engayne family, the chronicler responds to the current situation with an attempt to create meaning from a time of crisis. In the process, he attempts to shape his material through patterns of style and thought inherited from both chronicle and hagiographical traditions, to make the present conform to the known and understood shape of the past. His success is limited by his inability to establish sufficient distance from traumatic events, a difficulty that many chroniclers seemed to encounter when they attempted to turn current events into meaningful historical narrative.

This essay takes its starting point in Legenda Aurea, a hagiographical compendium written in the thirteenth century by an Italian catholic friar, Jacobus de Voragine. The essay aims to find out how the Roman history in the third century is shown in Legenda Aurea, a Christian book written about a thousand years later. The purpose of this essay is to show how a part of the history of the Roman Empire is understood and remembered during the Christian hegemony that was during the thirteenth century. The main results of this essay show that the history of the Roman Empire during the reign of named emperors is remembered as a violent, brutal and authoritarian history, but also that Christianity seems to have been widespread within the Roman Empire during this time.

Verbal Expressions of Reverence for St. John of Nepomuk in Vilém Bitnar's Saint-John- Questionnaire The goal of this thesis is a description of verbal expressions of reverence (legends, songs, prayers etc.) for St. John of Nepomuk in the Czech lands, which were collected by Výbor svatojanský in the questionnaire edited by Vilém Bitnar. This questionnaire was sent out to Czech and Moravian parishes at the occasion of the 200th anniversary of canonization of St. John of Nepomuk in 1929 and now it is deposited in the Literary Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature in Bitnar's estate. The mutual points in the questionnaire are seeked as well as regional specifics. These are situated into context of trends in religious life in the Czech lands in 1920s in general and also of relationship between contemporary Czech society and the Roman Catholic Church with reverence for St. John of Nepomuk. Bitnar's questionnaire is also situated into context of other Bitnar's scientific and publication activities. Keywords Hagiography; hymnology; St. John of Nepomuk; Vilém Bitnar; religiousness; legend; religious song; First Czechoslovak Republic

ANGLICKÁ ANOTACE (= předběžná náplň práce) Passio Perpetuae and Its Reflection in the Literature of Ancient Church The "Passion of Perpetua and Felicity" (Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis) is one of the most renowned texts of early Christian hagiography. Accordingly, it has been enjoying a renewal of scholarly interest in the last decades. However, surprisingly little attention was paid to its literary "Nachleben", and there exist virtually no studies focusing on its reception in the subsequent literature of the early Church. Seemingly simple narrative, describing the martyrdom of a group of North African Christians, has been held in high esteem since its composition. It acquired almost "canonical" status and was considered authoritative not only by the mass of simple believers but by the Christian intellectuals, too. Though highly venerated in the early Church, it contained a number of innovative and - in the context of Antique and early Christian society - potentially subversive features. These novel features were felt to undermine the existing social order and hierarchy, and it was necessary to "explain them away" in order to make the text more compliant with traditional and generally accepted social values. This was then often taken into account, when later authors and interpreters refer to the text. The...

Chinese people, like those of many other cultures, understand themselves as belonging to a specific gender, one with social rules and positions that can be difficult to stray from. Such gender norms have existed in China for millennia. There are a number of ways to examine what these gender norms are (or have been), and a number of ways in which one can understand how they dictated the lives of the Chinese people they defined. The present thesis is a translation and study of two Chinese hagiographical collections from the late Song or early Yuan Dynasty. These collections detail the exploits of Daoist transcendents. The first collection translated is concerned with male transcendents, the second with female transcendents. In translating these texts, I seek to understand how gender is portrayed in the lives of exceptional religious figures. As an examination of gender within a patriarchal—or at least male-dominant—society, I expected the female transcendents to be relegated, somehow, to a lesser station. Through my translations I argue that, though they could not wholly extricate themselves from gender norms, religious Daoism, as portrayed in the hagiographies, offered both men and women from certain social obligations. These social obligations include such institutions as marriage and reproduction (for both men and women). The hagiographies also depict a greater sense of equality for Daoist women than they might have found otherwise. At its most ambitious, Narrating Transcendents serves to demonstrate the multivalent function of hagiographies as tools religious communities used to define and guide themselves. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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Ce mémoire s’intéresse à la prévention des accidents liés à la petite enfance au Moyen-Âge. Par l’étude de trois compilations de miracula, nous analyserons la thématique de l’enfant qu’ils présentent. Ces compilations sont les Miracles de la Sainte-Vierge par Gautier de Coincy, les Miracles de Nostre-Dame de Chartres par Jean le Marchant et le Rosarius. Dans cette étude, nous nous pencherons sur la diversité des discours normatifs entourant cette thématique. Ces analyses nous permettent de dresser un bilan des précautions entourant l’enfant au Moyen-Âge. Nous concluons que les Miracles de Nostre-Dame de Chartres ne sont pas représentatifs du corpus de miracula général, puisque les miracula qu’il contient présentent un caractère préventif davantage axé sur les dangers physiques courus par l’enfant. / Abstract This thesis focuses on the prevention of early childhood accidents in the Middle Ages. Through the study of three compilations of miracula, we will analyze the thematic of the child that they present. These compilations are the Miracles of the Blessed Virgin by Gautier de Coincy, the Miracles of Nostre-Dame de Chartres by Jean le Marchant and the Rosarius. In this study, we will look at the diversity of normative discourses surrounding this theme. These analyze allow us to take stock of the precautions surrounding children in the Middle Ages. We conclude that the Miracles of Nostre-Dame de Chartres are not representative of the general miracula corpus, cause the miracula it contains present a preventive character more focused on the physical dangers faced by the child.

The longer thirteenth-century Middle English verse life of Saint Frideswide found in the collection of saints' lives known as the South English Legendary (SEL) narrates an event unique to medieval hagiography. In the poem, a leper asks the virgin saint to kiss him with her "sweet mouth," which she does in spite of her feelings of considerable shame, and the leper is healed. The erotic nature of the leper's request, Frideswide's reluctance to grant it, and her shame throughout the incident represent a significant departure from the twelfth-century Latin texts on which the SEL version of the saint's life is based. In this paper, I provide a deeper critical analysis of the text than has previously been attempted, exploring the SEL version of the leper's healing from medieval perspectives on leprosy, gender, religious authority, and genre. By the thirteenth century, leprosy in hagiographic texts had come to symbolize the abject condition of Christ himself, and saints' lives invariably portrayed their protagonists as eager to embrace and kiss lepers as a means of serving Christ. Frideswide's shame and reluctance to kiss the leper greatly contrast with generic convention and cause her gender to emerge as a defining holy attribute inexplicably demanded by the leper's exigency. The SEL-poet's portrayal of Frideswide's gender as a vital component of her healing power is consistent with medieval conceptions of personhood, from which gender could not be separated. The poet crafts the scene of the leper's healing using conventions not only of hagiography but of romance as well; this hybridization of genres creates tension between sanctity and eroticism in the scene. The poet's depiction of the saint as simultaneously exceptional and human may have been a reaction against the contemporary ecclesiastical landscape, in which female authority and influence were limited. Moreover, the romantic language used by the poet to create tension also makes Frideswide's story more accessible to lay readers by transforming the relationship between supplicant and saint into an interaction between a courtly lover and his lady.

<p>  </p> <p>While the medieval lexicon did not include a comprehensive term for disability as we understand it today, images of impaired and disabled bodies proliferate in Middle English texts. This dissertation investigates textual representations of the material body across some of the most popular genres of the later Middle Ages (religious exempla, confessional literature, and hagiography) to demonstrate how medieval authors implement impaired bodies in service of spiritual exploration. I show how impaired medieval bodies that are often excluded from discussions of disability—for instance, personified sins, aging bodies, and martyrs’ bodies—are represented in distinctly material terms, drawing attention to medieval authors’ complex and nuanced explorations of bodily difference. Through sustained close readings and attention to medieval authors’ engagement with their source texts, I find that the impaired body operates as a generative site for engagement with significant ontological questions of the period —and that these textual depictions ultimately reveal the body’s resistance to easy or straightforward categorization. Moreover, my research demonstrates the utility of a more nuanced disability studies approach to medieval literature, intervening in current discussions about the ethics of applying the lens of disability to historical texts.</p>

Scholars have faced many challenges in the classification of the literary genre of the hagiographical texts. In addition to their various styles and structures, hagiographical texts tend to move beyond the classical rhetorical approach. So, it is preferable to regard hagiography as a discourse which was mainly written for the purpose of the production of new heroes through the imitation of Christ and His holy men/women. The hagiographical discourse continued in Early Medieval Arabic Christianity, yet its purpose has expanded to address both Christians and Muslims. Through the examination of the Arabic hagiographical texts of two neo-martyrs, Anthony al-Qurashi and Būlus ibn Raja, it has been revealed that Christians pursued the figure of speech of parrhesia to address the mixed audience. On the one hand, to urge Christians to behold to their faith and, on the other hand, to encourage Muslims to convert.