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This dissertation explores the interrelated processes of religious community formation, changing state regulation, and literary production in early modern India by focusing on two figures of the Caitanya lineage: Mahipati Taharabadkar (1715-1790) and his predecessor Uddhav Cidghan (d. 1690). While the community of Vitthal devotees (Varkaris) came to hold a prominent and strategic place in devotional histories of the Deccan, I demonstrate that several 17th-century facets of ascetic practice and sectarian identification that Mahipati inherited were obscured in his celebrated 18th-century hagiographies, especially the Bhaktavijaya (1762, Victory of Devotees). First, I highlight the lineage’s Mahanubhav connections through a study of Marathi and Persian documentary archives. The Mahanubhavs had a crucial and fraught social presence till they were deemed criminal in 1782-83 (Chapter I). I then focus on Uddhav’s Bhaktamālikā (A Garland of Devotees) to explore the lineage’s Dasanami milieu (Chapter II-III). Uddhav tethers the lineage to a trans-regional, multi-linguistic, and supra-sectarian community that Mahipati later expands on and transvalues. Diffused forms of state support that Mahipati’s family benefited from, and his access to scribal, courtly, performative, and Ramdasi networks, I demonstrate, enabled him to achieve a large-scale reconfiguration of the lineage’s social history (Chapter IV). In doing so, he excludes the Mahanubhavs and introduces a paradigm that becomes definitive for the Varkaris: the devotee and his or her family are presented as the loci for experiencing devotion.

For every famous author of the twelfth-century renaissance, there are numerous lesser-known writers. Despite being overshadowed by more brilliant scholars or those closer to the centre of important events, their voices add depth to the study of the intellectual history of this period. A founding member of one of the earliest Premonstratensian houses; a highly-educated and prolific author, much in demand as a hagiographer; and a vigorous defender of the clerical order, Philip of Harvengt is one such writer, and a worthy subject for study. This thesis examines two bodies of Philip’s works – his letters and his hagiographical writings – analysing the predominant and recurrent concerns and ideals expressed in them, and the means by which they are expressed. The letters are carefully crafted works, examples of the literary labour which Philip writes is incumbent upon the cleric. The first part of this thesis approaches these letters in chapters on four themes: the role of the ecclesiastical prelate; the importance of learning; the relationship between religious orders; and Philip’s use of the motif of friendship. His hagiographical works, too, are examples of literary artistry, to move as well as to educate the audience. In the second part of the thesis, these will be discussed individually, with the first chapter analysing his vita of Oda, a nun attached to his own house, whom he portrays as a martyr. The succeeding chapters consider Philip’s rewritings of earlier vitae, and show how he managed his sources in order to produce vitae depicting their subjects according to his ideal model of sanctity. Philip’s letters express concerns shared by contemporaries, reflecting anxieties surrounding roles and ideal forms of living in a period immediately following the first fervour of religious renewal. His hagiographies articulate ideals of sanctity, clarifying these when they are not made sufficiently explicit in earlier works, for the better edification of an audience pursuing this vita perfecta. Both letters and hagiographies are designed to exhort and instruct the reader or listener: above all, Philip is a teacher.

Pour respecter les droits d’auteur, la version électronique de ce mémoire a été dépouillée de certains documents visuels et audio-visuels. La version intégrale du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal / Ce mémoire s’intéresse à l’art pratiqué par des Jésuites ayant vécu chez le peuple agnier au 17e siècle. L’analyse du travail de deux peintres, les pères Jean Pierron et Claude Chauchetière, nous permet de définir l’environnement socioculturel et politique susceptible d’avoir influencé leur production artistique. Ces artistes ont pour point commun d’avoir œuvré exclusivement chez les Agniers et ce, à seulement une décennie d’intervalle. Pierron destine son art, majoritairement composé d’illustrations didactiques, à un public autochtone non christianisé. Nous avons déterminé que son œuvre témoigne d’une transition idéologique, notamment par l’utilisation de thèmes eschatologiques, le recours à l’image à des fins didactiques et l’intégration de quelques éléments d’écriture dans son œuvre, annonçant ainsi les pratiques apostoliques et artistiques futures. Quant à l’art de Chauchetière, il reflète la continuation du changement perceptif jésuite, notamment en plaçant l’Autochtone comme héros du récit, mais également en l’introduisant au cœur du genre littéraire hagiographique, avec la figure de Catherine Tekakwitha. Toutefois, une transition s’effectue par rapport à l’usage de l’image, qui passe d’un statut didactique à cultuel. / This thesis concerns the art developed by Jesuits living with the Mohawk people in the 17th century. By the analysis of the works of two painters, Father Jean Pierron and Father Claude Chauchetière, we define the sociocultural and political environment that influenced their artistic production. These artists share in common the experience of working exclusively with the Mohawk indigenous community, in two consecutive decades. Pierron’s art can be characterized by didactic illustrations aimed towards a secular indigenous audience. We have determined that this painter indicates an ideological transition, in particular by the representation of eschatological theme, the utilisation of imagery in didactical purposes, and by the integration of a few elements of writing into his illustrations. We think that this heralds the apostolic and artistic practices of the generation to follow. The art of Chauchetière reflects the continuation of Jesuit perceptual change by placing the Aboriginal as the hero of the narrative, but also by the introduction of a new character to the heart of hagiographic literature, the character of Catherine Tekakwitha. We can nevertheless observe that a transition takes place with respect to the use of the image, which transforms from a didactical status to that of worship.

During the seventeenth century, the Catholic Reformation sparked unprecedented growth in girls' educational opportunities with the opening of over five hundred new teaching convents. Yet, the active role girls played in these institutional and social changes is often overlooked. Even though girls' autobiographical writing from the seventeenth century is rare, prescriptive, educational, and biographical sources from convent schools are rich in details about girls' lives and vocational discernment. Upon leaving school, girls were encouraged to take either marriage or religious vows. Since orthodox Catholicism taught that salvation could only be received if one's life reflected God's will this decision was weighty. In fact, reformed convents tested their entrants to ensure that their vocations were freely chosen and not forced. Seventeenth-century girls' educational theorists shared this concern, and while they debated the details of curriculum, they agreed that only girls had the authority to articulate their own God-given vocations. At convent schools, girls encountered both models of female domesticity and women who were dedicated to religious life. The repeated affirmation of both of these paths created an atmosphere in which girls could legitimately choose either. Furthermore, the memories of vocational discernment recorded in nuns' lives offer evidence of plausible ways in which girls proved their callings to their communities. Focusing on religious vocation reveals how girls in the seventeenth century actively articulated their ideas, impacted their societies, and challenged adult authority. / Graduate / 2017-08-25 / 0330 / 0335 / 0520 / mjkort@uvic.ca

Ce travail de thèse a pour objet l’historicité conflictuelle d’un objet qui n’a jamais vraiment été étudié d’un point de vue littéraire : la littérature hagiographique de l’époque moderne. En nous séparant de la lecture institutionnelle qui est souvent celle de la critique, nous voulons la dégager de son utilisation comme moyen de contextualisations historiques ou anthropologiques. Au sein des écrits de la période moderne, l’hagiographie n’est pas simplement l’ « autre discours » de l’historiographie, comme le disait Michel de Certeau. Au lendemain du concile de Trente, les biographies d’une candidate à la sainteté comme Jeanne de Chantal (1572-1641, canonisée en 1767) sont l’occasion de réfléchir sur ces nouveaux écrits, qui présentent des structures qui se stabilisent et des éléments topiques qui renvoient à une tradition d’écriture préexistante. Qui sont les auteurs de ces textes ? Dans quelles conditions les rédigent-ils et pour quel public ? Quels en sont les enjeux ? En pleine crise moderniste, la condamnation par la Congrégation de l’Index de la dernière Vie importante de la figure, la Sainte Chantal de Bremond (1912), sera notre point de vue : Bremond revendique paradoxalement une forme de nouveauté par un retour au XVIIe siècle, visible dans la filiation exhibée de son propre texte à celui de la première biographie, les Mémoires de Françoise-Madeleine de Chaugy (1642). Ce geste construit alors, comme malgré lui, une histoire diachronique des Vies de Jeanne de Chantal, dont les mutations en font un « cas » de la littérature hagiographique française et permettent de voir qu’écrire la Vie d’un saint, c'est à chaque fois rejouer ce qu’est la sainteté. / The hagiographic literature from the Early Modern Period has never been studied as a plain literary issue. Departing from the institutional reading of a major part of the critics about hagiography, the hagiographic literature must be considered apart from its historical and anthropological contextualisations. Hagiography is not only the “other one” of historiography, as Michel de Certeau said. In the wake of the Trent Council, the biographies of a candidate to sanctity like Jeanne de Chantal (1572-1641, canonized in 1767) allow us to consider these new writings which show newly built structures and topical elements of a former writing tradition. Who wrote these texts? How have there been written? For whom? What were there main issues? Our point of view will be the last major Life of Jeanne de Chantal (1912), convicted by the Congregation of the Index, in the middle of the Modernist Crisis. The return to the first biography of the heroine, the Mémoires of Françoise-Madeleine de Chaugy (1642), is a paradoxical way for Bremond to claim the originality of his approach. A diachronic history of Jeanne de Chantal’s Lives can be seen through this operation. Their mutations make them a “case” of French hagiographical Literature: writing the Life of a saint is always defining what is sanctity again.

This dissertation offers the first systematic historical contextualization and literary analysis of the five saints' lives composed by Philotheos Kokkinos (ca. 1300-1378) for his contemporaries Nikodemos the Younger, Sabas the Younger, Isidore Boucheir, Germanos Maroules, and Gregory Palamas. Notwithstanding Kokkinos' prominent role in the political and ecclesiastical scene of fourteenth-century Byzantium, as well as the size and significance of his hagiographic oeuvre, both the hagiographer and his saints' lives have received surprisingly little scholarly attention. My dissertation fills this gap and shows Kokkinos as a gifted hagiographer who played a leading role, both through his ecclesiastical authority and hagiographic discourse, in orchestrating the societal breakthrough of hesychast theology that has remained at the core of Christian Orthodoxy up to this day. The dissertation is structured in three parts. The first, Philotheos Kokkinos and His OEuvre, offers an extensive biographical portrait of Kokkinos, introduces his literary oeuvre, and discusses its manuscript tradition. A thorough palaeographical investigation of fourteenth-century codices carrying his writings reveals Kokkinos' active involvement in the process of copying, reviewing, and publishing his own works. This section includes an analysis of the 'author's edition' manuscript Marcianus graecus 582, and presents its unusual fate. Moreover, Part I establishes the chronology of Kokkinos' vitae of contemporary saints and offers biographical sketches of his heroes, highlighting their relationship to their hagiographer. The second part, Narratological Analysis of Kokkinos' Vitae of Contemporary Saints, constitutes the first comprehensive analysis of Kokkinos' narrative technique. It first discusses the types of hagiographic composition ('hagiographic genre') Kokkinos employed for his saints' lives (hypomnema, bios kai politeia, and logos), and then it offers a detailed investigation that sheds light on the organization of the narrative in Kokkinos' vitae and his use of specific narrative devices. This includes a discussion of hesychastic elements couched in the narrative. Part II concludes with considerations on Kokkinos' style and intended audience. The third part, Saints and Society, begins with a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the miracle accounts Kokkinos wove in his saints' lives. This considers the miracle typology, types of afflictions, methods of healing, and the demographic characteristics of the beneficiaries (such as age, gender, and social status), revealing that Kokkinos shows a predilection for including miracles for members of the aristocracy. Second, it presents Kokkinos' view on the relationship between the imperial office and ecclesiastical authority by analysing how he portrays the emperor(s) in his vitae. Moreover, this part addresses the saints' encounters with the 'other' (Muslims and Latins), revealing Kokkinos' nuanced understanding of the threats and opportunities raised by these interactions. Finally, it makes the claim that through his saints' lives Kokkinos offers models of identification and refuge in the troubled social and political context of fourteenth-century Byzantium, promoting a spiritual revival of society. As my dissertation shows, Kokkinos' vitae of contemporary saints sought to shape and were shaped by the political and theological disputes of fourteenth-century Byzantium, especially those surrounding hesychasm. Their analysis offers insights into the thought-world of their author and sheds more light on the late-Byzantine religious and cultural context of their production. The dissertation is equipped with six technical appendices presenting the chronology of Kokkinos' life and works, the narrative structure of his vitae of contemporary saints, a critical edition of the preface of his hitherto unedited Logos on All Saints (BHG 1617g), a transcription of two hitherto unedited prayers Kokkinos addressed to the emperors, the content of Marc. gr. 582 and Kokkinos' autograph interventions, and manuscript plates.

This thesis considers how religious literature represented sickness and disability in Anglo- Saxon and post-Conquest England. Based on Gospel accounts of Jesus's healings, narratives of miracle-cures were highly valued within medieval Christian culture. By analysing a selection of miracle-cure narratives from the main period of miracle writing in England, from the age of Bede to the late twelfth century, this project considers the social significance of such stories. All miracle-cures followed the pattern of a spiritual triumph over the material world, but this thesis focuses on how hagiographers represented human experiences of sickness and disabilities. The first two chapters of this thesis address the conceptual structure of the project. The first explains the two areas of scholarly theory that underpin this thesis. These are the use of narrative sources for historical study; and sociological conceptualisations of bodily difference. The second chapter orientates the case-studies selected for this project in their context. Miracle-cures were recounted in relation to other aspects of the culture of medieval England, most importantly the theology of sainthood and of sin. The remaining three chapters of the thesis provide detailed thematic analysis of selected miracle-cure narratives. The third chapter asks how the spiritual experience of bodily difference was understood. The next chapter considers the physical understandings of a body that was affected by either sickness or disability, and the links between miracle-cure narratives and contemporary medical theory. The fifth and final chapter addresses the representation of social aspects of sickness and disability in these texts, in particular the moralising rhetoric of such texts in favour of community support. This thesis concludes with a discussion of how modern Disability Studies and scholarship on medieval culture benefit from interaction with one another.

This thesis examines the legend of the Italian virgin martyr, Saint Maria Goretti (1890-1902). Her legend states that she died at the age of eleven protecting her virginity from her assailant Alessandro Serenelli who stabbed her numerous times, and that she granted him forgiveness before she died. Hence, she has been promoted as an example of purity and mercy. The continued relevance of Saint Maria Goretti is demonstrated by the fact that her figure was used to promote the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis and first announced in March 2015. The aim of the current study is to examine how Maria Goretti has been portrayed in the Catholic tradition. This is done by analysing Maria Goretti’s official representation found in the papal discourse about her (which consists of homilies, discourses, Angelus, messages and a letter), as well as by analysing the devotional discourse which in this study is comprised of two books that belong to the genre of hagiography. The chosen books: St. Maria Goretti, by Marie Cecilia Buehrle (1950), and St. Maria Goretti: In garments all red, by Fr. Godfrey Poage, C.P. (1950) can be included among the classics written about Saint Maria Goretti in English. I deploy a thematic narrative analysis as method in which I’m concerned with content in terms of themes, and with the ways in which characters are represented. Uncovering the themes that are discussed in the papal discourse and the devotional discourse about Saint Maria Goretti contributes to a better understanding of her representation and, in some measure, to a reconsideration of what she represents. A part of this thesis focuses on the aspects of Maria Goretti’s representation that can be considered problematic because of the claim that it is preferable to choose to be killed rather than to be raped. Therefore, it becomes necessary to include the discourse that treats Goretti’s story from a critical point of view which in this study embraces ethical, psychological, and feminist perspectives. The legend of Maria Goretti has been the object of arguably many studies. This thesis, nonetheless, contributes with a more detailed analysis of the discourse about Maria Goretti at the official level as well as the devotional level. I also seek to give insight into the genre of hagiography and to elucidate that the edeavour of portraying a wholly virtuous individual does not come without it’s complications in terms of the interpretations that can be made of the images that are conveyed. The analysis shows, among other things, that the representation of Maria Goretti misses aspects of reality and the complexity and multifariousness of the subject of sexual violence. I argue that a wholesome and more comprehensive representation of Saint Maria Goretti should include expert knowledge of sexual violence, especially that which can be found within the field of psychology.

This thesis examines the legend of the Italian virgin martyr, Saint Maria Goretti (1890-1902). Her legend states that she died at the age of eleven protecting her virginity from her assailant Alessandro Serenelli who stabbed her numerous times, and that she granted him forgiveness before she died. Hence, she has been promoted as an example of purity and mercy. The continued relevance of Saint Maria Goretti is demonstrated by the fact that her figure was used to promote the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy proclaimed by Pope Francis and first announced in March 2015. The aim of the current study is to examine how Maria Goretti has been portrayed in the Catholic tradition. This is done by analysing Maria Goretti’s official representation found in the papal discourse about her (which consists of homilies, discourses, Angelus, messages and a letter), as well as by analysing the devotional discourse which in this study is comprised of two books that belong to the genre of hagiography. The chosen books: St. Maria Goretti, by Marie Cecilia Buehrle (1950), and St. Maria Goretti: In garments all red, by Fr. Godfrey Poage, C.P. (1950) can be included among the classics written about Saint Maria Goretti in English. I deploy a thematic narrative analysis as method in which I’m concerned with content in terms of themes, and with the ways in which characters are represented. Uncovering the themes that are discussed in the papal discourse and the devotional discourse about Saint Maria Goretti contributes to a better understanding of her representation and, in some measure, to a reconsideration of what she represents. A part of this thesis focuses on the aspects of Maria Goretti’s representation that can be considered problematic because of the claim that it is preferable to choose to be killed rather than to be raped. Therefore, it becomes necessary to include the discourse that treats Goretti’s story from a critical point of view which in this study embraces ethical, psychological, and feminist perspectives. The legend of Maria Goretti has been the object of arguably many studies. This thesis, nonetheless, contributes with a more detailed analysis of the discourse about Maria Goretti at the official level as well as the devotional level. I also seek to give insight into the genre of hagiography and to elucidate that the edeavour of portraying a wholly virtuous individual does not come without it’s complications in terms of the interpretations that can be made of the images that are conveyed. The analysis shows, among other things, that the representation of Maria Goretti misses aspects of reality and the complexity and multifariousness of the subject of sexual violence. I argue that a wholesome and more comprehensive representation of Saint Maria Goretti should include expert knowledge of sexual violence, especially that which can be found within the field of psychology.