Gli studi sulla Vita santi Iohannis Gualberti (BHL 4398) di Attone di Pistoia si sono da sempre concentrati sugli aspetti storico-letterari dell’opera, escludendo il versante filologico. Ad oggi infatti non possediamo un’edizione critica di questa agiografia, nonostante essa sia la Vita più diffusa su Giovanni Gualberto, fondatore dell’Ordine Vallombrosano. Il presente lavoro cerca di colmare questa lacuna. Ad una prima parte introduttiva sull’autore e sull’opera (Capitolo I), segue un esame dettagliato della tradizione manoscritta della Vita BHL 4398 (Capitolo II). Molti codici fino ad oggi non erano mai stati studiati, mentre di altri le informazioni erano parziali o datate: ho pertanto riconsiderato l’intera tradizione, indagando i motivi di composizione e i luoghi di origine dei testimoni. Nel Capitolo III si espongono i risultati della recensio, si analizzano i legami tra questo testo e le sue fonti e si propone uno stemma codicum rappresentativo dei rapporti genealogici tra i testimoni indagati. Infine nel Capitolo IV offro il testo critico dell’opera.

Thesis advisor: Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner / This study demonstrates the essential connection between literature and history by examining the way selected saints’ lives were read and rewritten in Latin and Old French from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Building on the concept of the horizon of expectations developed by Hans Robert Jauss, it argues against both the model of literature as a series of timeless classics whose meaning is apparent to the intelligent reader of any age and the tendency to reduce literature to the more or less successful imitation of historical realities. Not only does the interpretation of a saint’s life change over time as the text is read in different religious and cultural contexts, but the narrative is in turn capable of influencing the way its readers understand themselves and the world in which they live. By comparing different versions of each saint’s life, I am able to isolate variations in form, tone, characterization, and action, and relate them to the experiences of specific historical figures whose lives illustrate the important religious and cultural issues of their time. In order to do this, I examine three saints’ lives in light of the sometimes troubled relationship between the clerical order of the church and the laity. Two Latin and two Old French versions of the Life of Saint Alexis are read along with the life of Christina of Markyate, an English woman who fled from her husband to become a recluse. Alexis’s and Christina’s refusal of marriage illustrates the tension between the monastic model of fleeing from the world to save one’s self and the pastoral ideal of working for the salvation of others. I compare the figure of the mother in two very similar Old French versions of the Life of Pope Saint Gregory, a story of incest, penance, and redemption, to Ermengarde of Anjou, a countess who could never commit herself to life in a convent. Like Ermengarde and countless other lay men and women, Gregory’s mother faces the question of whether she can live a sufficiently holy life as a lay person or needs to enter a convent to expiate her sins. Finally, I read Latin and Old French verse and prose versions of the Life of Saint Mary the Egyptian in light of the similar yet opposing experiences of Valdes of Lyon and Francis of Assisi in relation to the question of heresy and orthodoxy. My understanding of the medieval religious historical context, particularly the history of the laity in the Church, builds on the foundational work of Raoul Manselli, Etienne Delaruelle, and André Vauchez, as well as more recent work by Michel Grandjean, who compares the different visions of the laity held by Peter Damien, Anselm of Canterbury, and Yves of Chartres. My dissertation shows that the different versions of saints’ lives not only reflect the evolution of attitudes about human relationships, salvation, and orthodoxy that characterize the time and place in which they were written, but also question the practices of later readers and offer solutions to new problems in new contexts. As my study demonstrates, ideals like the monastic identification of holiness with asceticism shape the way people understand and direct their lives, and the source for these ideals can often be found in literary texts like saints’ lives. These texts do not communicate these ideals transparently. The juxtapositions, tensions, and conflicts they depict can lead the reader to come to a more nuanced understanding or even a total reconsideration of his or her beliefs. The study of rewriting and medieval saints’ lives can help us better understand this interplay between narrative, ideal, and lived experience. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Romance Languages and Literatures.

Thesis advisor: Stephen Brown / Although hagiography and sermons from the Middle Ages are abundant, little research exists that explores the relationship between these two genres. Jacobus de Voragine compiled the most renowned medieval collection of hagiography, Legenda aurea (Golden Legend). He also compiled several volumes of model sermons, including a volume on the saints, sermones de sanctis. This dissertation examines four saints who appear in both of these works: Mary Magdalene, Benedict, Nicholas and Peter Martyr. By writing his hagiography and sermons, Jacobus attempted to guide Christians toward lives of virtue and ultimate union with God. In particular, Jacobus relied on tropological and anagogical reading of Scriptures in order to communicate how Christians should behave and what they should anticipate in eternity. In his work on two of these saints, Mary Magdalene and Benedict, Jacobus relied on the framework of spiritual ascent to God described by Pseudo-Dionysius. In particular, Jacobus focused on the first stage of ascent, the purgative. A link between the hagiography and sermons sometimes can be found in the etymological introductions in the Golden Legend. In the sermons on Mary Magdalene and Peter Martyr, Jacobus follows the virtues found in the etymology in the hagiography, while for Nicholas and Benedict, the correspondence is not as faithful. Nevertheless, throughout his sermons on the saints, Jacobus refers to episodes described more fully in the Golden Legend. Jacobus intended preachers to use stories from the Golden Legend to punctuate and illustrate the more theological content presented in the model sermons. If Jacobus's work is indicative of larger trends in medieval preaching, preachers expected to utilize hagiographical resources in order to urge their listeners to the virtuous life and an eschatological union with God. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

In this dissertation, I examine a genre of commercially-published, illustrated hagiographical books. Recounting the life stories of some of China’s most beloved cultural icons, from Confucius to Guanyin, I term these hagiographical books “origin narratives” (chushen zhuan 出身傳). Weaving a plethora of legends and ritual traditions into the new “vernacular” xiaoshuo format, origin narratives offered comprehensive portrayals of gods, sages, and immortals in narrative form, and were marketed to a general, lay readership. Their narratives were often accompanied by additional materials (or “paratexts”), such as worship manuals, advertisements for temples, and messages from the gods themselves, that reveal the intimate connection of these books to contemporaneous cultic reverence of their protagonists. The content and composition of origin narratives reflect the extensive range of possibilities of late-Ming xiaoshuo narrative writing, challenging our understanding of reading. I argue that origin narratives functioned as entertaining and informative encyclopedic sourcebooks that consolidated all knowledge about their protagonists, from their hagiographies to their ritual traditions. Origin narratives also alert us to the hagiographical substrate in late-imperial literature and religious practice, wherein widely-revered figures played multiple roles in the culture. The reverence of these cultural icons was constructed through the relationship between what I call the Three Ps: their personas (and life stories), the practices surrounding their lore, and the places associated with them (or “sacred geographies”). In this dissertation, I explore this dynamic through the prism of origin narratives by focusing on the immortal Xu Xun 許遜, the god Zhenwu 真武, and the immortal bard Lü Dongbin 呂洞賓. I conclude with a case study of a recurrent theme in origin narratives: the protagonist’s journey through hell. The main goal of this dissertation is to examine the pivotal yet overlooked genre of origin narratives and unveil its significance to Chinese literature and cultural practice. What was the reading experience of origin narratives? What spurred their rise and commercial success in late Ming? And what was their long-term impact on writing and worship in late-imperial China? To answer these questions, this dissertation attempts to transcend anachronistic disciplinary boundaries that obscure the realities of life in late Ming China, and instead explore origin narratives within the broader cultural framework that informed their production and consumption during this period. Therefore, I analyze origin narratives in conjunction with a wide range of materials that fall into the realms of literature, religion, and history. These include literary works, canonical texts, popular religious tracts (baojuan and shanshu), daily-life encyclopedias, local gazetteers, geographical compendia, pictorial hagiographies, and art works. Origin narratives reflect three concomitant trends in late-Ming book culture: a renewed interest in hagiographies, a penchant for anthologizing in commercial publishing, and the multiple roles xiaoshuo narratives played in the culture. In their hybrid composition and encyclopedic scope, origin narratives are a unique late-Ming phenomenon that opens a rare window onto the interplay between literature and religion during this transformative period in the history of Chinese culture.

This work examines the literary English traditions of four Virgin Martyrs: Agatha of Catania, Agnes of Rome, Juliana of Nicomedia, and Katherine of Alexandria. The primary focus surrounds the narratological developments and alterations of these women’s sex-specific or -emphasized tortures. In addition to torments, other details, which may not initially appear sex-specific in nature, are also considered. As recent scholarship has shown, Virgin Martyrs’ lives tend to conform to a relatively standardized core narrative by the later Middle Ages. This study considers to what extent the lives of these four saints actually conform and to what extent they retain individualism despite this homogenizing trend. An analysis of each narrative’s progression from early Latin sources, when available, through fifteenth-century English texts, which supplements the current scholarly trend of examining Virgin Martyrs as a collective group, is also provided. The tracing of these legends’ sex-specific characteristics allows for clear identification of similarities and deviations within various sources. Five appendices, each including an analytical table, are included to aid in the visualization of this progression. The tables, which allow for quick and easy identification of variations through chronologically listed sources, demonstrate this process in a concise and user-friendly manner and should be utilized alongside examinations of these legends as presented in each of the central chapters. The first chapter, on Agatha, addresses her breast amputation and its symbolic implications for femininity and motherhood, as well as the argument that Virgin Martyrs ‘Become Male’ during their passiones. The second chapter, on Agnes, explores her traditionally eroticized relationship with Christ, the motif of concealment, and Virgin Martyrs’ conventional brothel experience. The third chapter, on Juliana, focuses upon the Warrior Virgin Martyr tradition, her physical and spiritual struggle with the devil, and the tradition of familial rejection. The final chapter, on Katherine, considers her position as supreme Bride, her limited physical trials, and her relationship with the Blessed Virgin. The final appendix contains a comparative chart of Virgin Martyr legends within the Legenda aurea, which indicates the frequency of motifs and plot devices in these lives.

This work examines the literary English traditions of four Virgin Martyrs: Agatha of Catania, Agnes of Rome, Juliana of Nicomedia, and Katherine of Alexandria. The primary focus surrounds the narratological developments and alterations of these women’s sex-specific or -emphasized tortures. In addition to torments, other details, which may not initially appear sex-specific in nature, are also considered. As recent scholarship has shown, Virgin Martyrs’ lives tend to conform to a relatively standardized core narrative by the later Middle Ages. This study considers to what extent the lives of these four saints actually conform and to what extent they retain individualism despite this homogenizing trend. An analysis of each narrative’s progression from early Latin sources, when available, through fifteenth-century English texts, which supplements the current scholarly trend of examining Virgin Martyrs as a collective group, is also provided. The tracing of these legends’ sex-specific characteristics allows for clear identification of similarities and deviations within various sources. Five appendices, each including an analytical table, are included to aid in the visualization of this progression. The tables, which allow for quick and easy identification of variations through chronologically listed sources, demonstrate this process in a concise and user-friendly manner and should be utilized alongside examinations of these legends as presented in each of the central chapters. The first chapter, on Agatha, addresses her breast amputation and its symbolic implications for femininity and motherhood, as well as the argument that Virgin Martyrs ‘Become Male’ during their passiones. The second chapter, on Agnes, explores her traditionally eroticized relationship with Christ, the motif of concealment, and Virgin Martyrs’ conventional brothel experience. The third chapter, on Juliana, focuses upon the Warrior Virgin Martyr tradition, her physical and spiritual struggle with the devil, and the tradition of familial rejection. The final chapter, on Katherine, considers her position as supreme Bride, her limited physical trials, and her relationship with the Blessed Virgin. The final appendix contains a comparative chart of Virgin Martyr legends within the Legenda aurea, which indicates the frequency of motifs and plot devices in these lives.

This dissertation examines the hagiographical corpus of the Dominican preacher Thomas of Cantimpré (c. 1201–1270), a critical early respondent to the burgeoning women’s religious movement in the Southern Low Countries. Writing at a time when both lay and religious spirituality were being radically refigured in light of new organizational structures and devotional practices, Thomas’s hagiographical corpus reflects the diversity of vocational possibilities available for women and men in this period at a time of great religious experimentation and innovation. Using historical, literary, and theological methods, the dissertation examines the ways in which Thomas’s vitae struggle with the question of how lay and religious, male and female readers might, in Thomas’s words, “take up” the different kinds of figures Thomas offers as models for practice and objects of devotion. Each of the vitae offer unique solutions to this question even as they represent different sorts of persons as exemplary. An important assumption governing the dissertation is that hagiography is a vital part of the spiritual and theological tradition of Christianity. Thomas’s vitae, I argue, attempt to articulate a theology of exemplarity in order to address the issue of what constitutes sanctity, who can become a saint, and by what means sanctity is attained. For Thomas, exemplarity is animated by theological notions of incarnation and scriptural revelation. Christ, as manifest in his life and in the words of scripture, is the great exemplum for embodied lives. For each of Thomas’s saints, Christ is both the singular figure who saves and the one in whom the saint participates, raising the question of how the individual human being embodies and exemplifies Christ’s singularity. Thomas’s Lives will be shown, in the course of their narratives, to illumine the tension between the singularity of Christ and its repetition in the saintly figures represented in the vitae and the readers of those vitae. Exploration of this tension reveals great richness in Thomas’s works, showing that Thomas’s narrative voice often speaks doubly within a single vita, thematizing the limits and possibilities of exemplarity and its hagiographical representation.

No description available.

Revised Thesis (doctoral)--Universite Paris X, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references and sources (p. [437]-460).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of St. Andrews, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-259) and index.