Hagiography occupies a central place in the history of European culture, and yet despite this centrality, its reception as a significant cultural achievement has at times been undermined by a narrow critical hermeneutic, one that focuses largely on the debilitating flaws of the genre. The goal of this critical practice can be described as at once diagnostic and prescriptive, as scholars attempt to rid the canon of specious documents through rigorous textual and contextual analyses. It is my contention, however, that this critical winnowing, rather than rescuing some hagiographic documents from disrepute, is in fact limited by its failure to adequately account for the medieval concern for representation as a re-presencing of the self within language. Understood through the criteria of contemporary biography, saints' lives are easily read as naive caricatures of holiness, archetypes of faith fitted crudely into human form. Instead, the notion of singular identity should be understood as a focal point for hagiography, one that presupposes important theological, and specifically incarnational, underpinnings. An exploration along these lines will reveal what I believe to be an important function of medieval hagiography; namely, to serve as textual bridges joining the sacred and corporeal realms in coincident moments of human transcendence and divine immanence.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xv, 508 p.; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 489-508).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1966. / Mainly translation of Acta Wolfkangi episcopi Ratisponensis by Hippolyte Delehaye. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Le pouvoir impérial joua à Byzance, à partir du IXe siècle, un rôle déterminant dans l’apparition et l’enrichissement des monastères en accordant de nombreux privilèges fiscaux et sa protection constante face aux empiètements de l’administration fiscale et épiscopale. La lecture des sources suggère que l’empereur obéissait à des intérêts supérieurs à ceux des bureaux du fisc et que la fondation ou la protection des monastères répondaient à des préoccupations spirituelles, idéologiques et politiques. Les monastères impériaux, en particulier, étaient soumis à des obligations contraignantes qui relevaient à la fois des droits privés de l’empereur, tels que l’obligation d’accueillir les membres de la famille impériale, et de ses droits régaliens ; ces monastères servaient de prisons politiques aux opposants de l’empereur, parfois aux empereurs déchus et à leurs proches, et étaient à la disposition du souverain qui pouvait les donner à ses partisans.L’insistance mise par les chroniqueurs à souligner l’amitié des empereurs pour les moines procède de leur volonté d’affirmer la légitimité du pouvoir de ces souverains, malgré leurs fautes ou leur déchéance, afin de maintenir la continuité de l’autorité impériale. Si la légitimité du souverain pouvait suivre à Byzance plusieurs voies et s’accommoder de la violence, elle ne pouvait se passer de l’assentiment divin. Les moines, proches de Dieu grâce à leurs vertus et intercesseurs privilégiés des hommes, étaient assurément les meilleurs garants de cette légitimité. L’idée de la supériorité de la dignité monastique, développée par les écrits monastiques et les Vies de saints, semble avoir trouvé un écho dans les sources narratives dont les récits ont contribué à l’élaboration d’un nouveau modèle idéologique, celui d’une basileia renforcée par des valeurs monastiques. / Starting from the IXth century, the imperial power played in Byzantium a significant role in the emergence and enrichment of monasteries, by providing several fiscal privileges and by giving constant protection against the encroachments of the fiscal and the episcopal administration. According to the literature, the emperor obeyed to interests superior to those of the fiscal administration, and the foundation or the protection of monasteries was due to spiritual, ideological and political concerns. The imperial monasteries, in particular, were subject to restrictive obligations which were sometimes the private rights of the emperor, such as the obligation to welcome the members of the imperial family, and other times his kingly rights ; these monasteries served as political prisons for the ones against the emperor, sometimes for the dethroned emperors and their closed ones, and they were available to the sovereign who could give them to his followers.The emphasis made by historians to underline the friendship of the emperors towards the monks proceed from their will to confirm the legitimacy of the power of these sovereigns, despite their mistakes or their decline, in order to maintain the continuation of the imperial authority. If the legitimacy of the sovereign could follow several routes in Byzantium and get used to the violence, it could not do without the divine consent. The monks, close to God thanks to their virtues and intercessors privileged of men, were definitely the best ones to guarantee this legitimacy. The idea of the superiority of the monastic dignity, developed by the monastic literature and the Lives of the saints, seems to have found an echo in the narrative sources whose recites have contributed to the elaboration of a new ideological model, that of a basileia reinforced by monastic values.

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Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Texas at Arlington, 2008.

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This thesis is based on a study of miracle stories recorded by Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical writers in the early part of the eighth century. It responds to a number of previous works which have concentrated solely on the miracle stories told by Bede, and argues that the stories of all the writers are the product of the historical situation. The idea that such stories were produced in order to respond to claims made in Irish or Continental hagiography, or by Anglo-Saxon paganism, is rejected; instead, we need to accept the assertion of the authors that these events were recorded because they were believed to have happened and to be of historical importance. Therefore, they provide an insight into the way that these authors approached the writing of history; an analysis of those involved in the stories, of the circumstances of the events, and of the likely transmission, suggests a close-knit circle of mainly noble monastics on whom the writers depended for information, and for whom they wrote. The miracle stories disclose that this approach to history was heavily informed by theological ideas, and by the bias of the author and his/her community. Precisely because the miracle material is to modern eyes unusual (if not incredible), these stories enable us better to understand the mind and methods of the writers on whom much of our knowledge early Anglo-Saxon history depends.

Thesis (doctoral)--Pontificia Università gregoriana, 1983.