The Invention of Saintliness [Hardcover]

This volume discusses, from an historical and literary angle, the ways in which sanctification and the inscription of saintliness take place. Going beyond the traditional categories of canonization, cult, liturgical veneration and hagiographical lives, the work raises fundamental issues concerning definitions of saints and saintliness in a period before the concept was crystallized in canon law. As well as discussing sources and methodology, contributions cover contextual issues, including relics and veneration, life and the afterlife, and examinations of specific sources and texts. Subjects raised include the idea of hagiography as intimate biography, perceptions of holiness in writings by and about female mystics, and bodily aspects of the Franciscan search for evangelical perfection.Part I: Introduction
Part II: Contexts: the Cult of Saints and the Invention of Saintliness
Part III: Texts: the Lives of Saints and the Invention of SaintlinessThis volume discusses, from an historical and literary angle, the ways in which sanctification and the inscription of saintliness take place.Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Medieval Studies at the University of Groningen (Netherlands). Her wide-ranging publications on historiography, hagiography and Gender Studies include Sanctity and Motherhood (Garland, 1995), De Kluizenaar in de Eik (The Hermit in the Oak, 1995), and Gouden Legenden (Golden Legend, 1998). She is presently preparing a book on Anchoresses in the Low Countries.

'The volume comprises, in short, a series of carefully nuanced investigations as to the roles that texts, individuals, social groups and institutions played in developing the conceptual framework of the cult of saints before the process of saint-making was subjected to effective control from above.'