1st Edition
Lives and Miracles of the Saints Studies in Medieval Latin Hagiography
Hagiography is a rich source for our knowledge of many aspects of medieval culture and tradition. The lives and miracles of the saints may be read on several levels, both as an expression of the dominant ideology and as a reflection of long-term themes in medieval society. The essays in this volume attempt to exploit the Latin hagiographical sources of the medieval West as means of illuminating our understanding of a variety of such themes: childhood and adolescence, elite and popular religion, sainthood and politics, the mechanism of canonisation, women in the church, dreams, visions and the concept of the miraculous, and the convergence of heresy, disbelief and piety.
Biography
Michael E. Goodich is Professor of Medieval History, University of Haifa, Israel.
'This welcome volume brings together twenty previously published essays by Michael Goodich, one of today's most prolific and interesting scholars of medieval hagiography... these articles chart not only the development of a single scholar's work, but, even more importantly, that of an increasingly prominent and creative subdiscipline of medieval studies. This collection will be useful to all serious students of medieval hagiography in providing the articles of an important and influential scholar in convenient form. The book, moreover, demands their attention as a whole as evidence for the development of their craft. It should be acquired by all college and university libraries.' The Catholic Historical Review '... the volume will certainly be of use to students of sainthood and hagiography, not least because it brings together a substantial quantity of Goodich's work in one place... In their informed and informative studies, both authors have done much to place the saints and their biographers at the centre of debates over religious, cultural and political interaction in the later Middle Ages.' Ecclesiastical History