Summary
Abstract
The starting points for this book are late medieval imitatio Christi and the valorization of pain, and their importance for saints’ lives. It presents gender and dis/ability as vital concepts for such analysis. Bodily suffering has been seen as a definitive factor for female saint's cults; while this book does not question these conclusions, it stresses the importance of the ambiguity of gender as a historical category and in defining the characteristics of a saint's cult, and approaches dis/ability as a cultural construct incorporating positive connotations of certain bodily variations. The introduction also discusses source-critical aspects that must be taken into account when using medieval canonization processes for the study of saints’ lives and the accounts of contemporary witnesses.
Keywords: canonization processes, sainthood, lay piety, infirmity, disability, gender
Approaching Holy Infirmity
Bodily infirmity and sanctity are inseparable in all medieval hagiography. Since late antiquity, saints’ miraculous and charitable actions towards their followers were recorded in an endless number of legends and miracle collections, in sermons and exempla, in liturgies, in pictorial depictions, and from the thirteenth century onwards, in the protocols of canonization inquests. As a large majority of recorded miracles were healings, hagiographic sources place illness and impairment at the core of lived religion.
In my earlier research I have mostly focused on miraculous healing, the more famous connection between saints and their devotees. While researching disability and sanctity in late medieval canonization processes, I started to wonder about the other side of the coin. Although much sparser and usually less elaborate than descriptions of miracles healing bodily illness and impairment, the depictions of the sufferings of the saints themselves caught my eye. What meanings did saints’ devotees give to the ailments of those they venerated, and how were infirmities used and investigated in canonization proceedings? Some late medieval saints for whom a canonization process was opened, such as St. Louis IX of France (d. 1270) or St. Clare of Montefalco (d. 1308), are known sufferers. What surprised me was that with very few exceptions, in virtually all inquisitiones in partibus the topic was approached even when the holy person's death was not in question.
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- Saints, Infirmity, and Community in the Late Middle Ages , pp. 11 - 30Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020