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Sanctity as a Form of Capital
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
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This paper uses Bourdieu’s model of the three forms of capital — economic capital, social capital and cultural capital — to explore the complex relationship between the spiritual and temporal spheres described in medieval hagiographical texts. It focuses on the vita of Hugh of Avalon, Bishop of Lincoln, composed in the early thirteenth century during a period of important procedural developments in the process of papal canonization. This paper argues that the two necessary prerequisites for canonization by the beginning of the thirteenth century, namely miracles and sanctity of life, can be analysed as forms of symbolic capital, which could be transformed into material goods through the mechanism of divine providence. Thus sanctity — in particular, a reputation for ascetic behaviour — was not merely a form of capital: it was also the mechanism through which one form of capital could be transformed into another.
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References
1 The place of Hugh’s canonization within broader trends is discussed in Bartlett, Robert, ‘The Hagiography of Angevin England’, in Coss, P. R. and Lloyd, S. D., eds, Thirteenth Century England V: Proceedings of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference 1993 (Woodbridge, 1995), 37–52 Google Scholar, at 52; Ward, Benedicta, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event 1000–1215 (London, 1982), 174–5, 190–1.Google Scholar
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3 A notable exception is Henry Mayr-Harting, ‘Functions of a Twelfth-Century Recluse’, History 60 (1975), 337–52.
4 Yarrow, Simon, Saints and their Communities: Miracle Stories in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford, 2006), 63–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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6 Yarrow, Saints and their Communities, 87–88, drawing on Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Hall, W. D. (London, 1990), 3.Google Scholar
7 For an analysis of the shift from the ‘gift economy’ to the ‘profit economy’, see Little, Religious Poverty, 3–41.
8 Originally published as Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital’, in Kreckel, Reinhard, ed., Soziale Ungleichheiten, Soziale Welt, Sonderheft 2 (Göttingen, 1983), 183–98 Google Scholar; ET by Nice, Richard as ‘The Forms of Capital’, in Richardson, J., ed., Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York, 1986), 241–58 Google Scholar. All quotations in this paper are taken from the latter. A more extended discussion can be found in Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Nice, Richard (London, 1984).Google Scholar
9 Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 243–8.
10 Ibid. 248–54.
11 Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Genesis and Structure of the Religious Field’, Comparative Social Research 13 (1991), 1–44 Google Scholar, at 9. For subsequent discussion, see Verter, Bradford, ‘Spiritual Capital: Theorizing Religion with Bourdieu against Bourdieu’, Sociological Theory 21 (2003), 150–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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13 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, ed. Douie and Farmer, 1: xii, xiv. Gerald wrote two lives of Hugh, both of which are printed in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera Omnia, ed. J. S. Brewer et al., 8 vols, RS 21 (London, 1861–91), 7: 73–80 (as part of the Life of Remigius), 83–147 (Life of St Hugh).
14 Innocent III’s development of the canonization procedure is discussed in Kemp, E.W., Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (Oxford, 1948), 104–7 Google Scholar; see also Vauchez, A., Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1997), 27–30, 36–40.Google Scholar
15 See Le Goff, Your Money or Your Life, 10–11.
16 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, ed. Douie and Farmer, 1: 100.
17 Ibid. 1: 99. See also ibid. 1: 76.
18 Ibid. 2: 33–8.
19 Ibid. 2: 35.
20 Compare Wulfric’s miraculous discovery of two newly minted coins in his purse: Mayr-Harting, ‘Functions’, 342.
21 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, ed. Douie and Farmer, 2: 71, 153.
22 For the relevant biblical texts and the underlying tension between condemnation and praise of wealth, see Gilchrist, Church and Economic Activity, 50—1.
23 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, ed. Douie and Farmer, 2: 45 (drawing on John Cassian, Conferences 1: 20—2): ‘(Erant uero ibi plurimi) probabiles trapazete qui librarent, examinarent atque diiudicarent secum figuram et pondus et metallum eorum que tractabat dominicorum talentorum, ne quid forte in leue, ne quid minus uel purum uel legitimum inueniri potuisset.’
24 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, ed. Douie and Farmer, 2: 54: ‘Quid vero de commissorum tibi negotiatione talentorum sentiemus? Que lucra, quas usuras reportaturum te confidis inter illos egregios institutores qui, omnia terre marisque pericula expertì, non modo plantauerunt set etiam ornauerunt et munierunt ecclesiam sanguine suo?’
25 Ibid. 2: 152.
26 Ibid, 1: 18.
27 Ibid, 1: 18–19. See also ibid. 1: 42.
28 Ibid. 1:64.
29 Ibid. 1:66.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid. 2: 98–116; discussed by Leyser, K.J., ‘The Angevin Kings and the Holy Man’, in Mayr-Harting, H., ed., St Hugh of Lincoln: Lectures delivered at Oxford and Lincoln to Celebrate the Eighth Centenary of St Hugh’s Consecration as Bishop of Lincoln (Oxford, 1987), 49–73 Google Scholar, at 61–8.
32 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, ed. Douie and Farmer, 2: 186—7.
33 For discussions of stewardship, see Gilchrist, Church and Economic Activity, 29—37.
34 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, ed. Douie and Farmer, 1: 115.
35 Ibid. 2: 87–8.
36 Ibid. 2: 189.
37 Ibid. 2: 85–6, at 86.
38 Some of Hugh’s ‘acquisitions’ are detailed in ibid. 2: 153–4, 167–71.
39 Ibid. 1: 85–8. Hugh’s precise term is ‘defrauded’ (fraudavit).
40 See n.18 above.
41 Adam of Eynsham, Magna Vita, ed. Douie and Farmer, 1: 92—103, at 103.
42 Ibid. 2: 1. Hugh’s burial is described in more detail in the fifth book: ibid. 2: 217–32.
43 Ibid. 1: 77–8.
44 Ibid. 2: 150.
45 For the electors, Hugh was the only candidate ‘who combined all the virtues with good breeding’: ibid, 1: 94. See also Vauchez, Sainthood, 279–83.
46 For statistics on social status and canonization, see Vauchez, 249–84. For the economic rewards, see Nilsen, Cathedral Shrines, 158–60, 222–6.
47 Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 252.