The Culture of Devotion
in the Later Middle Ages:
A Bibliography
Compiled by Thomas Head
Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
Contents:
1) General historical studies;
2) General studies of
religious history; 3) Culture of
devotion; 4) Unbelief and heresy; 5)
Arts and religious life; 6) Hagiography;
7) Regional studies
of sanctity and hagiography; 8) Sanctity
and the State; 9) Sanctity and
the family; 10) Mysticism; 11) Failed
saints.
General historical studies.
A convenient summary of the political history and social development
of Europe during this period may be found in Denys Hay, Europe in the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, second edition (London, 1989).
On the development of states and government, see Bernard Guénée,
States and Rulers in Later Medieval Europe, trans. Juliet Vale (Oxford,
1985). More specifically on specific regions see: May McKissack, The
Fourteenth Century (Oxford History of England, 5; Oxford, 1969); K.
A. Fowler, The Age of Plantagenet and Valois, second ed. (London,
1980); Philippe Contamine, Des pouvoirs en France: 1300-1500 (Paris,
1992); John Larner, Culture and Society in Italy, 1290-1420 (New
York, 1971); Brian Pullan, A History of Early Renaissance Italy: From
the Mid-Thirteenth to the Mid-Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1973); Denys
Hay and John Law, Italy in the Renaissance, 1380-1530 (Longman History
of Italy, 3; London); Angus MacKay, Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier
to Empire, 1000-1500 (London, 1977).
General studies
of religious history.
The cultural and religious history of the later middle ages was long
written under the shadow, or perhaps better pall, cast by Johan Huizinga's
famous essay The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of
Life, Thought and Art in France and the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth
Centuries, trans. F. Hodman (London, 1924 and numerous reprints) which
was first published in Haarlem in 1919. A view of a more vigorous late
medieval religious culture developed in scholarship over a long period
of time, perhaps first given coherence by Etienne Delaruelle, E. R. Labande
and Paul Ourliac in L'Eglise au temps du Grand Schisme et de la crise
conciliare (1378-1449) (Paris, 1964), and again with even greater clarity
by Francis Rapp in L'Eglise et la vie religieuse en occident à
la fin du Moyen Age (Nouvelle Clio, 25; Paris, 1980). Both these synthetic
works are milestones in the development of a history of Christianity oriented
toward practice and social context. These can now be supplemented by the
relevant volumes of the Histoire du chirstianisme: André
Vauchez (ed.), Apogée de la papauté et expansion de la
chrétienté (1054-1274) (Paris, 1993) and Un temps
e'épreuves (1274-1449) (Paris, 1990). In English one can find
a less full, but nonetheless very useful, synthesis in R. N. Swanson, Religion
and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215-c. 1515 (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks;
Cambridge, 1995), and the highly idiosyncratic, but quite brilliant, work
of John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford, 1985).
These syntheses were to a large basis based on careful local studies
of religious practice in the later middle ages which have appeared with
regularity over the course of the past several decades. The effect of these
studies has been to blur the edges of the hard dividing line in religious
history once provided by the Protestant reform movements. Among these studies
are: Jacques Toussaert, Le sentiment religieux en Flandre à la
fin du Moyen age (Paris, 1963); Noël Coulet, "Jalons pour
une histoire religieuse d'Aix au bas-moyen âge (1150-1450),"
Provence historique, 22 (1972), pp. 203-60; J. Fournée, Les
normands face à la peste. Trois siècles et demi de peste
en Normandie Bilan religieux et social (Flers, 1978); Richard Trexler,
Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1980); Nicole Lemaître,
Le Rouergue flamboyant. Le clergé et les fidèles dans
le diocèse de Rodez, 1417-1563 (Paris, 1988); Dominique Viaux,
La vie paroissiale à Dijon à la fin du Moyen Age (Dijon,
1988); Alain Derville, "La vie religieuse au XIVe siècle d'après
les comptes de la cathédrale de Cambrai," Revue d'histoire
de l'Eglise de France, 74 (1988), pp. 213-33; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping
of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-c.1580 (New
Haven, 1992); Robert Brentano, A New World in A Small Place: Church
and Religion in the Diocese of Rieti, 1188-1378 (Berkeley, 1993); Pierrette
Paravy, De la chrétienté à la réforme en
Dauphiné. Evêques, fideles et deviants (vers 1340-vers 1530),
2 vols. (Collection de l'Ecole Française de Rome, 183; Paris/Rome,
1993); Daniel Bornstein, The Bianchi of 1399: Popular Devotion in Late
Medieval Italy (Ithaca, NY, 1993); William Dohar, The Black Death
and Pastoral Leadership: The Diocese of Hereford in the Fourteenth Century
(Philadelphia, 1995); Andrew Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England:
the Diocese of Salisbury, 1250-1550 (Cambridge, 1995). Two useful collections
of translated documents have also appeared in English: Stephen Pumfrey,
Paolo Rossi and Maurice Slawinski (eds.), Science, Culture, and Popular
Belief in Medieval and Renaissance Society (Manchester, 1991) and R.
N. Swanson, Catholic England: Faith, Religion and Observance before
the Reformation (Manchester, 1993).
The culture of devotion.
One of the hallmarks of Christian history and practice in this period
is the development of what I have chosen to call a "culture of devotion"
among not only the formally religious, but also the laity. An excellent
introduction to lay religious life (which during this period ceases to
be the oxymoron it would have been under the formal defitions of the high
middle ages) is Guy Lobrichon, La religion des laïcs en Occident,
XIe-XVe siècles (Paris, 1994). See also the essays collected
in E. Schulte van Kessel (ed.), Women and Men in Spiritual Culture,
XIV-XVII Centuries: a Meeting of North and South (The Hague, 1986).
The "classic" document for defining such practice remains that
published by W. A. Pantin, "Instructions for a Devout and Literate
Layman," in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented
to Richard William Hunt, ed. J. J. G. Alexander and Margaret Gibson
(Oxford, 1976), pp. 398-422.
During the 1970s and early 1980s scholars tended to treat these problems
under the rubric of "popular" religion or piety: Raoul Manselli,
La religion populaire au moyen âge. Problèmes de méthode
et d'histoire (Montréal, 1975); Etienne Delaruelle, La Pieté
populaire au moyen âge (Turin, 1975); Bernard Plongeron (ed.),
La Religion populaire dans l'occident chrétien. Approches historiques
(Paris, 1975); M.-H. Vicaire (ed.), La religion populaire en Languedoc
du XIIIe à la moitié du XIVe siècle (Cahiers de
Fanjeaux, 11; Toulouse, 1976); James Obelkevich (ed.), Religion and
the People, 800-1700 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1979); Rosalind Brooke, and
Christopher Brooke, Popular Religion in the Middle Ages. Western Europe
1000-1300 (London, 1984); Leonard Boyle, "The Fouth Lateran Council
and Manuals of Popular Spirituality," in The Popular Literature
of Medieval England, ed. Thomas Heffernan (Knoxville, 1985), pp. 30-43.
For coherent critiques of the concept, which has since waned in popularity,
see Jean-Claude Schmitt, "'Religion populaire' et culture folklorique,"
Annales ESC, 31 (1976), pp. 941-53 and Natalie Davis, "From
'Popular Religion' to Religious Cultures," in Reformation Europe:
A Guide to Research, ed. Steven Ozment (St. Louis, MO, 1982), pp. 321-42.
The concept of "popular" religion in particular crumbled under
the weight of careful studies which showed how the efforts of ecclesiastical
institutions at pastoral care could also be viewed as efforts by the hierarchy
to disseminate Christianity. On this trend in scholarship, see in particular
Charles Trinkhaus and Heiko Oberman (eds.), The Pursuit of Holiness
in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Leiden, 1974); Thomas Tentler,
Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977);
Faire croire: Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception
des messages religieux du XII au XVe siècle (Collection de l'Ecole
Française de Rome; 51; Rome, 1981). Another alternative to "popular
religion" and "popular culture" has been offered by the
largely German school of Alltagsgeschichte: for consideration of
the methodological issues, see particularly the articles collected in Mensch
und Object im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit: Leben-Alltag-Kultur.
Internationaler Kongress, Krems an der donau, 27. bis 30. September 1988
(Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften philosophisch-historische
klasse sitzungsberichte, 568; Veröfffentlichungen des instituts für
Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen neuzeit, 13; Vienna,
1990).
Now even these revisionist scholarly rubrics have become themselves
problematic, crumbling, in our chosen field, under the weight of ever more
subtle analyses of the specifics of pastoral care and ritual life, much
of which can be found in the more recent studies cited below.
The Mass and the eucharist. The works of Peter Browe remain fundamental
to any research on this topic: Die Verehrung der Euchaistie im Mittelalter
(Munster 1933), Die eucharistischen wunder des Mittelalters (Breslau,
1938), and Die haufige Kommunion im Mittelalter (Munster 1938).
Miri Rubin has presented the most ambitious overview of the cultural context
of the Eucharist in late medieval Europe in Corpus Christi: The Eucharist
in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991). The analysis favors English
evidence and has many curious gaps. See also the very compelling analyses
of John Bossy, "The Mass as a Social Institution, 1200-1700,"
Past and Present, 100 (1983), pp. 29-61, Charles Zika, "Hosts,
Processions and Pilgrimages: Controlling the Sacred in Fifteenth-Century
Germany," Past and Present, 118 (1988), pp. 25-64, and Virginia
Reinburg, "Liturgy and the Laity in Late Medieval and Reformation
France," Sixteenth-Century Studies, 23 (1992-3), pp. 526-47.
For the theological bases of the eucharist in this period, the best introduction
remains the article by J. de Ghellinck in Dictionnaire de la théologie
catholique, 5:1233-1302
Other sacraments. Baptism: John Bossy, "Blood and Baptism:
Kinship, Community and Christianty in Western Europe from the Fourteenth
to the Seventeenth centuries," Studies in Church History, 10
(173), pp. 129-43. Confession: John Bossy, "The Social History of
Convfession in the Age of the Reformation," Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society, fifth series, 25 (1975), pp. 21-38; Thomas
Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton,
1977) and Pratiques de la confession. Des pères du désert
à Vatican II (Paris, 1983). Marriage: William Sheehan, "The
Influence of Canon Law on the Property Rights of Married Women in England,"
Mediaeval Studies 25 (1963), pp. 109-24 and "The Formation
and Stability of Marriage in Fourteenth-Century England: Evidence of an
Ely Register," Mediaeval Studies 33 (1971), pp. 228-263; R.
H. Helmholz, Marriage Litigation in Medieval England (Cambridge,
1974); Charles Donahue, "The Canon Law on the Formation of Marriage
and Social Practice in the Later Middle Ages," Journal of Family
History 8 (1983), pp. 144-158; James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian
Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987); Christopher Brooke, The
Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford, 1989); Jeffrey Watt, The Making
of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and the Rise of Sentiment in Neuchâtel,
1550-1800 (Ithaca, NY, 1993); Anthony Molho, Marriage and Alliance
in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, MA, 1994); Eric Carlson, Marriage
and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994); Robert Kingdon, Adultery
and Divorce in Calvin's Geneva (Cambridge, MA, 1995). General iconography:
Ann Nichols, Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments
1350-1544 (Woodbridge, 1994). Clerical vestments were an integral part
of these rituals, see very generally Louis Trichet Le costume deu clergé
(Paris, 1986) and La tonsure, vie et mort d'une pratique ecclésiastique
(Paris, 1990), and, for a more specifically relevant analysis, Perrine
Mane and Françoise Piponnier, "Entre vie quotidienne et liturgie:
le vêtement ecclésiastique à la fin du Moyen Age,"
Symbole des Alltags, Alltag der Symbole: Festschrift für Harry
Kühnel zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Gertrud Glaschitz et al. (Graz,
1992), pp. 469-95.
Prayer. Pierre Rézeau, Les prières aux saints
en français à la fin du Moyen Age, 2 vols. (Publications
romanes et françaises; Geneva: Droz, 1982-3) provides the fullest
corpus of relevant texts. On the development of prayers said for specific
intentions in the high medieval liturgy, see Jean Molin, "Les intentions
des prières de prône, éducatrices du peuples chrétien,"
in Crises et réformes dans l'église de la réforme
grégorienne à la préréforme (Actes du 115e
Congrès nationale des société savantes, Avignon 1990;
Paris, 1991), pp. 107-16. For the textual bases of his work see Jean Molin,
"L'oratio communis au Moyen Age en Occident du Xe au XVe siècle,"
in Miscellanea liturgica in onore . . . Giacomo Lercaro (Rome, 1967),
pp. 315-468 and "Quelques textes médiévaux de la prière
universelle," in Traditio et progressio: Studi liturgici in onore
. . . Adrien Innocent (Rome, 1988), pp. 338-58. More generally, see
John Bossy, "Christian Life in the Later Middle Ages: Prayers,"
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 1 (1991),
pp. 137-48 and the differing views of Virginia Reinburg, in her comment
on Bossy, pp. 148-50 and "Hearing Lay People's Prayer," in Culture
and Identity in Early Modern Eruope (1500-1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie
Zemon Davis, ed. Barbara Diefendorf and Carla Hesse (Ann Arbor, MI,
1993), pp. 19-39. A fuller version of Reinburg's analysis of prayer is
forthcoming under the title Popular Prayers in Late Medieval France
(Ithaca, NY). Also see also the essays collected in La prière
au Moyen Age (Senefiance, 10; Aix, 1981).
Parishes. For a useful overview, see Joseph Avril, "Quelques
aspects de l'institution paroissiale après le IVe concile du Latran,"
in Crises et réformes dans l'église de la réforme
grégorienne à la préréforme (Actes du 115e
Congrès nationale des société savantes, Avignon 1990;
Paris, 1991), pp. 93-106. Gabriel Le Bras, L'Eglise et le village
(Paris, 1976); Pievi e parrocchie in Italia nei basso medioeveo (sec.
XIII-XV), 2 vols. (Italia Sacra, 35-6; Rome, 1984); Joseph Avril, "La
paroisse médiéval et la prière pour les morts,"
in Jean-Loup Lemaitre (ed.), L'église et la mémoire des
morts dans la France médiévale (Paris, 1986), pp. 53-67;
Dominique Viaux, La vie paroissale à Dijon à la fin du
moyen âge, (Publication de l'université de Bourgogne,
65; Dijon 1988); Pierre Desportes, "Réflexions sur la paroisse
urbaine en France du Nord au Bas Moyen Age," Histoire de la paroisse
(Angers, 1988), pp. 44-56; Gervase Rosser, "Communities of Parish
and Guild in the Late Middle Ages," in S. J. Wright (ed.), Parish,
Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion, 1350-1750 (London,
1988), pp. 29-57; La paroisse en Languedoc aux XIIIe-XIVe siècles
(Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 25; Toulouse, 1990).
Preaching and exempla collections. There have been a series
of influential studies of preaching in late medieval England: G. R. Owst,
Preaching in Medieval Engalnd: An Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts
of the Period c. 1350-1450 (Cambridge, 1926) and Literature and
Pulpit in Medieval England: A Neglected Chapter in the History of English
Letters and of the English People (Cambridge, 1933), J. W. Blench,
Preaching in England in the later XVth and XVIth Centuries (London,
1964), and H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages
(Oxford, 1994). Some editions and studies of the varied collections which
used for that preaching include: Theodor Erbe (ed.), Mirk's Festial:
A Collection of Homilies by Johannes Mirkus, I (EETS, extra series,
96; London, 1905); Fritz Kemmler, "Exempla" in Context: A
Historical and Critical Study of Robert Mannyng of Brunne's "Handlyng
Synne" (Tübingen, 1984). Further bibliography may be found
in Thomas Heffernan, "Sermon Literature," in Middle English
Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres, ed. A. S. G. Edwards
(New Brunswick, NJ, 1984), pp. 177-207. For Italy, see the useful general
essays of Carlo Delcorno, "Rassegna di studi sulla predicazione medievale
e umanistica (1970-80)," Lettere italiane (1981), pp. 235076
and "La predicazione volgare in Italia (sec. XIII-XIV). Teoria, produzione,
ricezione," Revue Mabillon, n. s. 4 (1993), pp. 83-107, as
well as the more thorough local study by Daniel Lesnik, Preaching in
Medieval Florence. The Social World of Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality
(Athens, GA, 1989). For France, see Hervé Martin, Le Métier
de prédicateur en France septentrionale à la fin du moyen
âge (1350-1520) (Paris, 1988) and Larissa Taylor, Soldiers
of Christ: Preaching in Late Medieval and Reformation France (Oxford,
1992).
Confraternities: G. Meersseman, "Etude sur les anciennes
confréries dominicaines," Archivum fratrum Praedicatorum,
20 (1950), pp. 5-113 and 21 (1951), pp. 51-96; Le mouvement confraternal
au Moyen Age. France, Italie, Suisse (Collections de l'Ecole Française
de Rome, 97; Rome, 1987); James Banker, Death in the Community: Memorialization
and Confraternities in an Italian Commune in the Late Middle Ages (Athens,
GA, 1988); C. F. Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century
(Cambridge, 1989); John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval
Florence (Oxford, 1994); Nicholas Terpstra, Confraternities and
Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna (Cambridge, 1995).
Death. Useful older studies include J. M. Clark, The Dance
of Death in the Midle Ages and the Renaissance (Glasgow, 1950), H.
Rosenfeld, Der Mittelalterliche Totentanz (Munster, 1954) and R.
Rudolf, Ars moriendi (Cologne, 1959). Philipple Ariès has
presented a provocative, if untimately flawed, thesis concerning changing
attitudes to death in L'Homme devant la mort (Paris, 1977)=The
Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York, 1981). For a more
measured consideration of ritual and social change, see Sharon Strocchia,
Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore, 1992). See
also the essays collected in La mort au Moyen Ages (Strasboug, 1977).
On funeral rituals, see Marie-Thérèse Lorcin, "Trois
manières d'enterrement à Lyon de 1300-1500," Revue
historique, 261 (1979), pp. 3-15; Ronald Finucane, "Sacred Corpse,
Profane Carrion: Social Ideals and Death Rituals in the Later Middle Ages,"
in Mirrors of Mortality Studies in the Social History of Death,
ed. J. Whaley (London, 1980), pp. 40-60; Christian Raynaud, "Quelques
remarques sur les cérémonies funéraires à la
fin du Moyen Age," Le Moyen Age, fifth series, 7 (1993), 293-310.
The moment of death was, not surprisingly, a common locus of the miraculous:
Christian Krötzl, "Evidentissima signa mortis: Zu Tod
und Todesfeststellung in mittelalterlichen Mirakelberichten," Symbole
des Alltags, Alltag der Symbole: Festschrift für Harry Kühnel
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Gertrud Glaschitz et al. (Graz, 1992), pp.
765-75.
Pious benefactions. The most ambitious and provocative study
remains Jacques Chiffoleau, La comptabilité d'au-delà:
les hommes, la mort et la religion dans la région d'Avignon à
la fin du Moyen Age (vers 1320-vers 1480)(Collection de l'Ecole française
de Rome, 47; Rome, 1980). Clive Burgess has examined the motivation of
devotion in late medieval English wills: "'By Quick and By Dead':
Wills and Pious Provision in Late Medieval Bristol," The English
Historical Review, 102 (1987), pp. 837-48; "'A fond thing vainly
invented': An Essay on Purgatory and Pious Motive in Late Medieval England,"
in S. J. Wright (ed.), Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay
Religion, 1350-1750 (London, 1988), pp. 56-84; "Late Medieval
Wills and Pious Convention: Testamentary Evidence Reconsidered," in
Profit, Piety, and the Professions in Later Medieval England, ed.
M. A. Hicks (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 14-33. On England, also see Brian Golding,
"Burials and Benefactions: an Aspect of Monastic Patronage in Thirteenth-Century
England," in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of
the Harlaxton Conference, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 1985), pp.
64-75. For France, see Marie-Thérèse Lorcin, "Les clauses
religieuses dans les tesaments du plat pays lyonnais aux XIVe et XVe siècle,"
Le Moyen Age (1972), pp. 287-323. For Bohemia, see John Klassen,
"Gifts for the Soul and Social Charity in Late Medieval Bohemia,"
Materielle Kultur und religiöse Stiftung im Spätmittelalter
(Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften philosophisch-historische
klasse sitzungsberichte, 554; Vienna, 1990), pp. 61-81. On the theology
behind such bequests, see R. W. Shaffern, "Learned Discussions of
Indulgences for the Dead in the Middle Ages," Church History,
61 (1992), pp. 367-81. On gifts by the living as members of confraternities
see Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice; The Social Institutions
of a Catholic State (Oxford, 1981); C. Vincent, Des charité
bien ordonnées. Les conféries normandes de la fin du XIIIe
au début du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1988), Miri Rubin, Charity
and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987), and John Henderson,
Piety and Charity (see above). On the memorialization of the dead
in confraternities, see James Banker, Death in the Community (see
above). As a counterpoint, see the neo-Marxist analysis of Samual Cohn,
Death and Property in Siena, 1205-1800: Strategies for the Afterlife
(Baltimore, 1988) and The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six
Renaissance Cities in Central Italy (Baltimore, 1992).
One of the most important manifestations of the culture of devotion
was the movement known as the Modern Devotion which developed in
the cities of the Low Countries. The fullest treatment remains R. R. Post,
The Modern Devotion (Leiden, 1968), supplemented by the essays collected
in J.-M. Cauchies, La dévotion moderne dans les pays bourguignons
et rhénans des origiens à la fin du XVIe siècle
(Neuchatel, 1989). For more a a number of relevant texts, many hagiographic,
in translation, see John Van Engen, Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings
(New York, 1988). The introduction provides an excellent basic orientation.
Monastic life. Remember that monastic communities continued to
exist and even to thrive in the later middle ages. For an entertaining
look at life in such communities, which focuses on late medieval evidence,
see Barbara Harvey, Living and Dying in England, 1100-1500: The Monastic
Experience (Oxford, 1993).
Unbelief and heresy.
It is important to remember that not all of the laity were devout. There
was a good deal of anti-clerical sentiment among the laity during the later
middle ages and early modern period. A good introduction may be found in
the essays collected in: Peter Dykema and Heiko Oberman, Anticlericalism
in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 1993). How these
sentiments could be matched with piety and devotion may be seen in the
Middle English literature of the fourteenth century as studied in Wendy
Scase, Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism (Cambridge, 1989)
and the superb study of Steven Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England
in 1381 (The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics, 27; Berkeley,
1994). Some of the context for such accusations and problems may be found
in Benoît Garnot (ed.), Le clergé deliquant (XIIIe-XVIIIe
siècle) (Dijon, 1995).
More obvious exceptions to the culture of devotion would at first blush
seem to be those people branded by the ecclesiastical hierarchy as heretics,
except that many of them, such as the Lollards, simply differed from the
orthodox in their concepts of, not their dedication to, pious devotion.
More to the point, other men and women were simply indifferent to religious
piety, some even sceptical. The point is made by Alexander Murray, "Piety
and Impiety in Thirteenth-Century Italy," Studies in Church History,
8 (1972), pp. 83-106, Michael Goodich, "Miracles and Disbelief in
the Late Middle Ages," Mediaevistik, 1 (1988), pp. 23-38, Paolo
Golinelli, "Il santo gabbato: Forme di incredulità nel mondo
cittadino italiano," in Città e culto dei santi nel medioevo
italiano (Bologna, 1991), pp. 63-90, and, although too simplistically
and grandly, by Susan Reynolds, "Social Mentalities and the Case of
Medieval Scepticism," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,
sixth series, 1 (1991), pp. 21-41.
The arts and relgious life.
Much of this culture of devotion focused on the use by the laity of
artistic images and vernacular texts. As far as artistic objects and images
goes, the point is made particularly forcefully and clearly in an exhibition
catalogue prepared by Henk van Os, et al., The Art of Devotion in the
Late Middle Ages in Europe, 1300-1500, trans. Michael Hoyle (Princeton,
1995). A survey of the art historical literature is impossible here, but
for more general considerations of the material culture of religious devotion,
see such studies as R. N. Swanson, "Medieval Liturgy as Theater: The
Props," in The Church and the Arts, ed. Diana Wood (Studies
in Church History, 29; Oxford, 1992), pp. 239-53; Judy Ann Ford, "Art
and Identity in the Parish Communities of Late Medieval Kent," in
The Church and the Arts, ed. Diana Wood (Studies in Church History,
29; Oxford, 1992), pp. 225-37; Jeryldene Wood, "Breaking the Silence:
The Poor Clares and the Visual Arts in Fifteenth-Century Italy," Renaissance
Quarterly, 48 (1995), pp. 262-86, as well as the essays collected in
Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (eds.), Christianity and the Renaissance:
Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento (Syracuse, 1990)
and Craig Monson (ed.), The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the
Arts in Early Modern Europe (Ann Arbor, 1992). On the spiritual or
religious impact of such images, see Lucy Sandler, "Face to Face with
God: A Pictorial Image of the Beatific Vision," in England in the
Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the Harlaxton Conference, ed. W.
M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 224-35 and Daniel Arasse, "Entre
dévotion et culture: Fonctions de l'image religieuse au XVe siècle,"
Faire Croire, pp. 131-46. For the involvement of a saint in the
world of the plastic arts, see Ann Roberts, "Chiara Gambacorta of
Pisa as Patroness of the Arts," in Creative Women in Medieval and
Early Modern Italy, eds. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia,
1994), pp. 120-54.
One of the most significant set of devotional images in the late middle
ages was that found in the Book of Hours. A convenient introduction may
be found in Janet Backhouse, Books of Hours (Oxford, 1985). A much
fuller overview may be obtained from the exhibition catalogue, Time
Sanctified: The book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life, ed. Roger Wieck
(Baltimore, 1988), particularly the essay by Roger Wieck. The essay by
Virginia Reinburg in that volume provides an excellent introduction to
the devotional use of books of hours; the analysis will be expanded in
the forthcoming Popular Prayer in Late Medieval France (Ithaca,
NY). Some other catalogues which contain many excellent examples of books
of hours include François Avril, Manuscript Painting at the Court
of France: the Fourteenth Century, 1310-1380 (Paris, 1978); Marcel
Thomas, The Golden Age: Manuscript Painting at the Time of Jean, Duc
de Berry (1979); Richard Marks and Nigel Morgan, The Golden Age
of English Manuscirpt Painting, 1200-1500 (1981); Alain Arnould, Jean
Michel Massing, et al., Splendours of Flanders: Late Medieval Art in
Cambridge Collections (Cambridge, 1993); James Marrow, et al., The
Golden Age of Dutch Manuscript Painting (New York, 1990).
Compelling analyses of the use of images in devotion and religious life
have been outlined recently by several scholars. Hans Belting, The Image
and its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings
of the Passion, trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer (German original,
1981; New York, 1989) and Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image
Before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (German original, 1990;
Chicago, 1993); David Freedburg, The Power of Images (Chicago, 1989);
Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Idology and Image-Making in Medieval
Art (Cambridge, 1989); Jeffrey Hamburger, "The Use of Images in
the Patoral Care of Nuns: The Case of Heinrich Suso and the Dominicans,"
Art Bulletin, 71 (1989), pp. 20-46, "The Visutal andthe Visionary:
The Image in Late Medieval Monastic Devotions," Viator, 20
(1989), pp. 161-82, and "A Liber Precum in Sélestat
and the Devlopment of the illustrated Prayer Book in Germany," Art
Bulletin, 73 (1991), pp. 210-36; Christiane Raynaud, Images et pouvoirs
au moyen âge (Paris, 1993); Flora Lewis, "The Veronica:
Image, Legend, and the Viewer," in W. M. Ornrod (ed.), England
in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the Harlaxton Conference
(Woodbridge, 1985), pp. 100-6 and "Rewarding Devotion: Indulgences
and the Promotion of Images," in The Church and the Arts, ed.
Diana Wood (Studies in Church History, 29; Oxford, 1992), pp. 179-92.
Images with miraculous or devotional reputations were also the focus
of pilgrimages, see, for example, Virginia Reinburg, "Les Pèlerins
de Notre-Dame du Puy," Revue d'histoire de l'église de France
75 (1989), pp. 297-314; Il Volto Santo: Storia e Culto, eds. C.
Baracchini and M. Filieri (Lucca, 1982) and Diana Webb, "The Holy
Face of Lucca," Anglo-Norman Studies, 9 (1986), pp. 227-237;
William Hood, "The Sacro Monte of Varallo: Renaissance Art
and Popular Relgion," in Monasticism and the Arts, ed. Timothy
Verdon (Syracuse, 1984), pp. 291-311.
Altarpieces were one of the most important expressions of religious
devotion in art, and one which frequently employed the iconography of the
saints. Recent work on Italian altarpieces includes: Peter Humfrey and
Martin Kemp, eds., The Altarpiece in the Renaissance (Cambridge,
1990); Peter Humfrey, The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice (New
Haven, 1993); Eve Borsook and Fiorella Gioffredi (eds.), Italian Altarpieces
1250-1550: Function and Design (Oxford, 1994).
Artistic expression of belief was particularly important in burying
the rich and powerful. On the setting of royal tombs, see Paul Binsky,
Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation
of Power, 1200-1400 (New Haven, CT, 1995) for England. On the tombs
of the popes, see Jeanne Vielliard, "Les tombeaux des papes du Moyen
Age à Rome et en Italie," Moyen Age, 30, second series
(1929), pp. 191-216 and Julian Gardner, The Tomb and the Tiara: Curial
Tomb Sculpture in Rome and Avignon in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford,
1992).
Hagiography.
Beyond the work of André Vauchez, the fullest examination of
the experience of sanctity and the writing of hagiography in the fourteenth
century is Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Lives. Fourteenth-Century Saints
and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, 1984). His essay "Holiness
and the Culture of Devotion: Remarks on Some Late Medieval Male Saints,"
in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, eds. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
and Timea Szell (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 288-305
also provides an excellent brief examination of how the culture of devotion
shaped notions of sanctity, as well as how the desire to attain sanctity
or salvation shaped the culture of devotion. More recently Michael Goodich
has mined the material provided by the miracle stories contained within
canonization processes in Violence and Miracle in the Fourteenth Century:
Private Grief and Public Salvation (Chicago, 1995). See also the essays
collected in Agiografia nell'occidente cristiano, secoli XIII-XV
(Atti dei convegni Lincei, 48; Rome, 1980).
In the later middle ages religious communities produced serial biographies
of their honored members which provided what was in essence a new hagiographic
genre. For the lives produced by the Bretheren of the Common Life, see
the work of Van Engen above. For "convent chronicles" from communities
of mendicant nuns, see Siegried Ringler, Viten- und Offenbarungsliteratur
in Frauenklöstern des Mittelalters. Quellen und Studien (Münchener
Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, 72;
Zurich, 1980) and Dewey Kramer, "'Arise and Give the Convent Bread':
Christine Ebner, the Convent Chronicle of Engelthal, and the Call to Ministry
among Fourteenth-Century Religious Women," in Women as Protagonists
and Poets in the German Middle Ages: An Anthology of Feminist Approaches
to Middle High German Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen (Göppingen,
1991), pp. 187-207; Jeffrey Hamburger, "The Liber miraculorum
of Unterlinden: An Icon in its Convent Setting," The Sacred Image
East and WEst, ed. Robert Ousterhout and Leslie brubaker (Illinois
Byzantine Studies, 4; Urbana, IL, 1995), pp. 147-90.
On the development of vernacular collections of saints lives in this
period, see Scrittori di religione del trecento volgarizzamenti,
ed. Giuseppe de Luca (Turin, 1977); Dominique de Courcelles, Les histoires
des saints, la priere et la mort en Catalogne (Textes et documents
du Centre de rechereche sur l'Espagne des 16e et 17e siècles, 1;
Paris, 1990); Jean-Pierre Perrot, Le passionaire français au
moyen âge (Publications Romanes et Françaises, 200; Geneva,
1992); Pamela Gehrke, Saint and Scribes: Medieval Hagiography in its
Manuscript Context (University of California Publications in Modern
Philology, 126; Berkeley, 1993); Katherine Gill, "Women and the Production
of Religious Literature in the Vernacular, 1300-1500," in Creative
Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: a Religious and Artistic Renaissance,
ed. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia, 1994), pp. 64-104.
Regional studies
of sanctity and hagiography.
Much recent work has been by Italian scholars, and even some foreigners,
on the Italian saints of the late medieval and early modern period. The
fullest monographic study is Gabriella Zarri, La sante vive: cultura
e religiosita femminile nella prima eta moderna (Sacro/santo, 2; Turin:
Rosenberg and Sellier, 1990). But see also the excellent collections of
essays: Culto dei santi, istituzioni e classi sociali in età
preindustriale, eds. Sofia Boesch Gajano and Luigi Sebastiani (Collana
di studi storici, 1; L'Aquila: Japadre Editore, 1984); Raccolte di vite
di santi dal XIII al XVIII secolo. Strutture, messaggi, fruizioni,
ed. Sofia Boesch Gajano (Fasano di Brindisi: Schena Editore, 1990); Luoghi
sacri e spazia della santità, eds. Sofia Boesch Gajano and Lucretta
Scaraffia (Sacro/santo, 1; Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1990); Finzione
e santità tra medioevo e età moderna, ed. Gabriella Zarri
(Sacro/santo, 7; Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1991); Modelli di comportamento/modelli
di santità. Contrasti, intersezioni, complementarietà,
eds. Giulia Barone, Marina Caffiero, Francesco Scorza Barcellona (Sacro/santo,
10; Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1994). Some more specific studies include:
Fernanda Sorelli, La santità imitabile: "Leggenda di Maria
da Venezia" di Tommaso da Siena (Venice, 1984); Simon of Rome,
Libro over Legenda della beata Helena da Udene, ed. Andrea Tilatti
(Udine, 1988); Santa Filippa Mareri e il monastero di Borgo San Pietro
nella storia del Cicolano (Rieti, 1989); Lucetta Scaraffia, La santa
degli impossibili. Vicende e significati della devozione a S. Rita
(Sacro/santo, 3; Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1990); Filippo Roitolo,
Il portinaio di S. Francesco B. Gerardo da Valen O. Min. =Palermo 19-XII-1342
(Palermo, 1992). Two useful review essays are: Jean-Michel Sallmann, "Il
santo e le rappresentazioni della santità: Problemi di metodo,"
Quaderni storici, 41 (1979), pp. 584-602 and Gabriella Zarri, "Le
sante vive: Per una tipologia della santità feminile nel primo cinquecento,"
Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo Germanico in Trento, 6 (1980),
pp. 371-445.
Several of the most important saints of the late middle ages were Italian.
On Catherine of Siena (+1380), see: Robert Fawtier, Sainte Catherine
de Sienne, Essai de critique des sources: Sources hagiographiques (Paris,
1921); Robert Fawtier and L. Canet, La Double expérience de Catherine
Benincasa (sainte Catherine de Sienne) (Paris, 1948); Raymond of Capua,
Life of Catherine of Siena, trans. Conleth Kearns (Wilmington, DE,
1980); The Letters of Catherine of Siena. Volume I, trans. Suzanne
Noffke (Binghamton, NY, 1988); Karen Scott, "Urban Spaces, Women's
Networks, and the Lay Apostolate in the Siena of Catherine Benincasa,"
in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, eds. E. Ann
Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia, 1994), pp. 105-19. On Francesca
Romana (+1440), see: Placido Tommaso Lugano (ed.), I Processi inediti
per Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani (Santa Francesca Romana) 1440-1453
(Studi e testi, 120; Vatican City, 1945); Una santa tutta romana. Saggi
e richerche nel VI Centenario nella nascita di Francesca Bussa dei Ponviani
(1384-1984), ed. Giorgio Picasso (Siena: Monte Oliveto Maggiore, 1984);
J. Pennington, "Semi-Religious Women in Fifteenth-Century Rome,"
Mededelingen van het Nederlands Institutut te Rome, 48 (1987), pp.
115-45; Marie-Pascal Dickson, Jubilation dans la lumière divine:
Françoise Romaine, 1384-1440 d'après le récit de ses
visions transcrit par Jean Mattiotti, son père spirituel (Paris,
1989); Guy Boanas and Lyndal Roper, "Feminine Piety in Fifteenth-Century
Rome: Santa Francesca Romana," Disciplines of Faith: Studies in
Religion, Politics and Patriarchy, ed. Jim Obelkevich, Lyndal Roper,
and Raphael Samuel (London), pp. 177-93; Guilia Barone, "La canonizazione
di francesca Romana (1608): la riproposta di un modello agiografico medievale,"
in Finzione e santità tra medioevo e età moderna,
ed. Gabriella Zarri (Sacro/santo, 7; Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1991),
pp. 264-79; Katerine Gill, "The Open Monastery in Italy: Two Examples
from Rome," in The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts
in Early Modern Europe, ed. Craig Monson (Ann Arbor, 1992). On Bernadino
of Siena (+1444), see: Iris Origo, The World of San Bernardino (London,
1963); Lothar Schläpfer, Das Leben des heiligen Bernhardin von
Siena (Düsseldorf, 1965); Bernadino predicatore nella società
del suo tempo (Todi, 1976); Ph. Jansen, "Un exemple de saintété
thaumaturgique à la fin du moyen age: les miracles de saint Bernardin
de Sienne," Mélanges de l'Ecole francaise de Rome: Moyen
Age - Temps modernes, 96 (1984), pp. 129-151. On a saint of less obvious
overall importance, see the following intriguing studies, Jacques Dalarun,
"Jeanne de Signa, ermite toscane du XIVe siècle, ou la sainteté
ordinaire," and Daniel Russo, "Jeanne de Signa ou l'iconographie
au féminin. Etude sur les fresques de l'église paroissiale
de Signa (milieu du XVe sicle)," Mélanges de l'Ecole française
de Rome, Moyen Age, 98 (1986), pp. 161-99 and 201-18.
There were fewer "new" saints in France, but see such
studies as Matthew Tobin, "Le "Livre des révélations"
de Marie Robine (+1399). Etude et édition," Mélanges
de l'Ecole française de Rome, Moyen Age, 98 (1986), pp. 229-64;
M. Somme, "Sainte Colette de Corbie et la réforme franciscaine
en Picardie et en Flandre au XV siècle," Horizons marins
itineraires spirituels, 2 vols. (Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne,
1987), 1: 255-64. Nonetheless local studies there have tended to emphasize
the development of shrines and cults. Louis of Anjou at Toulouse: Margaret
Toynbee, St. Louis of Toulouse and the Process of Canonization in the
Fourteenth Century (Manchester, 1929); M. H. Lauent, Le culte de
Saint Louis d'Anjou à Marseille au XIVe siècle, Les documents
de Louis Antoine de Ruffi (Temi e Testi, 2; Rome, 1954); Jacques Paul,
"Miracles et mentalité religeuse populaire à Marseille
au début du XIVe siècle," Cahiers de Fanjeaux,
11 (1966), pp. 61-90 and "Témoinage historique et hagiographie
dans le procès de canonisation de Louis d'Anjou," Provence
Historique, 23 (1973), pp. 305-17; J. Gardner, "The Cult of a
Fourteenth-Century Saint: the Iconography of Louis of Toulouse," I
Francescani nel Trecento, (Perugia, Centro di studi francescani, 1988),
p. 169-193. Delphina at Marseille: André Vauchez, "La Religion
populaire dans la France méridionale au XIVe siècle d'après
les procès de canonisation," Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 11
(1966), pp. 91-107. Charles of Blois at Periguex: André Vauchez,
"Devotion et vie quotidienne à Periguex au temps de Charles
V d'après un recueil de Miracles de Charles de Blois," Mélanges
offerts a Bernard Chevalier. Villes, bonnes villes, cites et capitales
(Tours, 1989), pp. 305-314. Le Puy: Virginia Reinburg, "Les Pèlerins
de Notre-Dame du Puy," Revue d'histoire de l'église de France
75 (1989), pp. 297-314. Catherine of Fierbois: Yves Chauvin (ed.), Livre
des miracles de Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois, 1375-1470 (Poitiers,
1976), (ET of earlier edition: Andrew Lang, The Miracles of Madame sainte
Katherine of Fierbois [1897]), see also Chauvin's analysis in "Le
Livre des Miracles de Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois," Bulletin de
la Société des Antiquiares de l'Ouest, fourth series,
13 (1975), pp. 281-311. Urban V: Gerard Veyssiere, "Le rayonnement
geographique du culte d'Urbain V," Mémoires de l'Academie
de Vaucluse, 7 series, 6 (1985), p. 137-151; Agaune: Jacques Rossiaud,
"Pèlerins à Saint-Maurice d'Agaune: Les metamorphoses
de Thébains à la fin cu moyen-âge."
A great deal of excellent anglophone scholarship has been devoted recently
to religious practice in late medieval and early modern Spain: William
Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton,
1981); William Christian, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance
Spain (Princeton, 1981); Sara Nalle, God in La Manch: Religious
Reform and the People of Cuenca (); Ronald Surtz, Guitar of God;
Ronald Surtz, Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain:
The Mothers of Saint Teresa of Avila (Philadelphia, 1995); Jodi Bilinkoff,
The Avila of Saint Teresa. Religious Reform in a Sixteenth-Century City
(Ithaca, NY, 1989); Alison Weber, Teresa of Avila and the Rhetoric of
Femininity (1990); Carlos Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art
and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge, 1995). Also
see the recent work by William Christian on modern Spain, Moving Crucifixes
in Modern Spain (Princeton, 1992).
Germany. The most ambitious interpretation of pilgrimage in late
medieval Germany is that which has been evolved in numerous publications
by Lionel Rothkrug. An adequate introduction to this intriguing, but highly
problematic, hypothesis may be found in "Popular Religion and Holy
Shrines. Their Influence on the Origins of the German Reformation and Their
Role in German Cultural Development," in Religion and the People,
800-1700, ed. James Obelkevich (Chapel Hill, 1979), pp. 20-86. Also
see R. W. Scribner, "Ritual and popular Religion in Catholics Germany
at the Time ofth e rEformation," Journal of ecclesiastical History,
35 (1984), pp. 47-77; Steven Sargent, "Miracle Books and Pilgrimage
Shrines in Late Medieval Bavaria," Historical Reflections / Réflexions
historiques, 13 (1986), pp. 455-71; Christopher Wood, "Ritual
and the Virgin on the Column: The Cult of the Schöne Maria in Regensburg,"
Journal of Ritual Studies, 6 (1992), pp. 87-107.
The margins of Europe. Christian Krotzl, Mirakel und Alltag.
Formen des Verhaltens im skandinavischen Mittelalter (12.-15 Jahrhundert)
(Studia Historica, 46; Helsinki: Societas Historica Finlandiae, 1994);
L'Eglise et le peuple chrétien dans les pays de l'europe du Centre-Est
et du Nord (XIVe-XVe s.) (Collection de l'Ecole française de Rome,
128; Rome, 1990). One of the most important saints of the later middle
ages was Bridget of Sweden, for general orientation see the essays collected
in Santa Brigida profeta dei tempi nuovi - Saint Bridget Prophetess of
New Ages (Rome, 1993).
Sanctity and the state.
Royal sanctity perdured into the late middle ages, see Gabor Klaniczay,
"The Cult of Dynastic Saints in Central Europe: Fourteenth-Century
Agnevins and Luxemburgs," in The Uses of Supernatural Power: The
Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe,
trans. Susan Singerman (Princeton, 1990), pp. 111-28. On saints as national
patrons, see Colette Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols
of Nation in Late Medieval France, trans Susan Ross Huston, ed. Fredric
Cheyette (Berkeley, 1991); Christian de Merindol, "Saint Michel et
la monarchie française à la fin du moyen age dans le conflit
franco-anglais," in La "France anglaise" au moyen age.
Colloque des historiens medievistes francais et britanniques (Actes
du 111 congres national des societes savantes, Poitiers, 1986, Section
d'histoire medievale et de philologie, Paris, 1988), pp. 513-542; E. Marosi,
"Der heilige Ladislaus als ungarischer Nationalheiliger. Bemerkungen
zu seiner Ikonographie im 14, 15 Jahrhundert," Acta Historiae Artium
Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 33 (1987), pp. 211-256. For the more
ordinary piety of a late medieval monarch, see Michael Prestwich, "The
Piety of Edward I," in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings
of the Harlaxton Conference, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 1985).
On other political uses of canonization, see John Theilmann, "Political
Canonization and Political Symbolism in Medieval England," Journal
of British Studies, 29 (1990), pp. 241-266; Colette Beaune and Nicole Lemaitre,
"Prophétie et politique dans la France du Midi au XVe siècle,"
in André Vauchez (ed.), Les textes prophétiques et la
prophétie en Occident (XIIe-XVIe siècle) (Mélanges
de l'Ecole française de Rome, Moyen Age, 102.2; Rome, 1990), pp.
597-616. Political ideals and ends could be developed in the cults of other
"saints", see Winfried Trusen, "Der 'heilige' Roland und
das Kaiserrecht," in Festschrift Nikolaus Grass zum 70. Geburtstag,
ed. Kurt Ebert (Innsbruck, 1986), pp. 395-406.
Sanctity and the Family.
The definition of sanctity came to utilize more of familial roles in
the later middle ages. On the saintliness of mothers, see the essays collected
in Anneke Mulder-Bakker (ed.), Sanctity and Motherhood: Essays on Holy
Mothers in the Middle Ages (Garland, 1995). The more general religious
role of the mother has been considered in Clarissa Atkinson, The Oldest
Vocation: Christian Motherhood in the Medieval West (Ithaca, NY, 1993);
Jean Delameau (ed.), La religion de ma mère: La rôle des
femmes dans la transmission de la foi (Paris, 1992). Widowhood had
its own possibilities for saintliness: Isabelle Cochelin, "In secectute
bona: pour une typologie de la vieillesse dans l'hagiographie monastique
des XIIe et XIIIe siècles," in Les ages de la vie au Moyen
age (Cultures et civilisations médiévales, 7; Paris,
1992), pp. 119-38. Children were common recipients of miracles in the later
middle ages: see, generally, Michael Goodich, "Il fanciullo come fulcro
di miracli e potere spirituale (XIII e XIV secolo)," in Potere
carismatici e infomali, ed. A. Paravicini-Bagliani and A. Vauchez (Palermo,
1992), pp. 38-57 and Christian Krötzl, "Christian Parent-Child
Relations in Medieval Scandinavia according to Scandinavian Miracle Collections,"
Scandinavian Journal of History, 14 (1989), pp. 21-37; more specifically
on Elizabeth of Thuringia's miraculous interventions in the lives of children,
see H. Zielinski, "Elisabeth von Thuringen und der Kinder: zur Geschichte
der Kindheit im Mittelalter," in Elisabeth: Die deutsche Orden
und Kirche, ed. U. Arnold and H. Liebing (Marburg, 1983), pp. 27-83
and André Vauchez, "Charité et pauvreté chez
sainte Elisabeth de Thuringe d'après les actes du procès
de canonisation," in Michel Mollat, ed., Etudes sur l'histoire
de la pauvreté (Paris, 1974), 163-73. Occasional servants were
also celebrated, as shown by Michael Goodich, "Ancilla Dei:
The Servant as Saint in the Late Middle Ages," in Women of the
Medieval World, ed. Julius Kirschner and Suzanne Wemple (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1985), 119-36.
Families often took up devotion to a particular saint, see, for example,
John Freed, "Devotion to St. James and Family Identity: The Thurns
of Salzburg," Journal of Medieval History, 13 (1987), p. 207-222.
One of the most increasingly pervasive forms of saintly patronage was to
be found in personal names. Benjamin Kedar, "Noms de saints et mentalité
populaire à Gênes au XIVe siècle," Le Moyen
Age, 73 (1967), pp. 431-46, Cristiane Klapisch-Zuber, "The Name
'remade': The Transmission of Given Names in Florence in the Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Centuries," Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance
Italy (Chicago, 1985), David Herlihy, "Tuscan Names, 1200-1530,"
Renaissance Quarterly, 41 (1988), pp. 561-82, and Steven Sargent,
"Saints' Cults and Naming Patterns in Bavaria, 1400-1600," Catholic
Historical Review, 76 (1990), pp. 673-96 all chart a major change in
the late middle ages. O. Leys has suggested an earlier change: "La
Substitutions de noms chrétiens aux noms préchrétiens
en Flandre occidentale avant 1225," Fifth International Congress
of Toponymy and Anthoponymy (Salamanca, 1958). On the use of patron
saints in the naming of boats, see Geneviève and Henri Bresc, "Les
saints protecteurs de bateaux, 1200-1460," Ethnologie Française,
9 (1979), pp. 161-77.
Many general histories of the family in the later middle ages have heavily
mined the anecdotal evidence provided by collections of miracle stories.
See, for example, David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge,
MA, 1985); Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance
Florence, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago, 1985); John Boswell, The
Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from
Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York, 1988); Shulamith Shahar,
Childhood in the Middle Ages (London, 1990); Barbara Hanawalt, Growing
Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (Oxford,
1993).
Mysticism.
One of the most common characteristics of the new saints of the late
middle ages was visionary or mystical experiences. They often discussed
these experiences in works written by their own hand or through an amanuensis,
thus producing a considerable body of works by recognized saints on the
experiences which garnered their saintly reputation, a genre some scholars
have called "autohagiography." The following collections of essays
provide a good sense of the state of current scholarship on visions, prophecy,
and mysticism in the later middle ages: many contain articles on specific
saints or hagiographers: "Parole inspiré" et pouvoir
charismatique published as part of Mélanges de l'Ecole française
de Rome, Moyen Age, 98.1 (Rome, 1986); Peter Dinzelbacher and Dieter
Bauer (eds.), Religiöse Frauenbewegung und mystische Frömmigkeit
im Mittelalter (Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 1988); André Vauchez
(ed.), Les textes prophétiques et la prophétie en Occident
(XIIe-XVIe siècle) (Mélanges de l'Ecole française
de Rome, Moyen Age, 102.2; Rome, 1990); Daniel Bornstein and Roberto Rusconi
(eds.), Mistiche e devote nell'Italia tardomedievale (Nuovo Medioevo,
40; Naples, 1992); Ulrike Wiethaus (ed.), Maps of Flesh and Light: The
Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics (Syracuse, 1993); E.
Ann Matter and John Coakley (eds.), Creative Women in Medieval and Early
Modern Italy (Philadelphia, 1994); Frances Beer, Women and Mystical
Experience in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge); Potere carismatici e
infomali, ed. A. Paravicini-Bagliani and A. Vauchez (Palermo, 1992).
Giovanni Poazzi and Claudio Leonardi (eds.), Scrittrici mistiche italiane
(Genoa, 1988) provides a useful overview of works written in Italy. For
bibliography on works in German, consult Gertrud Jaron Lewis, Bibliographie
zur deutschen frauenmystik des Mittelalters. Mit einem Anhang zu Beatrijs
van Nazareth und Hadewijch (Bibliographien zur deutschen Literatur
des Mittelalters, 10; Berlin, 1989). For one study of the impact of mysticism
on a wider audience, see David Wallace, "Mystics and Followers in
Siena and East Anglia: A Study in Taxonomy, Class and Cultural Mediation,"
The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. Marion Glasscoe
(1984), pp. 169-91.
Failed saints.
In the late medieval and early modern period we begin to find accusations
made that people are simulating the devotional practices of sanctity. Such
charges were pursued in ecclesiastical courts. The fullest treatment is
in the essays collected in Gabriella Zarri (ed.), Falsa santi e simulazione
in età moderna (Sacro santo, 7; Turin, 1991); But also see Jacques
Dalarun, "La part du faux. Les Bienheureaux Andrea et Giovanni, Françiscains
de Rimini au XIV siecle," Mélanges de l'Ecole francaise
de Rome. Moyen age, 102 (1990), pp. 79-129; Anne Schutte, "Per
Speculum in Enigmate: Failed Saints, Artists, and Self-Construction
of the Female Body in Early Modern Italy," in Creative Women in
Medieval and Early Modern Italy, eds. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley
(Philadelphia, 1994), pp. 185-201
One could interpret the intrepid English laywoman and autobiographer
Margery Kempe as a would-be saint who failed. The bibliography is vast,
but recent treatments which touch on her devotional practices at length
include: Anthony Goodman, "The Piety of John Brunhman's Daughter,
of Lynn," in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Studies in Church
History, Subsidia, 1; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), pp. 347-58; Susan
Dickman, "Margery Kempe and the English Devotional Tradition,"
in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. Marion Glasscoe
(Exeter, 1980), pp. 156-72; Clarissa Atkinson, The Life and the Book
of Margery Kempe (Ithaca, NY); Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and
Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia, 1991); Sandra McEntire (ed.),
Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York, 1992).
One of the most famous saints of the late middle ages, Joan of Arc,
was executed for heresy in the fifteenth century and not canonized until
the twenthieth. Etienne Delaruelle has provided a sophisticated study of
the personal piety of Joan of Arc in "La Spiritualité de Jeanne
d'Arc," in idem, La Piété populaire (Turin, 1975),
pp. 355-88, as well as the role of saintly intercessors in that piety in
"L'Archange Saint Michel dans la spiritualité de Jeanne d'Arc,"
in La Piété populaire (Turin, 1975), pp. 389-400.
Scholars have recently begun to treat the charges made against witches
and heretics as a kind of "anti-sanctity." See, among others,
Edith Ennen, "Zuberinnen und fromme Frauen-Ketzerinnen und Hexen,"
in Peter Segl (ed.), Der Hexenhammer: Entstehung und Umfeld des Malleus
maleficarum von 1487 (Cologen, 1988); Dinora Corsi, "Dal sacrificio
al maleficio. La donna e il sacro nell'eresia e nella stregoneria,"
Quaderni medievali, 29 (1990), pp. 8-62; Peter Dinzelbacher, "Heilige
oder Hexen?" in Dieter Simon (ed.), Religiöse Devianz: Untersuchungen
zu sozialen, rechtlichen und theologishcen Reaktionen auf religiöse
Abeweichung im westlichen und östlichen Mittelalter (Frankfurt,
1990); Gabor Klaniczay, "Hungary: The Accusations and the Universe
of Popular Magic," in Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (eds.),
Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Periperies (Oxford,
1990), 240 ff.
|