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This book discusses the ways in which early modern hagiographic sources can be used to study lived religion and everyday life from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. For several decades, saints' lives, other spiritual biographies, miracle narratives, canonisation processes, iconography, and dramas, have been widely utilised in studies on medieval religious practices and social history. This fruitful material has however been overlooked in studies of the early modern period, despite the fact that it witnessed an unprecedented growth in the volume of hagiographic material. The contributors to this volume address this, and illuminate how early modern hagiographic material can be used for the study of topics such as religious life, the social history of medicine, survival strategies, domestic violence, and the religious experience of slaves.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Hagiography & Lived Religion; Jenni Kuuliala, Rose-Marie Peake, and Päivi Räisänen-Schröder.- 2. Intimate Enemies: Religious Difference in Seventeenth-Century French Catholic Hagiography; Barbara B. Diefendorf.- 3. Gentle Holiness in the Vocational Culture of Seventeenth-Century French Visitandine Nuns; Christopher J. Lane.- 4. Saintly Shepherdesses: Semi-religious Women and Identity Formation in Seventeenth-Century France; Rose-Marie Peake.- 5. From an Experiencer to a Saintly Man: Losing Biography, Gaining Hagiography in the Accounts of Marian Apparitions in Early Modern Poland; Tomasz Wislicz.- 6. Sleeping with the Enemy: Infertility and Wife Murder in a Miracle of St. Peter Martyr; Diana Bullen Presciutti.- 7. 'When the Fury of the Proud Sea Re-Awoke': Water, Devotion, and Lived Experience in Renaissance Venice; Karen McCluskey.- 8. Everyday Miracles in Seventeenth-Century Spain; Thomas C. Devaney.- 9. Narrating Pain and Healing in Andrieu de la Vigne, Mystère de saint Martin (1496); Andreea Marculescu.- 10. The Seriousness of Comedy in the 'Redentin Easter play' (ca. 1460): Forms, Functions, and Potential Effects; Florian M. Schmid.- 11. Cure, Community, and the Miraculous in Early Modern Florence; Jenni Kuuliala.- 12. The Sacred in Everyday Spaces: Discerning African Voices in the Canonisation Inquest of San Pedro Claver; Ronald J. Morgan.
About the author
Jenni Kuuliala is Postdoctoral Researcher at Tampere University, Finland.
Rose-Marie Peake is Postdoctoral Researcher at Tampere University, Finland.
Päivi Räisänen-Schröder is Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki, Finland.
