Saints and their Communities offers a new approach to the study of lay religion as evidenced in collections of miracle narratives in twelfth-century England. There are a number of problems associated with the interpretation of this hagiographical genre and an extended introduction discusses these. The first issue is the tendency to read these narratives as transparent accounts of lay religion as if it were something susceptible to static, 'ethnographic' treatment in isolation from wider social and political activities. The second issue is the challenge of explaining the miraculous as a credible part of cultural experience, without appealing to reductionist notions of a 'medieval mindset'. The third issue is the problem of how to take full account of the fact that these sources are representations of lay experience by monastic authors. The author argues that miracle narratives were the product of and helped to foster lay notions of Christian practice and identity centred on the spiritual patronage of certain enshrined saints. The six main chapters provide fully contextualized studies of selected miracle collections. Yarrow looks at when these collections were made, who wrote them, the kinds of audiences they are likely to have reached, and the messages they were intended to convey. He shows how these texts served to represent specific cults in terms that articulated the values and interests of the institutions acting as custodians of the relics; and how alongside other programmes of textual production, these collections of stories can be linked to occasions of uncertainty or need in the life of these institutions. A concluding chapter argues the case for miracle collections as evidence of the attempt by traditional monasteries to reach out to the relatively affluent peasantry, and to urban communities in society, and their rural hinterlands with offers of protection and opportunities for them to express their social status with reference to tomb-centred sanctity.

The saints form a huge part of our world's history, on both a religious and secular level. Their shrines have attracted millions of pilgrims throughout the centuries, and their relics continue to be venerated today. In North America even atheists and non-Christians know to bury a statue of StJoseph in their yards for a quick sale of their property. In England there is a tradition that the weather on St Swithun's feast day (the 15th July) will continue for forty more days. On the 14th of February the love-struck and lonely-hearted of the world declare their crushes with a card or giftsto the object of their affections, signing in the name of St Valentine. But how did people become saints? What role does sainthood continue to play in our institutional beliefs and traditions? And how does their significance in the Christian ideology translate into other cultures and belief systems?Simon Yarrow introduces the origins of sainthood and sanctity, and examines the part the saints have played in our society and culture, from the ancient world to the modern day. Exploring the treatment of saints in literature and art, and the way they have been used in politics, he analyses them asexamples of idealised male and female heroism. He concludes by considering the similarities between Christian Saints and holy figures in other religious cultures, including Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism.

The author argues that miracle narratives were the product of and helped to foster lay notions of Christian practice and identity centred on the spiritual patronage of certain enshrined saints."--BOOK JACKET.

The idea of saints and sainthood are familiar to all, irrelevant of religious faith. In this Very Short Introduction, Simon Yarrow looks at the origins, ideas, and definitions of sainthood, sanctity, and saints in the early Church, tracing their development in history and explaining the social roles saints played in the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds. Along the way Yarrow considers the treatment of saints as objects of literary and artistic expression and interpretation, and as examples of idealised male and female heroism, and compares Christian saints and holy figures to venerated figures in other religious cultures, including Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. He concludes by considering the experiences of devotees to saints, and looking at how saints continue to be a powerful presence in our modern world. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The author links personal stories, scripture, prayer, and soul-strengthening exercises for the vocation of Catholic motherhood through the introduction of fifty-two holy companions.

This book honours the scholarship of English historian Dr. Alan Thacker by exploring the insular, the European and, more broadly, the Mediterranean connections and contexts of the history and culture of Anglo-Saxon England in the age of Bede, and beyond. It brings together original contributions by leading European and North American scholars of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages working across a range of disciplines: history, theology, epigraphy, and art history. Moving from the Irish Sea to the Bosporus, this collection presents a linked world in which saints, scholars, and the city of Rome all played powerful connective roles, creating communities, generating relationships, linking east to west, north to south, and present to past. As in Thacker's own work, Bede's life and thought is a central presence. Bede's attitudes to historical and contemporaneous conceptions of heresy, to the Irish church, and the evidence for his often complex relationships with his Northumbrian contemporaries all come under scrutiny, together with groundbreaking studies of his exegesis, christology, and historical method. Many of the contributions offer original insights into figures and phenomena that have been the focus of Dr. Thacker's highly influential scholarship.

In Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics Janine Larmon Peterson investigates regional saints whose holiness was contested. She scrutinizes the papacy's toleration of unofficial saints' cults and its response when their devotees challenged church authority about a cult's merits or the saint's orthodoxy. As she demonstrates, communities that venerated saints increasingly clashed with popes and inquisitors determined to erode any local claims of religious authority. Local and unsanctioned saints were spiritual and social fixtures in the towns of northern and central Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In some cases, popes allowed these saints' cults; in others, church officials condemned the saint and/or their followers as heretics. Using a wide range of secular and clerical sources—including vitae, inquisitorial and canonization records, chronicles, and civic statutes—Peterson explores who these unofficial saints were, how the phenomenon of disputed sanctity arose, and why communities would be willing to risk punishment by continuing to venerate a local holy man or woman. She argues that the Church increasingly restricted sanctification in the later Middle Ages, which precipitated new debates over who had the authority to recognize sainthood and what evidence should be used to identify holiness and heterodoxy. The case studies she presents detail how the political climate of the Italian peninsula allowed Italian communities to use saints' cults as a tool to negotiate religious and political autonomy in opposition to growing papal bureaucratization.