1st Edition

The Invention of Saintliness

Edited By Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker Copyright 2002
240 Pages
by Routledge

232 Pages
by Routledge

240 Pages
by Routledge

This volume discusses, from an historical and literary angle, the ways in which sanctification and the inscription of saintliness take place. Going beyond the traditional categories of canonization, cult, liturgical veneration and hagiographical lives, the work raises fundamental issues concerning definitions of saints and saintliness in a period before the concept was crystallized in canon law.... Read more
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Contexts: the Cult of Saints and the Invention of Saintliness
Part III: Texts: the Lives of Saints and the Invention of Saintliness

Biography

Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Medieval Studies at the University of Groningen (Netherlands). Her wide-ranging publications on historiography, hagiography and Gender Studies include Sanctity and Motherhood (Garland, 1995), De Kluizenaar in de Eik (The Hermit in the Oak, 1995), and Gouden Legenden (Golden Legend, 1998). She is presently preparing a book on Anchoresses in the Low Countries.

'The volume comprises, in short, a series of carefully nuanced investigations as to the roles that texts, individuals, social groups and institutions played in developing the conceptual framework of the cult of saints before the process of saint-making was subjected to effective control from above.'

 - Ecclesiastical History, Volume 57

'Newcomers to the subject and students embarking on dissertations will find the book eminently useful for the purpose of defining their own research questions.'

- Paul Hayward, University of Lancaster

'Its great virue is the succinct way in which it defines issues central to the field.'

- Paul Hayward, University of Lancaster