-----Original Message-----
From: Chara Armon <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, July 01, 2000 12:18 PM
Subject: sanctity
>Returning to the beatus/sanctus discussion, and to Dennis Martin's
>suggestion that sanctity has primarily to do "not with sinlessness or
>nobility or likeability but with recognition of and sorrow for one's sins,"
>I wonder whether other listmembers agree with me that this seems a
>problematic criterion. Thinking historically, the main question that
>interests me is whether the medieval faithful would have accepted this as
>the primary criterion for determining whether or not someone was a saint.
I absolutely agree with you. Certainly, the penitent saint is a powerful
model, first drawn, I believe, by Augustine but there is, as far as I know,
no implication of penitence or recognition of sin in the early martyr
stories where the cult of saints has its origin Moreover, as hagiography
developed as a genre in the early middle ages, the emphasis was generally on
self-imposed mortifications as a substitute for martyrdom, not as a penance
for sin. The more important exceptions to this rule are fictional: the
various repentant whore romances of the fourth and fifth centuries.
Naturally, no one ever suggests that the saint was born without sin, but
some hagiographers come very close when they have their subject miraculously
singled out in childhood or even in the womb.
Jo Ann
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|