medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
For those listmembers who have joined us in the past 2-1/2 years, since I
started writing my "saints of the day 'column'," I thought it might be
useful to explain what it is that I hope to accomplish with my daily
postings, and how I go about writing them.
I took over from the list's previous martyrologist, when she found the
strain of a daily contribution too difficult to keep up. As I am 1) rather
obsessive, 2) a great lover of trivia, 3) the editor of a comparative
encyclopedia of holy people, and 4) a loner who clearly doesn't have
anything better to do with her time I volunteered to take her place.
The #1 purpose of this listing, to my mind, is to provide a starting point
for discussion of topics ranging over the whole of our period (at the
list-owner's request I don't include saints who died after 1550)---several
hundred more-profound conversations on this list have grown from my
postings. A daily column like this also seems to help give the list
stability--- so that even in dry spells, there's (almost) always one
posting a day to medieval-religion. And I suspect that there are others on
the list, like me, who just like to think of great (or odd, or both) saints
on "their" day, as a celebration of the spirituality, perversity, and sheer
enjoyment value of the medieval cult of saints---in fact I know this, since
a fair number of you have written and told me so.
I do not, however, spend more than 15-20 minutes a day on this task, except
when I'm avoiding grading papers. What I have done has been to pick a main
recent compilation of saints' accounts each year, only referring to other
sources when I found the one I was using annoying or obviously inadequate.
Thus my main source this year is Basil Watkins, ed., *The Book of Saints: A
Comprehensive Biographical Dictionary*, 7th ed (New York: Continuum, 2002).
Last year I combined Farmer's *Oxford Dictionary of Saints* and a couple
of web sites for better coverage of continental Europe; the year before
that I drew mostly on a *Bildlexikon der Heiligen*, a beautiful
recently-published German dictionary of saints.
All of these collections are published by and for Roman Catholics, which
means that very few eastern saints are included from the later Middle Ages.
My current source has saints' days in accordance with the 1969 Roman
Catholic calendar reform.
I include what I think will be of most interest to readers, and am always
open to suggestions. I certainly don't include everything (Watkins has 23
entries for saints of 1. February), but I have, for example, consistently
included saints who were demoted in 1969 at a member's request, have been
more mindful of Scottish saints, include every Breton saint about whom my
source says anything at all interesting, and have included canonization
years when my source gives them. Of course the large majority of the
saints I include are from the days before official canonization, and have
never been retro-fitted with papally-sanctioned haloes.
I remain, as always, happy to try to suggest further sources for interested
listmembers, and several dozen people have in the past consulted me on
matters of hagiographical esoterica---I'm up to a full bookshelf full of
reference books on Christian saints. I should point out, though, that my
own field of study is the German empire in the tenth and eleventh
centuries---that's the only point at which I make any claims of being able
to scratch much beneath the surface.
Best,
Phyllis
Dr. Phyllis G. Jestice
[log in to unmask]
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|
