medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Some additional bibliography that may be of
interest(unpublished but available on ILL):
Scott Montgomery, "The Use and Perception of Reliquary
Busts in the Late Middle Ages," Ph.D. diss., Rutgers
University, 1996 -- I believe he's published several
related articles since then on the topic. He focuses
on St. Just.
Mary Flavia Godfrey, "The Severed Head: Images of the
Body in Old and Middle English literature," Ph.D.
diss., Princeton, 1992 (esp. the pp. on Aelfric's Life
of St. Edmund, 94-164).
Some further thoughts...Saints rarely hold their own
heads in *narrative* art; as has been pointed out,
cephalophores take their place alongside iconic images
of martyrs holding their own body parts. And I believe
cephalophores are primarily local saints (not, for
example, St. John the Baptist or Catherine of
Alexandria). Showing them holding their heads was
surely a good way for artists and patrons to
legitimize or even "publicize" local claims to their
relics.
Torie Reed
--- Otfried Lieberknecht <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval
> religion and culture
>
> Dear Marjorie,
>
> George and I once posted a bibliography on
> cephalophores to this list, which can still be found
> in the list archives:
>
>
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind9606&L=MEDIEVAL-RELIGION&P=R4765&I=-3
>
> As to some of your your questions:
>
> >1) I looked up "cephalophore" in my on-line
> dictionary and came up
> >empty. The French word "cephalophorie" was my
> "point de départ."
> >What is the English word (if such exists) to
> describe a person
> >who carries his own head?
>
> Simply "cephalophore" or "cephalophore saint" seems
> sufficiently English to me :-)
>
> >2) Is this topos unique to Christianity? I can
> think of no parallel
> >myth in any other culture, although my knowledge of
> such is far
> >from encyclopedic. Come to think of it, are they
> all French? (Denis,
> >Nicaise, now Mitre...)
>
> The message in our archives quotes examples from
> classical literature or myht, but these do not
> really qualify as cephalophores in the strict sense:
> the head (e.e. of Orpheus) which has been cut or
> torn off the body is still speaking or singing but
> is not carried by the beheaded trunk. The typical
> setting for a cephalophore in Christian tradition is
> a public beheading, and that was no common topos in
> classical literature. The message quoted above also
> refers to Dante scholars speculating that Dante in
> his presentation of Bertran de Born (Inf. 28) was
> inspired by islamic sources describing cephalophores
> in front of God's heavenly throne. Yet to my
> knowledge the Dante scholars making or reporting
> this claim have never quoted a precise Islamic
> source (as I remember it the motif is not in the
> Liber Scalae or in the versions thereof that I have
> seen).
>
> And no, they are not all French, San Miniato is one
> of them.
>
> >3) Anyone care to speculate on how this notion came
> into being?
> >Saint Denis is the earliest example I know of such,
> but why did
> >this particular story have to be invented to
> explain the location
> >of his body? Saint Catherine, after all, was
> transported by angels
> >and all sorts of other explanations were available
> for Denis.
>
> Well, it's a good story, isn't it? Fits the general
> paradigm of martyrs apparently unaware of the bodily
> harm inflicted to them and thus morally defeating
> their tormentors. I have heard one explanation, not
> particularly convincing, that statues of saints that
> had been damaged by knocking off their heads might
> haven given rise to such legends. However, you
> don't necessarily need a particular reason or visual
> starting point for inventing a good miracle story
> impressing your audience.
>
> Kind regards, O.
>
>
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