Dear John--
Many thanks. This is extremely helpful. Let me know if your list of
eleventh-century lives ever does become "available to the public." And--by
the way--I very much enjoyed your new book on Dominic of Sora.
Megan
>>
>Megan:
>
> Do you just want Vitae? Or also other hagiographical genres?
>
> The request for a list of 11th-century lives is an awkward one for
>me, since I have been compiling just such a resource since the early 1980s,
>from the BHL (which does not date), the Biblioteca Sanctorum, my own
>research spin-offs, etc. Unfortunately it is not currently transportable,
>since it consists of punched card file entries referring to file cabinets
>full of photocopies and occasional microfilms. This project was started in
>my pre-electronic era.
>
> The BHL does not actually date texts. It only puts them into
>relative order. The in-progress Belgian project, done by grad students
>directed by Guy Phillipart, to created an electronic BHL, has added search
>possibilities for geography and other new variables, but I do not believe
>that even the finished version will permit a search of vitae by composition
>date (it would take research checking on more than 10,000 texts, many of
>which have never been securely dated).
>
> Getting a sample of major texts for the 11th century, parallel to
>what Ludwig Zoepf did for the l0th century, is doable. In fact, the listing
>in the DICTIONNAIRE DE SPIRITUALITE "biographie spirituelle" article might
>serve, despite some errors. But a complete sample would involve reexaming
>and redating many texts. My 1979 UCLA dissertation involved isolating a
>chronological cross-section of hermit lives written between 970 and l070,
>i.e. very close to the period you proposed to study. At that time I found
>that about 25% of texts attributed to that period in the literature were
>actually misdated. I suspect that this is probably a representative margin
>of error. Hagiographical studies have progressed considerably since then,
>but some areas, particularly eleventh-century rewrites of ancient passiones,
>have still not drawn much systematic critical attention.
>
> On my Web-page, though not updated for a couple of years, you can
>find an annotated list of "Lists of Lives" from which you can get some
>control over what lists have been published. Try
>http://www2.tltc.ttu.edu/howe. I apologize for the under-construction
>nature of the page, but a required shift to Windows95 really messed up my
>Nota Bene translating capabilities and I have still not worked out all the
>bugs.
>
> Good luck.
> --John Howe, Texas Tech
Megan McLaughlin
Associate Professor of History and Women's Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
309 Gregory Hall, 810 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801 U.S.A.
Phone: 217-244-2084
Fax: 217-333-2297
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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