A trickster saint whose miracles reportedly included the healing of an inguinal hernia via a hammer and anvil, Sainte Foy inspired one of the most important collections of miracle stories of the central middle ages. Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn explore the act of "writing faith" as performed both by the authors of these stories and by the scholars who have used them as sources for the study of medieval religion and society. As Ashley and Sheingorn show, differing agendas shaped the miracle stories over time. The first author, Bernard of Angers, used his narratives to critique popular religion and to establish his own literary reputation, while the monks who continued the collection tried to enhance their monastery's prestige. Because these stories were rhetorical constructions, Ashley and Sheingorn argue, we cannot use them directly as sources of historical data. Instead, they demonstrate how analyzing representations common to groups of miracle stories—such as negative portrayals of Muslims on the eve of the Crusades—can reveal the traces of history.

Writing Faith: Text, Sign, and History in the Miracles of Sainte Foy

Biographies & Memoirs

Ashley, Kathleen

Sheingorn, Pamela

Historical

University of Chicago Press

Medieval manuscript culture organizes reading as a visual experience. Early fifteenth-century Paris saw a proliferation of luxury manuscripts whose illuminations situate the reader as spectator. Christine de Pizan understood this visual aspect of medieval texts and exploited it throughout her work. The Epistre Othea (or Letter of Othea, dated about 1400) exemplifies the visual potential of medieval literature to enhance the reading experience. Myth, Montage, and Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture, as a study of this visuality, draws extensively on film theory, which offers critical categories for the structures of spectatorship. The authors argue that premodern and postmodern cultures share a predilection for the cinematic arrangement of knowledge in a montage format. Their book explores the competing models for the study of visual cultures represented by the work of Erwin Panofsky and Aby Warburg and argues that the latter's Mnemosyne offers the most productive method for analyzing the Epistre Othea. Marilynn Desmond is Professor of English, Binghamton University. Pamela Sheingorn is Professor of History, Medieval Studies, and Theatre, Graduate Center, the City University of New York.

Myth, Montage, and Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture: Christine de Pizan's Epistre Othea

Literature & Fiction

Desmond, Marilynn Robin

History & Criticism

University of Michigan Press

The Easter Sepulchre is the English form of a monument known throughout Western Europe in the Middle Ages as the sepulchrum domini, the tomb of the Lord, the monument associated specifically with the commemorative Easter rites. The Easter Sepulchre stood in the place of Christ's tomb in Jerusalem, recreated in hundreds of churches in England for Holy Week and Easter each year. This volume discusses this important monument that stands at the intersection of several important aspects of medieval culture: its study impinges upon the fields of drama, liturgy, art history, and social history. The study is organized so as to trace individual threads-the representations of the Holy Sepulchre in art, the development of the commemorative Easter rites, and the form and iconography of the Easter Sepulchre-before describing the pattern that results when they are interwoven. This volume is of critical interest to those studying this monument, and sheds light on the intersections of medieval English developments in art, liturgy, drama, and popular religion.

The Easter Sepulchre in England (Early Drama, Art, and Music Reference Series)

Arts & Photography

Medieval Institute Publications

The Easter Sepulchre in England (Early Drama, Art, and Music Reference Series, 5)

Sculpture

Western Michigan Univ Medieval

In addition to a catalogue of Easter sepulchres in England, Professor Sheingorn has produced in her introduction a superb study of the ceremonies, rites, and dramas associated with this structure.

The Easter Sepulchre in England (Early Drama, Art, and Music Reference)

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Books by Sheingorn, Pamela