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10 Seminar Topics & Bibliographies Seminar 1 : History and Hagiography: The Lives and Cults of the Saints Seminar Preparation This seminar will look at the written lives or Vitae of medieval saints, and consider what historians of medieval religion and society might be able to learn from such documents. We will look at the primary source texts listed below together, and consider their strengths and weaknesses as ‗primary sources‘, the context in which they were composed, and the purposes of their authors. Please maker sure that you have read the source texts before the seminar, and refer to the recommended secondary reading for further guidance. It should be possible to access some of the secondary texts online, even if you are away from the university library. Look at the ‗questions for discussion‘ for further guidance. Primary Sources for Class Discussion The Life, Translation, and Miracles of St Sacerdos by Hugh of Fleury, available online at http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~thead/sacerdos.htm Extracts from Jacobus of Voraigne, The Golden Legend (The 11,000 Virgins, Thomas Becket, the Translation of Thomas Becket) The Miracles of St Osmund The Miracles of Henry VI Thomas of Celano, Two Lives of St Francis, online extracts at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/stfran-lives.html Secondary Sources P. Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography (tr.V. M. Crawford). Available online at: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/delehayelegends.html : Chapters 1-3 D.Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 2003 (most recent edition, but there are others) B. Abou-El-Haj, The medieval cult of saints : formations and transformations (1993) P.Brown, The cult of the saints : its rise and function in Latin Christianity (1981) T.Head, Medieval hagiography : an anthology (2001)
11 T.Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages, 1988 A.Vauchez, Sainthood in the later Middle Ages, 1988 D. Weinstein, Saints and society [electronic resource] : the two worlds of western Christendom, 1000-1700 (History E-Book Project, accessible via Unicorn) S.Wilson, Saints and their cults : studies in religious sociology, folklore and history, 1983 Discussion Questions When was the saint alive, and when was the life written? By whom? (if we know) What motives might there have been for writing the life of this saint at this specific time? What can we learn about the saint from this text? And, conversely, what can‘t we learn? Why were the legends of the saints so popular? And what function / purpose did the texts fulfil? By what other means might information about the saints have been disseminated? What is ‗hagiography‘, and how does it differ from other sorts of biography? Are the lives of the saints a form of historical writing? How useful is hagiography to the historian? Why have historians been sceptical about its worth, and are they right to be? Are the lives of the saints anything more than myths and legends? And does this matter? Seminar 2: Popular Culture: The People of Europe and the Ritual Year Summary ‗It is sometimes expedient to allow people to play the fool and make merry‘ (Claude de Rubys). In this session we will look in more detail at ‗merry-making‘, the idea of the ‗ritual year‘, and the feasts and festivities that marked out the calendar in Early Modern Europe. Without being overly prescriptive, we will focus our attention upon publicly celebrated festivals and customs – not least because these provide the historian with the best source materials – and the way in which they were changed and adapted during our period. Some distinction may be made between the festivities of the populace and those of the ‗elite‘, or between those festivals with a religious
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Page 7 and 8: 7 Course Outline Autumn Term Week O
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Page 13 and 14: 13 Secondary Reading Burke, P., Pop
Page 15 and 16: 15 Secondary Sources Aston, M., Eng
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Page 21 and 22: 21 Curry, P., Prophecy and power :
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Page 31 and 32: 31 Seminar Preparation We will use
Page 33 and 34: 33 Seminar One: The Malleus Malefic
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Page 39 and 40: 39 Seminar 4 : Magic I - Popular Be
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Page 45 and 46: 45 Read, J., Prelude to Chemistry.

Ritual, Myth and Magic in Early Modern Europe - University of Reading

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