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

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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