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

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\u27s 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.https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1372/thumbnail.jp

An Unsentimental View of Ritual in the Middle Ages, or Sainte Foy was no Snow White

The paper argues that ritual theories (especially those of Victor Turner and other symbolic anthropologists) overemphasize the achievement of community through ritual Contemporary British cultural theory suggests that ritual serves to articulate, but not necessarily to resolve, contesting ideologies and thus provides a convenient site for social negotiation. These theories are examined in the light of materials from the eleventh-century cult of Sainte Foy of Conques in southern France. Through ritual, the monks of the Conques monastery attempted to channel the power of their miracle-working saint into the reliquary-statue they controlled and to use the statue and the rituals surrounding it for their own monastic ends. Local elites, contesting the monks\u27 attempt to achieve political and economic dominance in the region, often resisted the rituals or manipulated them to their own ends. Peasant worshippers also asserted their rights to perform their own rituals in the presence of the reliquary-statue

The Performed Book: Textuality and Social Space in the Cult of Sainte Foy

Chapter in ROMARD: Research on Medieval and Renaissance Drama.https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1354/thumbnail.jp

Interpreting Cultural Symbols: St. Anne in Late Medieval Society

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The Translations of Foy: Bodies, Texts and Places

Chapter in The Medieval Translator. Avec ses concepts et sa terminologie, la traduction fournit aux auteurs médiévaux tout un registre de métaphores leur permettant de passer d\u27un environnement culturel à un autre. Le culte de Sainte Foy en est un exemple: à travers la dévotion qu\u27elle suscite sont mises en relation la traduction des textes relatant son histoire, la translatio de ses reliques d\u27Agena Conques, ainsi que la dissémination de son culte à travers l\u27Europe médiévale. A l\u27occasion de chacune de ces translations s\u27opère une reformulation culture He du culte voué à la jeune martyre. Ceci illustre l\u27analyse de Rita Copeland, pour qui la traduction est la production active d\u27un texte nouveau, qui a conservé sa charge affective originelle et s\u27est adapté aux conditions historiques particulières de sa réception (voir note 11 ).https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1378/thumbnail.jp

The Liturgy as Social Performance: Expanding the Definitions

Chapter in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church. This volume seeks to address the needs of teachers and advanced students who are preparing classes on the Middle Ages or who find themselves confounded in their studies by reference to the various liturgies that were fundamental to the lives of medieval peoples. In a series of essays, scholars of the liturgy examine The Shape of the Liturgical Year, Particular Liturgies, The Physical Setting of the Liturgy, The Liturgy and Books, and Liturgy and the Arts. A concluding essay, which originated in notes left behind by the late C. Clifford Flanigan, seeks to open the field, to examine liturgy within the larger and more inclusive category of ritual. The essays are intended to be introductory but to provide the basic facts and the essential bibliography for further study. They approach particular problems assuming a knowledge of medieval Europe but little expertise in liturgical studies per se.https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/facbooks/1363/thumbnail.jp