WRITING THE LIVES OF SAINTS: THE GOLDEN LEGEND AND ITS COUNTERPARTS

In Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, hagiography – the writing of the lives of saints – became a literary genre par excellence that emerged from a confluence of oral traditions, cultural practices and religious pilgrimage throughout Europe. Notable examples of this phenomenon include Mirk’s Festial, Aelfric’s Lives of Saints and The Golden Legend, a collection of 153 hagiographies that at the height of its popularity in the Middle Ages was more widely published than the Bible, and translated from Latin into almost every other European language. During this course we shall explore the incredible journey of the spoken word through manuscript to printed text.