The making and unmaking of a saint : hagiography and memory in the cult of Gerald of Aurillac / Mathew Kuefler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kuefler, Mathew.

Series:

Middle Ages series.

The Middle Ages Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gerald, of Aurillac, Saint, 855-909--Cult--History.

Gerald.

Odo, Saint, Abbot of Cluny, approximately 879-942. Vita sancti Geraldi Auriliacensis.

Odo.

Christian hagiography--History--To 1500.

Christian hagiography.

Christian saints--France--Aurilla--Biography--Early works to 1800.

Christian saints.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (317 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A crusader, a hermit, a bishop, a plague victim, and even a repentant murderer by turns: the stories attached to Saint Gerald of Aurillac offer a strange and fragmented legacy. His two earliest biographies, written in the early tenth and early eleventh centuries, depicted the saint as a warrior who devoted his life to pious service. Soon Gerald was a venerated figure, and the monastery he founded was itself a popular pilgrimage site. Like many other cults, his faded into obscurity over time, although a small group of loyal worshippers periodically revived interest, creating sculpted or stained glass images and the alternate biographies that complicated an ever more obscure history. The Making and Unmaking of a Saint traces the rise and fall of devotion to Gerald of Aurillac through a millennium, from his death in the tenth century to the attempt to reinvigorate his cult in the nineteenth century. Mathew Kuefler makes a strong case for the sophistication of hagiography as a literary genre that can be used to articulate religious doubts and anxieties even as it exalts the saints; and he overturns the received attribution of Gerald's detailed Vita to Odo of Cluny, identifying it instead as the work of the infamous eleventh-century forger Ademar of Chabannes. Through his careful examination, the biographies and iconographies that mark the waxing and waning of Saint Gerald's cult tell an illuminating tale not only of how saints are remembered but also of how they are forgotten.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Note on names

Maps 1 and 2

Introduction

Chapter 1. Prolegomenon on the Dating and Authorship of the Writings about Gerald of Aurillac

Chapter 2. The First Saint Gerald

Chapter 3. The Second Saint Gerald

Chapter 4. Saint Gerald and the Swell of History

Chapter 5. Saint Gerald and the Ebb of History

Chapter 6. The Modern Cult of Saint Gerald

Conclusion

Appendix 1. Translation of the Vita sancti Geraldi brevior

Appendix 2. The Manuscripts of the Vita Geraldi

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Includes English translation of the Vita Geraldi brevior.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Contains:

Odo, Saint, Abbot of Cluny, approximately 879-942. Vita sancti Geraldi Auriliacensis. English.

ISBN:

9780812208894

0812208897

OCLC:

870097639