Lived Religion and Everyday Life in Early Modern Hagiographic Material (Palgrave Studies in the History of Experience)

This book discusses the ways in which early modern hagiographic sources can be used to study lived religion and everyday life from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. For several decades, saints’ lives, other spiritual biographies, miracle narratives, canonisation processes, iconography, and dramas, have been widely utilised in studies on medieval religious practices and social history. This fruitful material has however been overlooked in studies of the early modern period, despite the fact that it witnessed an unprecedented growth in the volume of hagiographic material. The contributors to this volume address this, and illuminate how early modern hagiographic material can be used for the study of topics such as religious life, the social history of medicine, survival strategies, domestic violence, and the religious experience of slaves. Front Matter ....Pages i-xii Introduction: Hagiography and Lived Religion (Jenni Kuuliala, Rose-Marie Peake, Päivi Räisänen-Schröder)....Pages 1-25 Intimate Enemies: Religious Difference in Seventeenth-Century French Catholic Hagiography (Barbara B. Diefendorf)....Pages 27-50 Gentle Holiness in the Vocational Culture of Seventeenth-Century French Visitandine Nuns (Christopher J. Lane)....Pages 51-75 Saintly Shepherdesses: Semi-religious Women and Identity Formation in Seventeenth-Century France (Rose-Marie Peake)....Pages 77-102 From an Experiencer to a Saintly Man: Losing Biography, Gaining Hagiography in the Accounts of Marian Apparitions in Early Modern Poland (Tomasz Wiślicz)....Pages 103-126 Sleeping with the Enemy: Infertility and Wife Murder in a Miracle of St. Peter Martyr (Diana Bullen Presciutti)....Pages 127-151 ‘When the Fury of the Proud Sea Re-awoke’: Water, Devotion, and Lived Experience in Renaissance Venice (Karen McCluskey)....Pages 153-187 Everyday Miracles in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Thomas C. Devaney)....Pages 189-213 Narrating Pain and Healing in Andrieu de la Vigne, Mystère de saint Martin (1496) (Andreea Marculescu)....Pages 215-233 The Seriousness of Comedy in the ‘Redentin Easter Play’ (ca. 1460): Forms, Functions, and Potential Effects (Florian M. Schmid)....Pages 235-263 Cure, Community, and the Miraculous in Early Modern Florence (Jenni Kuuliala)....Pages 265-292 Reading Beneath the Hegemonic Discourse: Finding African Agency and Voice in the Seventeenth-Century Canonisation Inquest of San Pedro Claver (Ronald J. Morgan)....Pages 293-318 Back Matter ....Pages 319-328