By Mathew Kuefler
A crusader, a hermit, a bishop, a virulent disease sufferer, or even a repentant assassin by means of turns: the tales hooked up to Saint Gerald of Aurillac supply an odd and fragmented legacy. His earliest biographies, written within the early 10th and early 11th centuries, depicted the saint as a warrior who dedicated his lifestyles to pious provider. quickly Gerald used to be a honored determine, and the monastery he based used to be itself a favored pilgrimage website. Like many different cults, his pale into obscurity through the years, even supposing a small staff of unswerving worshippers periodically revived curiosity, growing sculpted or stained glass pictures and the exchange biographies that complex an ever extra imprecise history.
The Making and Unmaking of a Saint lines the increase and fall of devotion to Gerald of Aurillac via a millennium, from his loss of life within the 10th century to the try to reinvigorate his cult within the 19th century. Mathew Kuefler makes a powerful case for the sophistication of hagiography as a literary style that may be used to articulate non secular doubts and anxieties while it exalts the saints; and he overturns the got attribution of Gerald's specific Vita to Odo of Cluny, picking out it in its place because the paintings of the notorious eleventh-century forger Ademar of Chabannes. via his cautious exam, the biographies and iconographies that mark the waxing and waning of Saint Gerald's cult inform an illuminating story not just of the way saints are remembered but additionally of ways they're forgotten.
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The Making and Unmaking of a Saint. Hagiography and Memory in the Cult of Gerald of Aurillac
A crusader, a hermit, a bishop, a pandemic sufferer, or even a repentant assassin by way of turns: the tales connected to Saint Gerald of Aurillac supply an odd and fragmented legacy. His earliest biographies, written within the early 10th and early 11th centuries, depicted the saint as a warrior who committed his lifestyles to pious provider.
Additional resources for The Making and Unmaking of a Saint. Hagiography and Memory in the Cult of Gerald of Aurillac
Sample text
It is far simpler to argue that the author of the Vita prolixior secunda, writing only in the late eleventh or early twelfth century when the first manuscripts appear, had both the Vita brevior and the Vita prolixior prima at hand and was attempting to reconcile what were two versions of the Vita Geraldi, both attributed to Odo of Cluny. This author relied most heavily on the Vita prolixior prima, making some corrections: mostly grammatical and stylistic, but including one about Gerald’s birthplace, perhaps from some outside source of information.
39). There is no further information within the Vita prolixior about this Count Ademar, but an episode in Ademar’s Chronicon sheds light on his identity. There he mentioned a man named Ademar whom King Odo of France had named count of Poitiers after the death of the previous count, Ralph (Ranulphus) II, in 890. Ralph had an illegitimate son named E`bles (Eblus), nicknamed Manzer, who was described there as a young boy (parvulum filium), so he was probably not deemed capable of taking possession of his father’s title and lands.
There are also a few changes in language throughout; as Bultot-Verleysen notes, these are often improvements with more accurate use of tenses or the smoothing out of awkward expressions, which would indicate that the Vita prolixior secunda was written after the original, the Vita prolixior (which she calls the Vita prolixior prima). There are also a few factual changes: Gerald’s birthplace is given as valle Aureliana in the Vita prolixior secunda, for example, instead of villa Aureliaco as given in the Vita prolixior.
