CONGRESS CANCELED Death in the Holy Life
Description
The execution of Marguerite Porete has been a boon to contemporary scholars, who see in her death the culmination of her apophatic theology of annihilation. But to what extent is this a projection of critics’ desire to create a uniform narrative for her life, or to see her as a proto-feminist hero(ine)? To what extent do modern critics’ desires differ from those of medieval hagiographers, whose assumptions about women’s sanctity informed their representations of their subjects’ deaths? Did medieval saints indeed yearn to die, and what are the implications of this desire—whether it was actual or declared after the fact by overeager hagiographers? What is the meaning of the ways that saints die—especially in contexts where martyrdom was no longer an option? This session of papers will explore representations of mortality and the desire to die both in medieval saints’ Lives and in critical approaches to hagiography. -Jessica Barr
CONGRESS CANCELED Death in the Holy Life
Schneider 1135
The execution of Marguerite Porete has been a boon to contemporary scholars, who see in her death the culmination of her apophatic theology of annihilation. But to what extent is this a projection of critics’ desire to create a uniform narrative for her life, or to see her as a proto-feminist hero(ine)? To what extent do modern critics’ desires differ from those of medieval hagiographers, whose assumptions about women’s sanctity informed their representations of their subjects’ deaths? Did medieval saints indeed yearn to die, and what are the implications of this desire—whether it was actual or declared after the fact by overeager hagiographers? What is the meaning of the ways that saints die—especially in contexts where martyrdom was no longer an option? This session of papers will explore representations of mortality and the desire to die both in medieval saints’ Lives and in critical approaches to hagiography. -Jessica Barr