Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture
About the Book Series
This series presents developments and debates within the field of medieval religion and culture.
Sanctity and Female Authorship: Birgitta of Sweden & Catherine of Siena
1st Edition
Edited
By Maria H. Oen, Unn Falkeid
June 30, 2021
Birgitta of Sweden (Birgitta Birgersdotter, 1302/03-1373) and her younger contemporary Catherine of Siena (Caterina Benincasa, 1347-1380) form the most powerful and influential female duo in European history. Both enjoyed saintly reputations in life, while acting as the charismatic leaders of a ...
Preaching and New Worlds: Sermons as Mirrors of Realms Near and Far
1st Edition
Edited
By Timothy Johnson, Katherine Shelby, John Young
September 30, 2020
This collection of essays examines the polyvalent concept of "New Worlds" in the context of medieval and early modern sermon studies. While the terms "Old World" and "New World" are commonplace in studies of Europe and the Americas, this volume explores how preaching in the Atlantic world and ...
Saintly Women: Medieval Saints, Modern Women, and Intimate Partner Violence
1st Edition
By Nancy Nienhuis, Beverly Mayne Kienzle
September 30, 2020
This ground-breaking volume assesses the contemporary epidemic of intimate partner violence and explores how and why cultural and religious beliefs serve to excuse battering and to work against survivors’ attempts to find safety. Theological interpretations of sacred texts have been used for ...
Representations of Eve in Antiquity and the English Middle Ages
1st Edition
By John Flood
December 10, 2019
As the first woman, Eve was the pattern for all her daughters. The importance of readings of Eve for understanding how women were viewed at various times is a critical commonplace, but one which has been only narrowly investigated. This book systematically explores the different ways in which Eve ...
The Barbarian North in Medieval Imagination: Ethnicity, Legend, and Literature
1st Edition
By Robert Rix
December 10, 2019
This book examines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide range of medieval texts from all over Europe, with a focus on the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The pagan...
The Invention of Saintliness
1st Edition
Edited
By Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker
May 07, 2015
This volume discusses, from an historical and literary angle, the ways in which sanctification and the inscription of saintliness take place. Going beyond the traditional categories of canonization, cult, liturgical veneration and hagiographical lives, the work raises fundamental issues concerning ...
Medieval Monstrosity and the Female Body
1st Edition
By Sarah Alison Miller
September 11, 2014
The medieval monster is a slippery construct, and its referents include a range of religious, racial, and corporeal aberrations. In this study, Miller argues that one incarnation of monstrosity in the Middle Ages—the female body—exists in special relation to medieval teratology insofar as it ...
Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages
1st Edition
Edited
By Carolyn Muessig, Ad Putter
May 16, 2014
Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages deals with medieval notions of heaven in theological and mystical writings, in visions of the Otherworld, and in medieval art, poetry and music. It considers the influence of such notions in the secular literature of some of the greatest writers of the period ...
Crying in the Middle Ages: Tears of History
1st Edition
Edited
By Elina Gertsman
November 08, 2013
Sacred and profane, public and private, emotive and ritualistic, internal and embodied, medieval weeping served as a culturally charged prism for a host of social, visual, cognitive, and linguistic performances. Crying in the Middle Ages addresses the place of tears in Jewish, Christian, and ...
Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe
1st Edition
Edited
By Sam Riches, Sarah Salih
November 24, 2011
This collection brings together two flourishing areas of medieval scholarship: gender and religion. It examines gender-specific religious practices and contends that the pursuit of holiness can destabilise binary gender itself. Though saints may be classified as masculine or feminine, holiness may ...
Julian of Norwich: Visionary or Mystic?
1st Edition
By Kevin Magill
July 21, 2010
Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century woman who at the age of thirty had a series of vivid visions centred around the crucified Christ. Twenty years later, while living as an anchoress in a church, she is believed to have set out these visions in a text called the Showing of Love. Going ...
Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, c.1100–c.1400
1st Edition
By Irina Metzler
July 08, 2010
This impressive volume presents a thorough examination of all aspects of physical impairment and disability in medieval Europe. Examining a popular era that is of great interest to many historians and researchers, Irene Metzler presents a theoretical framework of disability and explores key areas ...