IMC 2006: Sessions
Session 1508: When Bad Mothers Go Good: Violent Gestures in Vision and Miracle Stories
Thursday 13 July 2006, 09.00-10.30
| Organiser: | Anna Taylor, Department of History, University of Texas, Austin |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Opleiding Nederlandse Taal en Cultuur, Universiteit Leiden |
| Paper 1508-a | The Virgo and the Virga: Filiation in Prose and Metric Vitae from around the Year 1000 (Language: English) Index terms: Hagiography, Language and Literature - Latin, Monasticism |
| Paper 1508-b | The Virgin, the Baby, and the Knife: Sacrifice and Self-Sacrifice in Late 12th-Century Cistercian Exempla (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Monasticism, Religious Life |
| Paper 1508-c | Butchering Mother and Healing Saint: Dismembered Child and Remembered Schism in the Nascent Cult of Vincent Ferrer (d. 1419) (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - Painting, Ecclesiastical History, Hagiography |
| Abstract | The three papers in this panel explore miracle narratives from the11th through the 15th centuries in which mothers cut up, cook, or beat their children. The male authors of these accounts do not criticise these seemingly cruel mothers. Rather they use them as symbols: the mothers stand for a small abbey’s overbearing mother house, a priest modelling renunciation for a male monastic community, and mater ecclesia respectively. Drawing on diverse sources, including art, archaeology, poetry, hagiography, and exempla stories, we examine the complicated ways that male authors used violent maternal gestures to discuss sanctity, communal identity, and devotional practice. |