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IMC 2015: Sessions

Session 1230: Renewal in the Cults of Saints: 1050-1300

Wednesday 8 July 2015, 14.15-15.45

Organiser:Steffen Hope, Centre for Medieval Literature, Syddansk Universitet, Odense
Moderator/Chair:Claire Trenery, Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London
Paper 1230-aProphet of Conquest: Reinventing St Dunstan in Anglo-Norman England
(Language: English)
Eleanor Parker, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), University of Oxford
Index terms: Hagiography, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin
Paper 1230-bLike Silver is Refined: The Distillation of Saints from Hagiography to Liturgy in the 12th Century
(Language: English)
Steffen Hope, Centre for Medieval Literature, Syddansk Universitet, Odense
Index terms: Hagiography, Language and Literature - Latin, Liturgy
Abstract

The veneration of saints was a constant in the medieval world, but the cult of any individual saint could be subject to reinvention, reinterpretation, and reformulation in a number of different ways. This session will explore processes of renewal and adaptation in the development of saints' cults across changing cultural, literary, and devotional contexts, focusing on three examples of saints renewed: the reinvention of St Dunstan after the Norman Conquest, 12th-century reformulations of Olaf of Norway and Edmund of East Anglia as hagiography was distilled into liturgy, and the developing iconography of the cult of St Christopher.