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IMC 2024: Sessions

Session 307: Saints in Crisis, III: Emotional Responses to Sanctity in the Middle Ages - Cross-Dressing Emotions

Monday 1 July 2024, 16:30-18:00

Organiser:Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, Departamento de Historia Medieval, Moderna y Contemporánea, Universidad de Salamanca
Moderator/Chair:Eleonora Celora, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame
Paper 307-aThrough Zosima's Eyes: Fear and Awe in the Encounter with St Mary of Egypt
(Language: English)
Eleonora Celora, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame
Index terms: Hagiography and Liturgy
Paper 307-b'They were frightened and they hit in great pain their heads and hearts': The Death of St Marina la Monaca in Text and Image
(Language: English)
Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, Departamento de Historia Medieval, Moderna y Contemporánea, Universidad de Salamanca
Index terms: Art History - General, Hagiography and Lay Piety
Paper 307-cDeviance or Devotion: Women Dressed as Men at the Shrine of St Cuthbert
(Language: English)
Eleanor Birch, Pembroke College, University of Oxford
Index terms: Hagiography and Women's Studies
Abstract

A series of three (3) sessions examine the connection between emotional responses, crisis, and sanctity by focusing on individual/collective expressions of feelings, reactions, and attitudes.

This session is dedicated to the connection between crisis, emotions, and sanctity by focusing on cross-dressed women accessing spaces dedicated to (male) monastic communities. The session addresses questions about female relationships to saints and devotional practices; gender segregation, prohibition, and disobedience; and female crisis and protection - with a case study on Saint Cuthbert's shrine. A second case study focuses on the emotional reactions and crisis of (male) monastic communities when coming into contact with sanctity, more precisely the relic/body of a woman - as illustrated by a case (study) on Saint Marina the Monk's visual and textual representations. Another case study deals with the emotional reactions of  Monk Zosima in relation to Mary of Egypt, a desert mother, that has undergone a crisis shifting from being a prostitute to a holy woman- as reflected in thirteenth-century Parisian liturgical manuscripts.