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Sacred fictions : holy women and hagiography in late antiquity / Lynda L. Coon.

By:

Coon, Lynda L

Series: Middle Ages seriesPublication details: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1997.Description: xxiii, 228 p. : ill. ; 24 cmISBN:

9780812233711
0812233719 (alk. paper)

Subject(s):

Contents:

1. Hagiography and Sacred Models -- 2. Gender, Hagiography, and the Bible -- 3. The Rhetorical Uses of Clothing in the Lives of Sacred Males -- 4. God's Holy Harlots: The Redemptive Lives of Pelagia of Antioch and Mary of Egypt -- 5. "Through the Eye of a Needle": Wealth and Poverty in the Lives of Helena, Paula, and Melania the Younger -- 6. Civilizing Merovingian Gaul: The Lives of Monegund, Radegund, and Balthild -- Conclusion: Sacred Fictions.

Summary: Late antique and early medieval hagiographic texts present holy women as simultaneously pious and corrupt, hideous and beautiful, examplars of depravity and models of sanctity. In Sacred Fictions Lynda Coon unpacks these paradoxial representations to reveal the construction and circumscription of women's roles in the early Christian centuries. The sacred fictions of holy women were written within the context of the institutionalization of the male priesthood and the masculinization of church worship, Coon contends. The windows they open on the past are far from transparent; driven by both literary invention and moral imperative, the stories they tell helped shape Western gender constructs that have survived into modern times.

List(s) this item appears in: Hagiography

Holdings ( 1 )
Title notes ( 3 )

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Book	St Cyril's Theological Library	Hagiography	270.082/CO (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		00399

Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-219) and index.

Late antique and early medieval hagiographic texts present holy women as simultaneously pious and corrupt, hideous and beautiful, examplars of depravity and models of sanctity. In Sacred Fictions Lynda Coon unpacks these paradoxial representations to reveal the construction and circumscription of women's roles in the early Christian centuries. The sacred fictions of holy women were written within the context of the institutionalization of the male priesthood and the masculinization of church worship, Coon contends. The windows they open on the past are far from transparent; driven by both literary invention and moral imperative, the stories they tell helped shape Western gender constructs that have survived into modern times.