The Saint's Life and the Senses of Scripture: Hagiography As Exegesis - Couverture souple

Astell, Ann W.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0268208123 ISBN 13 : 9780268208127

Editeur : University of Notre Dame Press, 2026

Synopsis

Through close examination of ancient, medieval, and modern Lives of the saints, Ann W. Astell demonstrates how the historical transformation of hagiography as a genre correlates with similar changes in biblical studies.

Christian hagiography flourished from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, illuminating the gospel through the overlapping forms of exempla and vita. Originally, the Lives of the saints were understood as hermeneutical extensions of the Bible―God authors the saint, just as God authors the divinely inspired scriptures. During the medieval period, a sense of dual authorship between God and the cooperating saint developed, paralleling the Scholastic impulse to assign greater agency to the human writers of scripture. Then, in the sixteenth century, powerful new anxieties about historical truth pushed hagiography aside for biography, its successor.

Drawing on her expertise in the history of Christianity and biblical exegesis, Astell convincingly shows how this radical shift in hagiography's status―the loss of the literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses of the Lives―serves as a bellwether for modern biblical reception.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Ann W. Astell is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of many books, including Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages, and the editor of Saving Fear in Christian Spirituality.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date d'édition: 2026
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0268208123
• ISBN 13: 9780268208127
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 400
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne