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Offering snapshots of mercantile devotion to saints in different
regions, this volume is the first to ask explicitly how merchants
invoked saints, and why. Despite medieval and modern stereotypes of
merchants as godless and avaricious, medieval traders were highly
devout - and rightly so. Overseas trade was dangerous, and
merchants' commercial activities were seen as jeopardizing their
souls. Merchants turned to saints for protection and succor,
identifying those most likely to preserve their goods, families,
reputations, and souls. The essays in this collection, written from
diverse angles, range across later medieval western Europe, from
Spain to Italy to England and the Hanseatic League. They offer a
multi-disciplinary examination of the ways that medieval merchants,
from petty traders to influential overseas wholesalers, deployed
the cults of saints. Three primary themes are addressed: danger,
community, and the unity of spiritual and cultural capital. Each of
these themes allows the international panel of contributors to
demonstrate the significant role of saints in mercantile life. This
book is unique in its exploration of saints and commerce, shedding
light on the everyday role religion played in medieval life. As
such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of religious history,
medieval history, art history, and literature.
A groundbreaking assessment of the use medieval English
history-writers made of saints' lives. The past was ever present in
later medieval England, as secular and religious institutions
worked to recover (or create) originary narratives that could
guarantee, they hoped, their political and spiritual legitimacy.
Anglo-SaxonEngland, in particular, was imagined as a spiritual
"golden age" and a rich source of precedent, for kings and for the
monasteries that housed early English saints' remains. This book
examines the vernacular hagiography produced in a monastic context,
demonstrating how writers, illuminators, and policy-makers used
English saints (including St Edmund) to re-envision the bonds
between ancient spiritual purity and contemporary conditions.
Treating history and ethical practice as inseparable, poets such as
Osbern Bokenham, Henry Bradshaw, and John Lydgate reconfigured
England's history through its saints, engaging with contemporary
concerns about institutional identity, authority, and ethics.
Cynthia Turner Camp is an Assistant Professor of English at the
University of Georgia.
Offering snapshots of mercantile devotion to saints in different
regions, this volume is the first to ask explicitly how merchants
invoked saints, and why. Despite medieval and modern stereotypes of
merchants as godless and avaricious, medieval traders were highly
devout - and rightly so. Overseas trade was dangerous, and
merchants' commercial activities were seen as jeopardizing their
souls. Merchants turned to saints for protection and succor,
identifying those most likely to preserve their goods, families,
reputations, and souls. The essays in this collection, written from
diverse angles, range across later medieval western Europe, from
Spain to Italy to England and the Hanseatic League. They offer a
multi-disciplinary examination of the ways that medieval merchants,
from petty traders to influential overseas wholesalers, deployed
the cults of saints. Three primary themes are addressed: danger,
community, and the unity of spiritual and cultural capital. Each of
these themes allows the international panel of contributors to
demonstrate the significant role of saints in mercantile life. This
book is unique in its exploration of saints and commerce, shedding
light on the everyday role religion played in medieval life. As
such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of religious history,
medieval history, art history, and literature.
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