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For thirteenth-century preacher, exorcist, and hagiographer Thomas
of Cantimpre, the Southern Low Countries were a harbinger of the
New Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit, he believed, was manifesting itself
in the lives of lay and religious people alike. Thomas avidly
sought out these new kinds of saints, writing accounts of their
lives so that these models of sanctity might astound, teach, and
trouble the convictions of his day. In Excessive Saints, Rachel J.
D. Smith combines historical, literary, and theological approaches
to offer a new interpretation of Thomas's hagiographies, showing
how they employ vivid narrative portrayals of typically female
bodies to perform theological work in a rhetorically specific way.
Written in an era of great religious experimentation, Thomas's
texts think with and through the bodies of particular figures: the
narrative of the holy person's life becomes a site of theological
invention in a variety of registers, particularly the devotional,
the mystical, and the dogmatic. Smith examines how these texts
represent the lives and bodies of holy women to render them
desirable objects of devotion for readers and how Thomas
passionately narrates these lives even as he works through his
uncertainties about the opportunities and dangers that these
emerging forms of holiness present. Excessive Saints is the first
book to consider Thomas's narrative craft in relation to his
theological projects, offering new visions for the study of
theology, medieval Christianity, and medieval women's history.
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Sam Smith
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Discovery Miles 1 950
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