John S. Ott
Portland State University
Fall 2023
All material on this and attached pages (c) John S. Ott (2011-2018)

HST 454/554: TOPICS IN MEDIEVAL HISTORY
The Holy Dead: Saints, Relics, and Society in the Middle Ages
(T,R 12:00-1:50, FMH B129)

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Instructor: Dr. John S. Ott
Office hours:  By appt. only; e-mail to set up
Office: 441-H Cramer Hall
Phone: 503.725.3013 / E-mail: ott@pdx.edu
 

Course description and objectives

This course examines the social phenomena and spectrum of medieval beliefs concerning holy men and women identified as saints, as well as associated practices, values, and anxieties surrounding their corporeal remains, or relics. The course content will be grounded in a wide-ranging discussion about whether historians can, or should, write about religious beliefs in the past, and how the subject has been approached from within and outside the discipline of History. Students will also be asked to reflect on how their own understanding of, and experience with, religion affects their understanding of it as a motive for historical actors.

Topics to be examined: sociological and historical approaches to and debates on the analysis of religious beliefs and practices; the construction sanctity and the historical evolution of its archetypes; the production and hermeneutics of hagiography and its sub-genres; race, gender, and sainthood; medieval ideas concerning the body (holy and not); relics and their presentation/display; sanctity and heresy.

Simultaneously, and no less significantly, this course pursues a number of overarching objectives relating to the professional practice of historians and the writing of History.


• We will consider challenges and methods that face historians writing abuot medieval religious practice;
  
• We will assess how historians' personal religious beliefs--and assumptions derived from those beliefs--directly and indirectly affect how they write and think about History;
• We will examine different sociological models of religion and society;
• We will write about our own assumptions concerning religious belief.

The class will include a field trip, likely between 11/7 and 11/14 (optional, date to be arranged) to Mt Angel Abbey and Seminary in Mt. Angel, OR, to visit the abbey's collection of devotional manuscripts and saints' relics.

Student evaluation

Undergraduate students will be assessed through the following assignments, guidelines for which are linked below.  Please note that Incompletes will be given only in accordance with University guidelines, and only with the advanced consent of the instructor.

• Active, engaged participation in class discussion, group work, and all other public components of the class -- 200 points (20%), divided into attendance (100 points) and discussion (100 points). Attendance is weighted at 5 points/class. An attendance sheet will be circulated daily; it is the student's responsibility to sign it. In determining participation portion of grade, excellent (90%+) attendance without oral participation will usually be assessed a final grade of "C" (around 75/100 points). Note that an 80% rate of attendance can yield no more than an 80% participation grade, and that assumes regular/daily participation. Excused absences will count neither for nor against your participation grade. For absences to be considered excused, the instructor must be notified in advance of class.
  
• Reflective short essay (approx. 4 pp.) on religious identity -- 200 points (20%).  Due Tuesday, October 10, in class.
  
• Medieval saint/saint's cult essay and presentation -- 250 points (150 paper/100 presentation) (25%). Sign up sheet for presentations (currently scheduled for 10/31 and 11/21-- subject to change) to be circulated in advance.
• Two interpretive essays, one on course material through 10/31, the second on material through 11/30 (~5 pp.) -- 350 points (175 points each.) (35%). Due, respectively, no later than November 9 and December 6.| Essay 1 Guidelines | Essay 2 Guidelines |
  

Graduate students, will complete the reflective essay (200), class attendance/discussion (200), saint/cult presentation (250), and either an historiographical essay (~ 15 pp., inclusive of bibliography) on a subject of their choosing, in consultation with the instructor, OR a review essay (15 pp.) covering four of the recommended books from the syllabus, or a limited research paper connected to one or more of the course themes (15 pp.) (350 points/35%). The final project (chosen from the three options above) is due in my office on Wednesday, December 6(Finals Weeks) by 5:00 PM.

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Required materials

Books may be purchased at the university bookstore or from independent booksellers. The majority of assigned readings are available on Course reserves.  Students are responsible for preparing all the assigned readings in advance of class.

• Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word. Saints' Stories and the Western Imagination, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Harvard, 2008)
  
• Mary-Ann Stouck, trans., A Short Reader of Medieval Saints (Toronto, 2009)
  

Plagiarism and AI usage policy

Refer to syllabus handed out in class.

Accessibility notice

Refer to syllabus handed out in class.

E-mail policy

Refer to syllabus handed out in class.

Title IX statement

Refer to syllabus handed out in class.

Submission of late qork and assignment extensions

Refer to syllabus handed out in class.

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Syllabus

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Part I.  Thinking about religion and history

T (9/26)  Welcome! Introduction to course themes, format, and expectations

TH (9/28)  Religion and History: the Historian's Dilemma

Readings (all):

• Gavin Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1990), pp. 42-68 (ch. 3) (Course reseves)
• Brad S. Gregory, "The Other Confessional History: On Secular Bias in the Study of Religion," History and Theory 45 (2006): 132-149 (available on J-Stor)
  

T (10/3) Debate: God in/and History

Readings:

• Tor Egil Forland, "Acts of God? Miracles and Scientific Explanation," History and Theory 47:4 (2008): 483-494 (Course reserves);
• Brad S. Gregory, "No Room for God? History, Science, Metaphysics, and the Study of Religion," History and Theory 47:4 (2008): 495-519 [read pp. 510-519] (Course reserves);
• Tor Egil Forland, "Historiography without God: A Reply to Gregory," History and Theory 47:4 (2008): 520-532 (Course reserves)

Optional additional reading (grad students must pick one):

• William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature (New York, 1902, rpt. 1922), chap. 2, pp. 26-52 (Course reserves);
• Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York, 1995), pp. 208-231 (Course reserves);
  
• Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, A Theory of Religion (New York, 1987), chap. 2, pp. 25-53 (Course reserves)

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Part II.  Saints and ther Cults, from Antiquirty to the Early Middle Ages

TH (10/5) What is a saint? What is hagiography (the  'saint's life')?

Readings (all):

• Hippolyte Delehaye, Sanctus: Essay on the Cult of Saints in Antiquity, trans. J. S. Ott (Brussels: Societe des Bollandistes, 1927), pp. 233-236, 259-261 (Course reserves);
• Aviad Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, pp. ix-xii, 1-15;
• An unremarkable saint:, Life of St Vodoalus, trans. J. S. Ott (Course reserves);
• Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography. Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), pp. 38-39, 55-71 (Course reserves)
  

T (10/10) The Christian cult of martyrs

Readings (all):

• The Martyrdom of Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna (On-line);
• The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, in A Short Reader of Medieval Saints, ed. Stouck, pp. 9-20;
  
• Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 15-34, 54-80
  

REFLECTIVE ESSAY DUE, IN CLASS

TH (10/12) The call of the desert: Ascetic withdrawal

Readings (all):

• Athanasius of Alexandria, The Life of St. Antony, in A Short Reader of Medieval Saints, ed. Stouch, pp. 21-39;
• Palladius, The Lausiac History: 'Amma Talis and Taor," "Collythus," and "Melania the Younger," trans. W. K. Lowther Clarke (London, 1918), pp. 165-169 (Course reserves);
• Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, pp. 81-117

Grad students also read:

• Peter Brown, "Enjoying the Saints in Late Antiquity," in Decorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishments on Tombs and Shrines of Saints, ed. Stephen Lamia and Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo (Turnhout, 2002), pp. 3-17 (Course reserves)
  

T (10/17)  The partitioned (and resurrected) body

Readings (all):

• Victricius of Rouen, In Praise of the Saints, trans. P. Buc., in Medieval Hagiography. An Anthology, ed. Tom Head (New York, 2001), pp. 31-51 (Course reserves);
• Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, pp. 34-53

Graduate students also read:

• Carolyn Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York, 1995), pp. 59-68, 86-114 (Course reserves)

TH (10/19) Early medieval models of sanctity I (holy abbots)

Readings (all):

• Gregory the Great, The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, in A Short Reader of Medieval Saints, ed. Stouck, pp. 40-72;
  
• Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, 118-150, 181-194

T (10/24) Early medieval models of sanctity II (holy abbesses and recluses)

Readings:

• Venantius Fortunatus, Life of St. Radegund of Poitiers, in A Short Reader of Medieval Saints, ed. Stouck, pp. 73-85
• Life of St Liutberga (d. 865? composed late ninth century), ed. G. H. Pertz, trans. Jo Ann McNamara (On-line);

Choose either:

• Jo Ann McNamara, "The Need to Give: Suffering and Female Sacntity in the Middle Ages," in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991), pp. 199-221 (Course reseves)

Or (grad students read both):

• Julia M.H. Smith, "The Problem of Female Sanctity in Carolingian Europe, c. 780-920," Past and Present 146 (1995): 3-37 (Course reserves)
  

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Part III.  Saints, Relics, and Mobililty

TH (10/26) The trade in relics: Acquisition, exchange, theft

Reading (all):

• Einhard, The Translation of Ss. Marcellinus and Peter, in A Short Reader of Medieval Saints, ed. Stouck, pp. 86-106

And read either:

• Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra. Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages, rev. ed. (Princeton, N.J., 1990), pp. 3-27 (ch. 1) (Course reserves)

Or:

• Michael McCormick, "Hagiographical Horizons: Collecting exotic relics in early medieval France," chap. 10 in Origins of the European Economy. Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300-900 (Cambridge, Eng., 2001), pp. 283-318 (Course reserves)

or (grad students pick any two):

• Holger A. Klein, "Sacred Things and Holy Bodies: Collecting Relics from Late Antiquity to the Early Renaissance," in Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, ed. Martina Bagnoli, et al (New Haven, 2010), pp. 55-67 (Online; there is also an awkward .pdf on Course reserves)

T (10/31) The saint's body moved and displayed

Reading:

Choose either:

• Barbara Abou El-Haj, "The Audiences for the Medieval Cult of Saints," Gesta 30 (1991): 3-15 (available on J-Stor)<>

or:

• Kate M. Craig, "Lay responses to traveling relics," chap. 5 in Mobile Saints: Relic Circulation, Devotion, and Conflict in the Central Middle Ages (New York, 2021), pp. 137-158 (Course reserves)
  

or (grad students pick any 2):


• Cynthia Hahn, The Reliquiary Effect. Enshrining the Sacred Object, pp. 18-46 (chap. 1) (London, 2017) (Course reserves)

STUDENT ORAL PRESENTATIONS I

TH (11/2) Pilgrimage

Readings (all):

• "The Pilgrim's Guide to St James of Compostela," in A Short Reader of Medieval Saints, ed. Stouck, pp. 107-119;
  
• The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour, trans. Marcus Bull (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 97-104, 117-136 (Course reserves)

And choose one of the following:

• R.A. Markus, "How on Earth Could Places Become Holy?" Journal of Early Christian Studies 2:3 (1994): 257-271 (available on Project Muse)
• Scott G. Bruce and W. Tanner Smoot, "The Social Life of an Eleventh-Century Shrine in the Miraculorum sancti Maioli libri duo (BHL 5186)," Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 12 (2023): 27-52 (Course reserves)
  

T (11/7)  Gender-fluid saints: Marinos and Brother Joseph of Schönau

Readings (all):

• Life of St. Mary/Marinos, trans. Nicholas Constas, in Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints' Lives in English Translation, ed. Alice-Mary Talbot (Washington, D.C., 1996-2006), pp. 1-13 (Course reserves and Google Books)
• Martha G. Newman, "Assigned Female at Death: Joseph of Schönau and the Disruption of Medieval Gender Binaries," in Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, ed. Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt (Amsterdam, 2021), pp. 43-63 (Available on J-Stor)
  

TH (11/9) Christina, the Astonishing Saint

Readings (all):

• Thomas of Cantimpré, "The Life of Christina [of Saint-Trond] the Astonishing," in Medieval Saints: A Reader, ed. Mary-Ann Stouck, pp. 436-469 (Course reserves);
• Claire Fanger, "Extreme Sanctity at the Turn of the Thirteenth Century: The Metamorphosis of Body and Community in the Vitae of Christina Mirabilis and Francis of Assisi," in The Sacred and the Sinister: Studies in Medieval Religion and Magic, ed. David J. Collins (College Station, PA, 2019), pp. 17-40 (Course reserves and in Ebook of the same title; note Ebook is divided into two .pdfs, text + endnotes). Read pp. 17-27 only.

FIRST ESSAY DUE, IN CLASS, NO LATER THAN TODAY

T (11/14)  The efflorescence of lay sanctity: Francis of Assisi

Readings (all):

• Thomas of Celano, Life of St. Francis of Assisi, in A Short Reader of Medieval Saints, ed. Stouck, pp. 120-141;
• Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, pp. 206-238
  

TH (11/16)  Writing holiness on the body

Readings (all):

• Raymond of Capua, Life of St. Catherine of Siena, in A Short Reader of Medieval Saints, ed. Stouck, pp. 156-173;
• Caroline Walker Bynum, "Bodily Miracles and the Resurrection of the Body in the High Middle Ages," Belief in History. Innovative Approaches to European and American Religion, ed. Thomas Kselman (Notre Dame, Ind., 1991), 68-106 (Course reserves)
  

T (11/21) Saints for the masses: The preaching orders and The Golden Legend

Readings (all):

• "Four 'Lives' from the Golden Legend," in A Short Reader of Medieval Saints, ed. Stouck, pp. 142-155;
• Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, pp. 200-204, 239-277
  

STUDENT ORAL PRESENTATIONS II (remainder of class)

TH (11/23) - NO CLASS, Thanksgiving observed

T (11/28) Un/holy: saints and heretics

Readings (pick 2; grad students read all 3):

• Janine Larmon Peterson, "Holy Heretics in Later Medieval Italy," Past and Present 204 (2009): 3-31 (Course reserves or on J-Stor)
  
• Richard Kieckhefer, "The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft and Magic in Late Medieval Europe," in Christendom and Its Discontents, ed. S. Waugh and P. Diehl (Cambridge, Eng., 1996), 310-337 (Course reserves);
• Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinksi, The Strange Case of Ermine de Reims: A Medieval Woman between Demons and Saints (Philadelphia, 2015), pp. 127-150 (ch. 5, "Ermine and the Discernment of Spirits') (Course reserves or available as Ebook through Millar Library)
  

TH (11/30) Religion, history, belief

Reading:

• Kleinberg, Flesh Made Word, pp. 278-297
• Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation (Princeton, N.J., 2013), pp. 609-637 (Course reserves)