Radical Succession: Hagiography, Reform, and Franciscan Identity in the Convent of the Abbess Juana de la Cruz (1481–1534)

In this article, I study in depth the first vita of the Franciscan Tertiary abbess Juana de la Cruz (Vida y fin de la bienaventurada virgen sancta Juana de la Cruz, written c. 1534), examining it as a chronicle that narrativizes the origins and reform of a specific religious community in the Castile of the Catholic Monarchs. I argue that Vida y fin constitutes an account that was collectively written inside the walls of the enclosure that can help us understand themes, motifs, and symbolic Franciscan elements that were essential for the self-definition of its original textual community. I first discuss the narrative of the convent’s foundation and then examine the penitential identity of the community, highlighting the inspiration that Juana’s hagiography takes from the infancy of Caterina da Siena, as described in the Legenda maior by Raimondo da Capua, and analyzing to what extent the represented penitential practices related to the imitatio Christi reflect a Franciscan Tertiary identity in opposition to a Dominican one. Finally, I address the passages in which the hagiographer(s) discuss(es) the sense of belonging to the Franciscan order rather than the Dominicans, and the mystical figure of Francesco d’Assisi as a founder, guide, and exemplar.

“SINGING IS BEAUTIFUL – READING IS HOLY”. SACRED TEXT, BOOK AND GODLINESS IN THE PAREMIC FOLKLORE OF THE OLD BELIEVERS OF THE NOVGOROD REGION

The article considers the mutual influence of the written and oral traditions of the Old Believers-Bespopovtsy of the Novgorod region on the example of proverbs that exist in those communities at the present time. The article substantiates an application of the approach to the Old Believers, considering it as a textual community, and reveals the role of interpretation of written sources in the oral paremia tradition.

Materiality, Documentary Authority, and the Circulation of the Katherine Group

Written in the decades before Ancrene Wisse, the Early Middle English hagiographies of the Katherine Group depict three virgin martyrs, Katherine, Margaret, and Juliana. Using touch and eyewitness accounts as measures of proof, the legend equates St. Margaret’s body with the textual corpus inscribed on animal hide. The manuscript’s documentary authority is verified through proximity to the holy body of the saint, and, in a similarly body-centred (and precarious) authority, the anchoress functions as the centre of an ephemeral textual community in the early thirteenth century. The Katherine Group narratives and codicological evidence indicate an anchoritic-lay literary culture operating adjacent to clerical manuscript culture, consistent with Catherine Innes-Parker’s theory about co-existing informal and formal vernacular textual cultures in the West Midlands. This “informal,” or ephemeral, textual community shaped lay literacy and manuscript use, including perceptions about the documentary authority of vernacular textual artifacts.

Between Latin and Church Slavonic: Literary Beginnings in the Vernacular and the Question of National Narrative in the Literary History of Bohemia, Croatia, and Poland

The paper is a refl ection on the differences between the development of Czech, Croatian, and Polish literatures. Despite the jurisdiction of the Western Church, the Cyrillo-Methodian mission created conditions for the adoption of Slavonic writ-ing in Bohemia and Croatia. While in Croatia Slavonic writing gained traction, the Slavic-speaking community of Bohemia chose to adopt Latin as the sole literary language. The literary beginnings in Poland, which had most likely not been affect-ed by the Cyrillo-Methodian mission, represents yet another scenario. The study of different conditions leading to the adop-tion of a language of literacy and textual community presents an opportunity to ponder how we study and describe a literary process in general, as well as how we understand the concept of a “national literature” and whether this concept should apply only to literature in the vernacular.

Oral Aspects: A Performative Approach to 1QM

As the product of a textual community imbedded in an oral culture, the War Scroll can be rewardingly approached as a composition intended for a community of hearers. Indeed, this article demonstrates that 1QM retained an orally fluid textuality and preserves a variety of textual indicators of performativity: hints of oral engagement, accumulation of imitable practices, and reliance on rhetorical techniques suited to the ear. In examining the performative potentials in the War Scroll’s prescriptive (cols. 1–9), prayer (cols. 10–14), and dramatic (cols. 15–19) material, I argue that 1QM can be understood as a spoken text, one which lends itself to performance and embodiment.