Comparative Hagiology and/as Manuscript Studies: Method and Materiality

Although the academic study of hagiography continues to flourish, the role of comparative methods within the study of sanctity and the saints remains underutilized. Similarly, while much valuable work on saints and sanctity relies on materialist methodologies, issues of critical bibliography particular to the study of hagiography have not received the theoretical attention they deserve. This essay takes up these two underattended approaches to argue for a comparative materialist approach to hagiography. Through a short case study of the Latin Vita of Lutgard of Aywières (1182–1246) written by the Dominican friar Thomas of Cantimpré (c. 1200–1270), I suggest that comparative material research into the textual history of hagiographic literature can provide us with a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of the production of any specific holy figure, as well as the evolving discourses of sanctity and holiness in general. While this suggestion emerges from my own work on medieval hagiography from the Christian Latin West, it resonates with recent arguments by Sara Ritchey and David DiValerio to call for a materially comparative approach to narratives of holy lives in any religious tradition in any time period. Furthermore, I suggest that medieval studies, and in particular medieval manuscript studies, may have much to offer to scholars of sanctity working in later periods and other settings. Offering a view of material textual scholarship as intrinsically comparative, we may expand our theoretical definitions of the comparative and its possibilities within the study of sanctity.

THE PLACE OF SENSE PERCEPTION IN 13TH-CENTURY ENCYCLOPAEDIAS: TWO DIFFERENT READINGS OF ARISTOTLE?

Several studies have approached sense perception in the encyclopaedias of Thomas of Cantimpré, Bartholomew the Englishman, and Vincent of Beauvais. A comparative analysis of these encyclopaedias shows that all of them arrange sense perception in accordance with the expositions on the soul and with human and animal anatomy. Yet there are significant differences in how they treat the objects of sensation: Thomas does not refer to them at all, Bartholomew considers them to be “accidents,” and Vincent deals with them separately when discussing the features of the sensible world. These differences, I argue, respond to two different readings of Aristotle.

Isabelle of France

The emergent reputation for sanctity of Isabelle of France (sister of Louis IX) was central to the development of larger Capetian claims to enjoy a unique favour in the eyes of God. Around 1260, Isabelle was the spiritual star of the court, as reflected in a series of texts written by bishops, friars such as Thomas of Cantimpré and Guibert of Tournai, and popes Innocent IV and Alexander IV. In the last decade of her life, however, her saintly reputation faded due to her refusal to become a nun and to her battles with the Franciscan Order over the rule for her abbey of Longchamp.

The Place of Sense Perception in Thirteenth-Century Encyclopaedias

Several studies have approached sense perception in the encyclopaedias of Thomas of Cantimpré, Bartholomew the Englishman and Vincent of Beauvais. Yet a systematic overview and comparison of the arrangement of sense perception in these encyclopaedias is still lacking. The overview offered here shows that all encyclopaedias place sense perception beside expositions on psychology and anatomy. There are, however, significant differences in how they treat the objects of sensation. In the case of Bartholomew and Vincent, I argue, these differences reflect two different readings of Aristotle.

“In dorso colorem habet inter viridem et ceruleum…”

Like other contemporary encyclopaedists of his time, Thomas of Cantimpré (1200 ca.–1270/72) used a vast number of sources in his Liber de natura rerum (completed between 1241 and 1260 ca.), which he meticulously selected to copy, cut and ‘paste’ in order to create a solid, well-argued, coherent and ‘Dominican’ discourse on nature. Among these auctoritates, the friar also uses a mysterious and anonymous libellum, which he qualifies as “liber rerum,” in his work. Consequently, the paper explains this auctoritas through a careful consideration of all the objective aspects that can be acquired from the Liber de natura rerum. Secondly, the work shows how the anonymous source was Thomas’ privileged vehicle through which to introduce in his encyclopaedia ‘alternative’ information borrowed from non-canonical sources (direct observations, personal experiences, etc.). The analysis therefore identifies the particular textual typology of the anonymous libellum, while also demonstrating how the friar of Cantimpré was a curious and actual auctor on nature, observing everyday reality directly and thereby distinguishing himself from his contemporary compilatores.

Language, Literacy, and the Saintly Body: Cistercian Reading Practices and theLife of Lutgard of Aywières(1182–1246)

Many years before the death of Lutgard of Aywières (1182–1246), a thirteenth-century Cistercian nun renowned for her asceticism and visionary insight, Thomas of Cantimpré (ca. 1200–ca. 1270) approached a group of nuns and lay brothers to arrange for the disposal of her relics should she die during his absence. Thomas—a Dominican preacher and theologian who penned a hagiography of Lutgard in addition to several other holy women of the mid-thirteenth century Low Countries—wanted her hand as “a sacred memorial” (sacram memoriam). The abbess Hadewijch agreed to his request. Repeating a medieval misogynistic commonplace, Thomas then wrote that “since it is women's nature to be unable to keep secrets. . . the nuns told Lutgard how I had ordered her hand to be cut off.”