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The article aims to focus attention on the study of blessed women and holy women through the documentation found in diocesan archives and belonging to the series of canonization processes. With the regulation of the process, narrative organization gave way to legal defense, confrontation to analysis, and narrative to texts that had evidentiary value, and all this gave rise to a mine of information not only about the lives of the blessed and holy women, but also about the society in which they had lived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to focus attention on the study of blessed women and holy women through the documentation found in diocesan archives and belonging to the series of canonization processes. With the regulation of the process, narrative organization gave way to legal defense, confrontation to analysis, and narrative to texts that had evidentiary value, and all this gave rise to a mine of information not only about the lives of the blessed and holy women, but also about the society in which they had lived.

Sixteenth-century theologians in their efforts to reform English religion sought to divest religion not only of its extrabiblical female saints but also its biblical female saints of their legends and their passionate expressions of sorrow. Reformers focused on deconstructing the popular weeping composite Mary Magdalene, yet their efforts were only partially successful. Thomas Walkington's 1620 sermon, Rabboni , reveals that Protestant preachers were willing to diverge from the biblical account and use their imagination in sermons to appeal to their audience's emotions. Rabboni demonstrates continued knowledge and leakage of Pre-Reformation extrabiblical legends into Protestant thought. The location of the sermon and the reception history of Pseudo-Origen's De Maria Magdalena suggest why the medieval image of Mary Magdalene proved so indestructible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article considers Wilgefortis, a medieval saint who disrupts the sex/gender binary as an embodiment of gender fluidity, as one example of Transing in pre and post-Enligthenment thinking. Topics include ways in which the materiality of gender is destabilized in the premodern era, the growing of beard by Wilgefortis just to avoid an arranged marriage and the significance of Wilgefortis images to transsexuals of 21st century.

St. Catherine of Siena's life and writings illustrate the ways a person's communication can provide guidance to others. Catherine exemplifies a dialogic responsiveness and commitment to semioethics by embodying her narrative tradition with an attentiveness toward charity and love toward others. Through an exploration of Catherine's participation in society, giving specific attention to her effort to communicate with other people, this essay tells the story of St. Catherine of Siena; discusses her semioethics responsiveness through uncovering her dialogic approach grounded in the Catholic intellectual tradition; and addresses her responsiveness to others, using her letters to demonstrate her semioethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Early Christian period, the practice of depicting Christ's chest stigma on the right-hand side of his upper torso was an established component of stigmata iconography. Thereafter, this tradition was consistently followed in painted images of stigmatic saints—most notably in representations of St Francis of Assisi. St Catherine of Siena (1357–80) also bore the stigmata, and when her chest stigma was included in her portraits the conventional pictorial tradition continued and artists placed the wound on the right side of her chest. Plautilla Nelli (1524–88), a Dominican prioress and painter in Florence, however, introduced a new iconography. Contrary to all visual precedents, she painted several small works depicting Catherine with a bloody chest stigma on her left-hand side. The suggestion offered here is that Nelli's unorthodox and original iconography was indebted not to the visual tradition but to two near-contemporary textual sources for Catherine's stigmatization. Raymond of Capua's Legenda maior and Thommaso Caffarini's Libellus de supplemento report Catherine's own account of her imprinting in which she testifies that the ray to her chest came to her left side, the side of her heart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the transition of St. Winefride, a seventh-century noblewoman turned saint, examining her life in the context of medieval religious beliefs and pilgrimage practices. It discusses her miracles, including her revival after an attempted beheading, and her eventual recognition as a saint, with a focus on her connection to three key locations such as Holywell, Gwytherin, and Shrewsbury.

This paper proposes an exploration of the medieval aspects of the early modern period with a particular focus on the lives of medieval female saints and the relevance of the accounts of their martyrdoms to early Shakespearean tragedy. The most distinguished hagiography collection in the Middle Ages (in Continental Europe and in England alike) was the thirteenth-century Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend), which reflected the spiritual, religious, socio-political, and cultural landscape of medieval Europe. It remained influential in the sixteenth century, and various elements of it seeped into Protestant martyrologies like John Foxe's Actes and Monumentes (Book of Martyrs) and John Bale's 1546 account of Anne Askew's interrogation and execution (The first examinacio[n] of Anne Askewe latelye martired in Smythfelde—The Examinations). I offer an interdisciplinary discussion of the impact of medieval hagiographies in early modern England, a subject frequently overlooked by scholars of Renaissance studies. The focus falls on the saints in The Golden Legend who represent a strong female voice and who are silenced violently. I also examine pre-and post-Reformation voyeuristic tendencies in (for instance) Foxe's and Bale's accounts and in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although child-bride harm was uncovered during the Age of Consent controversy (1890s), no attempt has been made to excavate its origins in Indian history. Rectifying this void, I investigate the phenomena of child sexual abuse in early modern and modern regions of Bengal and Maharashtra. I adopt a female-child-centred approach that involves engaging with the perspectives of girls and young women. Some questions raised are: Did a girl have rights? If so, how was her freewill visualised by the state, law and popular culture? What can we glean from women's discourses through historical time on pre-pubertal sex, conjugality and child-marriage and how are they different from official discourses? In order to cast light on an obscured subject, I widen the archive to include an analysis of devotional poetry, bardic literature, personal narratives, royal chronicles besides, the more conventional media reports, religious and medical texts. The essay reveals how religious punditry combined with the state and popular culture to produce a convoluted concept of female agency that authorised girl-bride sexual abuse in child marriage. The study finds more continuities than breaks in the prevalence of child-wife abuse within the institution of child marriage from early modern to modern times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text is, above all, a grateful testament to a local saint's continued liveliness. It is a new hagiography, a story of a woman who gave away everything—her house, her money, her possessions, and even her name—who wandered homeless, and who has helped people resolve desperate situations ever since. Retelling the fragmented stories of how people asked for her intervention, and of how, through their actions, new mycelia of power grew on the ruins of the Soviet socialist state, I hope that this essay helps opens a loophole: a space between naïve faith and sociological faithlessness in which we might understand today's miracles without crushing them by the secular objectivist gaze. Looking through this loophole, this essay retells some of stories I heard about the Soviet collapse and about how people survived it: about gleaning the planned economy's rubble, chance connections, personal ties, Divine Providence, fast fortunes, and the enclosure of fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merovingian hagiographies make extensive use of the metaphor of service to demonstrate the sanctity of their subjects. These religious images emerged from a society in which slaves and servants were both ubiquitous and demeaned, and the metaphors were embedded in the social realities of service. This article examines the Lives of three elite female saints who were depicted as slaves, or engaged in acts of servitude: Radegund, Balthild, and Austreberta. It argues that although service as a religious motif was central to each of these texts, the authors engaged with the image in strikingly different ways and to quite different ends, depending on the social world of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the life of Saint Apollonia, a virgin martyr who fell victim to Roman Emperor Decius' persecution of Christians in Alexandria, Egypt, as described by Greek poet Eusebius in his work "Ecclesiastical History." It describes how deaconess Apollonia was beaten in her jaws and all her teeth were knocked out. It mentions that she has been honored as the patron saint of those who suffer from tooth pain, and regarded as the patron saint of the dental professions. It also presents several photographs including the portraits of Apollonia.

Veneration of Westphalian stigmatic and visionary Anna Katharina Emmerick (1774–1824) reached new heights during the Weimar Republic. German Catholics engaged in promoting her beatification cause organized a multipronged, multimedia campaign. Priests and laypersons, as well as the popular press and theological journals, all encouraged the veneration of Emmerick as “a crucified saint for a crucified Volk.” Memories of Napoleonic French aggression, secularization, and waning religious belief provided revanchist Weimar German Catholics with a readymade narrative of victimization. Moreover, as a poster child of the Westphalian Heimat, her pilgrimage sites offered a spiritual antidote to the “godless” modern city. Meanwhile, everyday Catholics continued a century-old, locally-based tradition of veneration that did not strictly conform to the new “official” line. Emmerick's Weimar cult, and the modern saint-making process more generally, thus provide a window onto the push and pull between clergy and laity, men and women, institutional and popular forces, in shaping lived German Catholicism in the 1920s. Die Verehrung der stigmatisierten und seherischen Anna Katharina Emmerick (1774–1824) aus Westfalen erreichte während der Weimarer Republik einen neuen Höhepunkt. Die deutschen Katholiken setzten sich für ihre Seligsprechung ein, indem sie eine mehrgleisige Multimediakampagne organisierten. Geistliche und Laien sowie die Boulevardpresse und theologische Zeitschriften ermutigten allesamt zur Verehrung der Emmerick als „einer gekreuzigten Heiligen für ein gekreuzigtes Volk.” Die Erinnerungen an die napoleonischen Kriege, die Säkularisierung und der abflauende Religionsglaube stellten dabei für die revanchistischen deutschen Katholiken Weimars eine gebrauchsfertige Opfergeschichte dar. Außerdem boten Emmericks Pilgerorte als ein Aushängeschild für ihre westfälische Heimat ein spirituelles Gegenmittel zur „gottlosen” modernen Stadt. Gleichzeitig führten die Durchschnittskatholiken eine Jahrhunderte alte, lokale Tradition der Verehrung fort, die nicht konform zur neuen „offiziellen” Richtung verlief. Der Weimarer Emmerick Kult und der moderne Prozess einer „Heiligmachung” im Allgemeinen bieten somit einen Einblick in das Hin und Her zwischen Geistlichen und Laien, Männern und Frauen sowie institutionellen und populären Kräften—und damit den gelebten Katholizismus im Deutschland der 1920er Jahre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A typological reading allows us to see that Margaret's early-medieval Latin passio, the Mombritius version upon which most later vernacular versions of her popular legend ultimately drew, is a tightly structured figural meditation on the theme of baptism and the sacraments of initiation. Examination of the prayers, the liturgically allusive gestures, and the symbolic elements of the whole narrative reveals a powerful female figure who "presides" over her own ordeal and with her prayers transforms the instruments of torture into baptisms by blood, fire, and water. This narrative's deep structure may offer further insight into Margaret's appeal as a patroness of childbirth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient Greek philosophers stressed the importance of asceticism, in order to increase wisdom, sometimes reaching the point of starvation. Neglecting one’s own body by strict ascetic practices, which included a very poor and limited diet, led to a higher status at the philosophical level and was a way to ideal perfection. Food or rather the refusal of it played a crucial role in their philosophy. Ancient biographers tell us about this struggle against material needs, whereas at the same time some comic texts bear witness to the contrast with ordinary people’s way of eating. When Christianity took over ancient civilization and became the dominant ideology, the ideal of perfection focused on salvation and union with God. In order to attain this divine union, which recalled the original perfection before sin, all passions should be controlled, especially sex and food. Depriving the body from almost any nourishment was the safest way to attain a full development of the soul and a perfect knowledge of God. In the West, the ideal of perfection has changed throughout history up to the present, from ancient philosophy to spiritual salvation, purity or even aesthetic excellence, all of which are subjective concepts of perfection to be attained by individuals through despising material food, sometime to the point of starvation.

This paper attempts to investigate the role of female Saints in the preaching and advancement of religion of Islam. The underlying hypothesis is that mysticism2 is a phenomenon that transcends gender boundaries as it is an experience which any gender can feel through divinely ordained talent, certain practices, devotion and dedication.3 It develops in one the love for God and one goes on to teach, practice and preach His message to humanity.4 Saints have played a significant role in Islam5 and many of these saintly figures have been women including wives of the Holy Prophet, or Sahabis, or their descendants. After the death of Holy Prophet his missionary work was carried out by his immediate followers and their descendents and owing to their efforts Islamic religion spread worldwide.6 Besides male saints, many female saints have done this service for the promotion and advancement of Islam in foreign lands but their role and stories have remained marginalized. One such story is linked with the mausoleum of Bibi Pak Daman, situated in Lahore, Pakistan and attributed to Bibi Ruqayyah, daughter of Hazrat Ali (R.A), and her entourage.7 Though main objective of the paper is to throw light on the gender and Sufism yet this paper also touches upon the narratives related to Bibi Pak Daman, a small shrine in Lahore, commonly known the graves of six women from the Prophet Muhammad's (P.B.U.H) family and subject to a range of theories regarding its origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work compares two versions of the history of Mary Magdalene in order to inquire how some components of the novelistic fiction begin to appear in the hagiographic discourse. The first biography appears in an anthology by Santiago de la Voragine, titled La leyenda dorada. This book represents the hagiographic, canonical and authorized version, consolidated by the xiii century in Spain; the second text that is going to be compared, recounts the life of the very same female saint which appears as the first history of the Manuscrito Escurialense h-I-13. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the connections between rituals, embodiment, and territorial claims by taking stock of Christian Orthodox rites at the Tomb of Mary in Jerusalem. As part of a comprehensive ethnography of this shrine, I have examined a wide array of body-based female practices that revolve around Mary's tomb. By rejuvenating embodied practices that are associated with fertility, parturition and maternity, devotees enlist the grotto’s womb-like interior as a platform for kissing, touching, crawling, bending, and other physical acts of devotion that make for a powerful body-based experience. As demonstrated herein, the mimetic journey of a fetus/pilgrim through this womb-tomb expanse elicits a sense of rebirth, which is analogous to reclaiming the land and establishing a “motherly” alternative to the masculine and bellicose disposition in Israel/Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the worship of La Santa Muerte through a geo-mapping of street altars in Mexico City followed by an ethnographic analysis of the devotees' relationships with the saint. I find that this saint has gained momentum among the fast-growing prison population over the last two decades. In contrast to studies that emphasise the desertification of mass incarceration elsewhere, this study finds that La Santa Muerte connects families across the social abyss of imprisonment. I suggest that the family-like relationships that devotees maintain with this saint are crucial to understanding her success. Rather than a one-dimensional sacred defender of criminals and police she is adopted by prisoners, prison officers, police and their families as a capricious ‘family member’, embracing the same ambivalence as the forces she helps to navigate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study provides an analysis of the legacy of Lal Ded, Kashmiri mystic and poetess, in the broad context of historical and social changes in medieval, XIV-century Kashmir. It was a significant period of time in the history of Kashmir, marked by shifts in power, social ferment, the beginning of gradual decline of Hinduism in Kashmir Valley to the advantage of Islam, transformation of Kashmiri society and its identity. Lal Ded is a unique phenomenon. This saint-poetess, who strongly rebelled against caste system, social and religious discrimination in medieval Kashmir, has been subsequently cherished as a saint and spiritual leader by Kashmiri Hindu and Muslim communities alike. Over the last six centuries, she has become a symbol of indigenous culture of Kashmir with its traditions of inter-faith and crosscultural connections and influences. The paper is particularly focused on her contribution to enriching mystic, spiritual traditions and cultural heritage of Kashmir and her profound impact on shaping Kashmiri society. The article approaches the topic in four major parts. The first part provides quick glance into Lal Ded's life in the early stage, the reasons for abandoning her family, starting the life of sage wanderer, and her influence on shaping the mindset of common people. The second part analyses historical background of the XIV century Kashmir with its ongoing political and social turmoil which had direct impact on Lal Ded's life and thought. The third part provides an insight to her thought and poetry in the context of social relations in Kashmir and the widely understood idea of syncretism in Kashmir. The fourth part looks at Lalla's influence on Rishi order with its founder Nund Rishi (Sheikh Nur-ud-Din), who is considered to be another important pillar of Kashmiri identity. To what extent has Lal Ded contributed to the propagation of Islam among Kashmiri followers of the Rishis? The conclusion summarizes the role and importance of Lal Ded's legacy in terms of relations between different religious communities with reference to contemporary Kashmir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on Mother Maria Skobtsova, who was born in 1891 in Riga in the Russian Empire and experienced world wars, the Russian Revolution, and family problems. It informs Mother Maria was recognized as a saint of the holy Orthodox Church in 2004 by the Ecumenical Patriarch for her efforts towards humanity during wars. It also discusses Maria's motherhood-of-God love.

In this article, the author discusses the exclusion of women from Roman liturgy and vocabulary, and the theology of liturgical prayer. Topics discussed include the domination of male saints over female saints, women writers who are usually presented as weak and ineffectual, and a book that reveals misogyny in Catholics writings.

The article examines the women of the Bible, including Eve, Rachel, Esther, and Mary Magdalene, from a psychoanalytic perspective. The author emphasizes the potential of Biblical characters as role models and suggests that they should be explained in their cultural context and made relevant to the contemporary world. Topics discussed include sexuality, women saints, and miracles.