The Life and Afterlife of St. Elizabeth of Hungary: Testimony from her Canonization Hearings

by Oxford University Press

Overview

This work is a study and translation of the testimony given by witnesses at the canonization hearings of St. Elizabeth, who died at age twenty-four in 1231. The depositions offer vivid anecdotes about her life as well as the healing miracles that were associated with her shrine in Marburg.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199889808
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/24/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Associate Dean and John Sutton Miner Professor of History, Pomona College

Table of Contents

Preliminaries:
On the Translations
Acknowledgments
Critical Editions of Translated Texts
Introduction

Essays:
The Afterlife of St. Elizabeth
The Life of St. Elizabeth

Sources:
The Miracle List (August 1232)
Conrad of Marburg, Summa vitae (1232)
Miracle Depositions from the First Papal Commission (1233)
Miracle Depositions from the Second Papal Commission (1235)
Dicta quatuor ancillarum (1235)

Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"St. Elizabeth of Thuringia provides us with a penetrating insight into the anguish and joy of medieval people. Kenneth Baxter Wolf's commentary and lucid translation of the canonization records of St. Elizabeth are priceless relics, providing an invaluable catalogue of social information about the penitents, their age, gender, occupation, descriptions of their illness, their cure, and their responses to the cure. This volume advances the study of hagiography and the popular imagination and deepens our understanding of the construction of medieval sainthood." —Thomas J. Heffernan, Kenneth Curry Professor of Humanities, University of Tennessee

"Wolf's substantial, engaging, and capacious introduction and his lively and meticulous translation of the canonization brief for St. Elizabeth of Thuringia constitute a remarkable piece of scholarship. Both the introduction and the translation offer to historians and lay readers alike an invaluable and unique perspective on the diverse processes through which sainthood was constructed and on late medieval mentality and culture. This is a most valuable and welcome contribution to our understanding of medieval sanctity and of the religious sensibilities of men and human in the medieval West in the wake of St. Francis's life and preaching." —Teofilo F. Ruiz, Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles

"The inquest into the canonization of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary produced some of the Middle Ages' richest sources concerning the life and deeds of a holy woman and the ordinary people who turned to her for help. Canonization inquests, written in Latin and often unpublished, are usually accessible only to professional medievalists. Ken Wolf's lucid translation now makes them available for the first time in English. His insightful introduction unravels the various influences that helped to shape Elizabeth's piety and the layers of conscious and unconscious editing that molded both the questions and the responses that produced the written testimony concerning her piety. Similarly, his discussion of the sick people who sought physical succor by appealing to Elizabeth after her death elucidates our understanding of the personal and collective rituals that were an integral part of medieval religious life." —Sharon Farmer, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

From the Publisher