Foreword : King St Louis and the Order of St Lazarus

Acta Historiae Sancti Lazari Ordinis, 2017

William of Saint-Pathus’ hagiography of Saint Louis, written approximately 30 years after his death, used as its source the documents from the canonisation commission. The fragments of documents that remain from the commission suggest that Saint-Pathus’ record of Saint Louis’ behaviour and his miracles is highly accurate. The format of the hagiography was identical to the Life of Saint Francis written by Saint Bonaventure. This paper examines in particular the detailed account of Saint Louis’s meeting with a leprous monk at the royal abbey of Royaumont. The encounter involved Saint Louis kneeling in front of the leper and feeding him freshly cooked food with his own hands. Saint-Pathus also recorded Saint Louis wiping the blood from the sores and wounds of other sick people. There are clear parallels to be drawn between the deeds of Saint Louis and those of Saint Francis, especially with regard to compassion towards the sick. The portrayal by Saint-Pathus, the Franciscan confessor of Saint Louis’ widow, forms part of the construction of image of Saint Louis as a holy king devoted to the mendicant orders, whose deeds were in turn adopted by the Franciscan order as a model of exemplary conduct towards the sick and the poor.

Revue Biblique, 2019

This is a response to a paper published by Joe Zias (2019) in Revue Biblique.

2024

“Medieval Saints and Their Sins” by Luke Daly explores the intricate history of sainthood in medieval Europe, examining how saints were both revered figures of piety and tools of political manipulation. The book is divided into three parts: “New Beginnings,” “The Golden Age,” and “The Fall,” charting the evolution of sainthood from its early Christian roots through its height in medieval Europe to its decline with the onset of the Reformation and the rise of secular power. Daly investigates the socio-political contexts that shaped the lives of various saints, highlighting how their stories reflect broader historical events, cultural shifts, and theological debates of the time. The book offers a critical view of how the church utilized the cult of saints to maintain control, bolster its authority, and navigate conflicts, such as heresies, the Crusades, and the Reformation. By focusing on key figures like Augustine, Jerome, and various saints who were central to the religious and political dynamics of their era, Daly demonstrates how sainthood was far from a static institution. Instead, it was a dynamic and evolving aspect of medieval society, constantly reshaped by external pressures, including changing power structures, the rise of intellectual movements, and societal crises.

Two understandings of leprosy prevailed at the turn of the thirteenth century. The dominant perception of leprosy since pre-Christian times was as a disease of the vile and sinful. The view that lepers were in fact the blessed of God began to gain ground in the late twelfth century. This thesis considers one of the key factors in this change — namely, the influence of charismatic religious figures. Previous scholarship on the history of leprosy in the high Middle Ages has not sufficiently considered the role played by such figures in reforming, or at least offering an alternative to, the reigning popular perception. This thesis presents the exemplary case of Saint Francis of Assisi, highlighting the role that one man may have played in the evolving religious and social understandings of medieval leprosy after the turn of the thirteenth century. Saint Francis’s interactions with the lepers constituted unprecedented transgressions of social boundaries and taboos. While Francis’s vitae followed in a long tradition of saints interacting with lepers for highlighting their piety, his actions were not merely a hagiographic topos. The kiss Francis bestowed upon a leper in the plains below Assisi came at a decisive moment in the Middle Ages where society was at a crossroads between the two societal perceptions of the disease. By examining the changes after the turn of the thirteenth century in the care of the leprous, the rise in saints who cared for the lepers, and the changes in the attitudes of the Church towards the leprous, this thesis argues that Francis’s effect on the social perception of leprosy is undeniable.

All Saints Royal Hospital: Lisbon and Public Health, 2021

2004

The biographical traditions associated with St. Catharine of Siena and St. Francis of Assisi are shown to share to a surprising extent folk-tale features in common with those that have influenced the Tale of the Judgement of Paris interpreted as an allegory of early life-choice between options offered by ambivalent helper figures.

Frag. I. The dwellers in Vienne and Lyons of Gaul, slaves of Christ, to the brethren in Asia and Phrygia who have the same faith and hope of redemption with us, peace and grace and glory from God the Father and our Lord Christ Jesus.

Renaissance and Reformation, 2014

This collection of primary texts offers readers a vivid sense of the various hagiographic and liturgical materials that might have formed part of the devotional tradition surrounding a saint in the later Middle Ages. In a paperback book that fits comfortably into the hands, Cecilia Gaposchkin presents editions of various Latin texts related to the cult of Saint Louis (b. 1214, r. 1226, d. 1270) accompanied by facing page English translations by Gaposchkin and Phyllis Katz. As Gaposchkin notes in her introduction, scholars most commonly know Saint Louis from Jean of Joinville's Vie nostre saint roy Loöys, which was completed by 1308 and is available in many translations today. Gaposchkin argues, however, that "this reliance on Joinville misrepresents the Saint Louis of the later Middle Ages, since Joinville's text was virtually unknown beyond the royal court before it was first printed in the sixteenth century" (1). Her collection, in contrast, presents a selection of hagiographic and liturgical texts that, she contends, were directly involved in the construction of the medieval cult of Saint Louis. Specifically, her collection includes editions and translations of two previously unpublished Latin vitae, the Gloriosissimi Regis and the Beatus Ludovicus,