Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints
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. Thi...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2019]
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| In: |
Journal of religious history
Year: 2019, Volume: 43, Issue: 3, Pages: 359-379 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Frankish Empire
/ History 486-687
/ Female saint
/ Servant woman
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| IxTheo Classification: | CB Christian life; spirituality KAD Church history 500-900; early Middle Ages KCD Hagiography; saints |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | 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. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-9809 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of religious history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/1467-9809.12612 |