Rewriting History and the Myth of the French Nation
The Hagiography of Radegund of Poitiers from Medieval to Modernity
9789048559152
324 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
This multidisciplinary analysis of the cult of Radegund of Poitiers, from the sixth century to the twenty-first, illuminates the roles saints play at the intersection of gender and politics. No other medieval saint was so politically charged or had such an astonishing range of constructed personae. The many “Radegunds” encountered in this study – virgin, wife, mother, royalist, republican, colonizer – can all be interpreted as responses to contemporary political events, shifting spiritual trends, and changing attitudes towards women’s role in society or the Church. The long trajectory of Radegund’s meanings and functions over the centuries suggests that saints have played a more significant ideological role in state formation, nationalism, and identity politics than is typically recognized. To “rewrite” Radegund is thus to rewrite the history of the French nation, and this ground-breaking study shows how powerful medieval hagiography has been and continues to be in the emergence of nationalism and the “Myth of the French Nation.”
Author Bio
Anna Katharina Rudolph is a medieval historian whose work examines how the sacred intersects with the political to redefine gender expectations for women in authority in pre-Modern France. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is the author of “From Runaway Wife to Sainted Queen: Scandal and the Model of Saintly Queenship in the Early Middle Ages.”
Alicia Spencer-Hall is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at University College London. Their research interests include: medieval hagiography, disability, gender, digital culture, and film and media studies. Her first monograph, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens: Divine Visions as Cinematic Experience was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2018, and is now available Open Access. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, a collection co-edited with Blake Gutt, was published in 2021. Shortlisted for the Transgender Non-Fiction award at the 34th Lambda Literary Awards, the volume is now also available Open Access. Their second monograph, Medieval Twitter, was published by Arc Humanities Press in 2024.
