This volume comparatively explores how members of “monastic” communities, broadly understood, developed practical strategies for the construction of identity across a range of religious traditions in the greater regions of premodern Europe and Asia. In particular, it seeks to understand how the production, distribution, and reception of hagiographic material (written, visual, and performative) served as a tool for the implementation of “monastic” dynamics of legitimation. This is accomplished by pursuing and developing a two-fold approach. At an empirical level, the volume expands our scholarly understanding of the cross-cultural processes that characterize religious communities’ notions of identity. At a meta-level, it furthers a re-evaluation of our taxonomy as it challenges established notions of categories such as “monk/monastic” and “hagiography.”
- Front Cover
- Front matter
- Half-title
- Series information
- Title page
- Copyright information
- Table of contents
- Body
- Introduction
- The Birth of an Idea
- The Essays
- Monasticism, Identity, and Hagiography
- Bibliography
- Chapter 1. Communal and Individual
Monastic Identity in Gregory
the Great’s Dialogues
- Gregory the Great, Hagiography, and Monasticism
- Two Debates Surrounding Gregory the Great
- Gregory’s Individual Monastic Identity
- From Individual to Communal Identity: The Case of Peter
- Bibliography
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Chapter 2. Hagiography and Monastic Legitimacy in the Translation of St Helena’s
Relics to Hautvillers
- The Theft of St Helena
- The Authenticity of the Relics
- St Helena’s Body as Performing Miraculous Healings
- The Theft and the Monastery
- A Comparison with Medieval Italy: The Case of St John of Spoleto
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Chapter 3. The Many Hagiographical Identities
of the Chinese Buddhist Nun Zhujin
- The Earliest Hagiographical Account: Zhujin’s Married Life
- Death: Zhujin’s Ascension to the Pure Land of Amitābha Buddha
- Conclusion
- List of Abbreviations for Buddhist Canonical Collections
- Bibliography
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Chapter 4. Hagiography Beyond the Saints:
Redefining Genre and Kashmiri Identity through Sanctifying Narrative
- Genre
- Who is Among the Holy?
- For What is this Praise?
- Bibliography
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Chapter 5. A Re-membered Community:
The Myth of Śaṅkara and the Making
of the Smārtas
- Introduction
- Monastic Myths
- The Ascent of Śiva
- Signing On
- The Inner Conflict of Tradition
- The Veda of Action and Knowledge
- Holy Hierarchy
- Smārtas Re-membered
- What’s Good for the Goose
- Ritual Rejected and Rehabilitated
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Chapter 6. The Ascetic and the Ecstatic:
Examples of Identity Construction
in the Rāmānandī Sampradāya
- Introduction
- Hagiographies as Sources
- On Kṛṣṇadās Payahārī
- Kīlhdev and the Tyāgī Branch
- Agradās and the Rasik Branch
- Different Monastic Communities, Different Monastic Identities
- Bibliography
- Primary Sources
- Secondary Sources
- Back matter
- Conclusions
- Hagiographies Compared
- Monastic Identities and Constellations of Diversity
- Legitimation, Locality, and Power
- Bibliography
- Index
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