Volume 27, Issue 2 (75)

Late Medieval and Early Modern Hagiographies

2025

Publication date: 22.12.2025

Description

The publication of this volume was financed by the Jagiellonian University in Kraków – Faculty of Polish Studies.

Cover Design: Paweł Sepielak

Licence: CC BY 4.0

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief dr hab., prof. UJ Grażyna Urban-Godziek

Assistant Editor dr hab. Wojciech Ryczek

Issue Editors dr hab. Magdalena Komorowska, mgr Karolina Grzybczak

Issue content

Od Redakcji

Karolina Grzybczak, Magdalena Komorowska

Terminus, Volume 27, Issue 2 (75), 2025, pp. VII-VIII

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Editors’ Note

Karolina Grzybczak, Magdalena Komorowska

Terminus, Volume 27, Issue 2 (75), 2025, pp. IX-X

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Articles

“Cartusia sanctos facit, sed non patefacit”: The Hagiographic Tradition of Saint Bruno the Carthusian († 1101) in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods

Stephen J. Molvarec

Terminus, Volume 27, Issue 2 (75), 2025, pp. 157-173

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843844TE.25.010.21781

The development of the hagiographic texts and tradition around Saint Bruno the Carthusian († 1101) illustrates a diachronic development of cultus, the role of “founder,” and the realities of canonization. Bruno founded La Grande Chartreuse outside Grenoble, France in 1084, only to be called away to Rome in 1090 by Pope Urban II never to return to his fledgling monastery. The first accounts of Bruno at La Grande Chartreuse appear in two monastic chronicles, Magister (1120s, possibly by Guigo I, fifth prior and author of the Carthusian customary) and Laudemus (c. 1250) as well as in the vita of Hugh of Grenoble (also composed by Guigo in the 1120s). Actual hagiographic vitae of Bruno were written only in 1300 (the vita antiquor) and 1398 (by Henry Kalkar, prior of the Carthusian monastery of Cologne). The sixteenth century saw the composition of yet more lives and the permission for veneration of Bruno by Leo X only in 1514, with the extension of his cultus to the post-Tridentine Church in 1623 by Gregory XV. Following the development of the hagiographic tradition and texts concerning Bruno through the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, there is a trend not only of the development of a cultus with requisite miracles stories and legends, but also the development of the need for the Carthusian order that expanded from that first monastery in the 1120s to have a founder. Bruno, on account of his departure and his failure to leave a customary or rule text, was almost forgotten. Guigo had created an institutional propositum and led the order through a period of expansion and the beginnings of centralization that would continue throughout the medieval era. Combined with the reluctance of the Carthusians to display their sanctity (“Cartusia sanctos facit, sed non patefacit” as one medieval slogan claimed) and the cultus of Bruno would be slow to develop, leading to the equipollent canonization by Leo X despite the popularity and growth of the order. This article will examine both the trajectory of Bruno’s hagiographic tradition across temporal periods as well as the development of the Carthusians’ perception of a founder figure.

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Autoordography: A Singular Carthusian Flower in the Garden of Hagiographical Tradition

Wiktor Dziemski

Terminus, Volume 27, Issue 2 (75), 2025, pp. 175-197

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843844TE.25.011.21782

The Carthusian hagiographical tradition is intimately tied not only to the history of its genre and the history of Saint Bruno of Cologne, the founder of the order, but also, in a unique and decisive manner to the order’s distinctive character. The article provides a concise overview of the literary development of Saint Bruno’s cult, while acknowledging the concurrent growth of introspection and the gradual confirmation of Bruno’s position as the founding figure of the Carthusian order. A pivotal moment in these developments is the 1514 decree by Pope Leo X, which allowed the Carthtusians to publicly venerate their founder. Additionally, several vitae were written at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. An analysis of these texts reveals the emergence of a specific Carthusian genre, aptly named autoordography. This article will explore the factors that contributed to the creation of this genre, including the Carthusian Order’s limited external interactions, their strict rule, and various criticisms directed at them. Besides, it will describe the unique characteristics of this genre, which forms an intriguing blend of hagiography, apologetic literature, and a distinctive form of speculum religionis.

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The Relationship of Atopy and Transgression on the Example of the Lives of Saint Simon Called Salos and Christina Called the Weird (Dziwna) in the Context of Ancient Tradition

Ewa Cybulska-Bohuszewicz

Terminus, Volume 27, Issue 2 (75), 2025, pp. 199-229

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843844TE.25.012.21783

This article aims to analyse the lives of Saint Simon, called the Madman, and Christina, called the Weird (Dziwna), in the context of the ancient tradition of writing down the lives of philosophers, which was revived in the Renaissance. It also examines the phenomena of atopy and transgression. The textual basis will be the collection by Piotr Skarga, Żywoty świętych (The Lives of the Saints) from 1579, the most popular hagiographic work of the post-Tridentine period in Poland. Other Polish Renaissance texts in which portraits of philosophers appear, like Żywoty filozofów (The Lives of Philosophers) by Marcin Bielski (1535) and Wizerunk (The Image) by Mikołaj Rej (1558), will also be used. The interpretation of the texts will be preceded by a lexical and semantic analysis of the basic meanings of transgression and atopy. The detailed research of the writing, currently prepared for a monograph on The Lives of the Saints, clearly shows that the idea of holiness, central to this work, is predicated on two other essential concepts, transgression and atopy, as well as related ones. This fact is evidenced by the frequent use of lexemes referring to them in the text of The Lives.

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Palček as a Reforming Hero and Reformed Saint: Towards a Bohemian Reformation Hagiography

Marie Škarpová

Terminus, Volume 27, Issue 2 (75), 2025, pp. 231-250

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843844TE.25.013.21784

Although the study of Christian hagiography still primarily targets ancient and medieval texts, the early modern hagiography has recently been established as a distinctive research topic. Its focus is not only on the transformations of the post-Tridentine hagiography of the Roman Catholic Church, which effectively appropriated the cult of the saints as its important identifier. In this respect, the early modern texts seem to have dissolved the conventional association of hagiography with Catholicism: the analyses of surviving early modern texts demonstrate that the Protestant churches—while still critical towards the cult of saints as they knew it from late medieval devotional practices— did not reject the concept of sanctity or hagiography as such. Martyrology in particular seems to have been very frequent in all early modern Christian denominations, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; indeed, research on Czech early modern hagiography of non-Catholic provenance has concentrated on texts about Jan Hus, or other Czech supporters of religious reforms who died violent deaths.
However, literary works such as a series of twelve Czech short texts published anonymously at the early seventeenth century under the title “Hystorye o bratru Janovi Palečkovi” (The histories of Brother Jan Palček) show that the equation of early modern Czech Non-Catholic hagiography with martyrology is unjustified. Indeed, the series employs many textual practices and topoi of (late) medieval Christian hagiography, and although its main character is not called a saint, it still bears distinctive features of the concept of Christian sanctity. The article aims to argue that the series can be interpreted as an example of non-martyrological hagiography of a Protestant Reformation type.

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Reviews and analyses

Myśl estetyczna Gianbattisty Gellego – przykład „paraklasycyzmu”? Uwagi do monografii Caroliny Pini Estetica e poetica in Giovan Battista Gelli. Gli scritti sull’arte e su Dante, Berlin–Boston: De Gruyter, 2023 (Classicism and Beyond/ Il classicismo e oltre, 2), ss. 186

Barbara Niebelska-Rajca

Terminus, Volume 27, Issue 2 (75), 2025, pp. 251-259

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843844TE.25.014.21785

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Files to download

Title and imprint pages PDF Table of Contents PDF

Słowa kluczowe: monasticism, founders, saints’ vitae, Carthusians, Carthusians, hagiography, autoordography, monastic literature, transsgression, atopy, sanctitya, Protestant hagiography, early modern hagiography, Bohemian Reformation, facetie, homo religiosus, signifying narrative, holy fool (‘fool for Christ’)

Funding information

The publication of this volume was financed by the Jagiellonian University in Kraków – Faculty of Polish Studies.