This study examines a set of model sermons written by Maurice de Sully c. 1160CE. The sermons were extremely popular throughout the later middle ages as evidenced by their existence in eighty-four manuscripts from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, and nineteen printed editions from the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The sermons are evidence of an unexplored trend in Christian piety focused on the adult life of Christ including his parables, miracles, and ministry that stands in contrast to the more well-known affective piety of the later Middle Ages, which tends to focus on the early life and Passion of Christ. Maurice de Sully did not promote passive reflection on the Passion but rather encouraged ordinary believers to reform their behavior, and actively lead good, Christian lives by participating in confession, receiving penance and by spreading the Christian Word. He did so using stories from the adult life of Christ, taken from the New Testament. The image cycles associated with the sermons of Sully also represent this trend in devotion.

Chapter one concerns the twelfth century world of Maurice de Sully in Paris, and the model sermon collection that he wrote there. While the sermons of Maurice de Sully are less studied than those of his more academically inclined contemporaries, such as Peter Comestor, Peter the Chanter and Peter Lombard, I reveal the ways in which his sermons actually relay pertinent theological information, especially concerning the Gospels, to lay audiences. Chapter two addresses the actual reception of the sermons and their intended message by investigating them in their manuscript context. The focus is on vernacular manuscripts and their use by lay audiences. Chapter three turns to an in-depth look at one fourteenth-century manuscript in particular, BnF français 187, in which the form of piety expressed in Maurice de Sully’s sermons is particularly evident. In this manuscript the sermons of Sully are highlighted by a beautiful narrative image cycle focused on the adult life of Christ, which I analyze.

Chapter four steps away from Maurice de Sully and his model sermon collection. In this chapter I examine the long and short versions of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, an extremely influential and heavily used devotional text also created in the mid-fourteenth century that survives in both Latin and the vernacular. The Meditationes serves as a most valuable study in devotional trends, and I use the contents of the long version of the MVC to enhance my study of the sermons of Sully. Finally, chapter five moves forward from the fourteenth century to the late fifteenth century, when Maurice de Sully's sermons first appear in print in Chambéry, the capital of the duchy of Savoy, in 1484CE. The sermons were reprinted a total of nineteen times, and several of the prints contain woodcut illustrations. This chapter investigates the narrative woodcut illustrations found in the 1484 printed edition, in particular. This image cycle, like the one found in BnF français 187, also focuses on the adult ministry of Christ and highlights the teaching potential of Maurice de Sully’s sermons.

This project explores the life and “afterlife” of Radegund, a Merovingian queen, monastic leader, and saint, through almost a millennium and a half of history from the sixth century to the twenty-first. By focusing on specific consolidating moments in the development of Radegund's cult throughout Europe, this study offers a historically critical perspective on the appropriation and reinterpretation of a figure whose versatility ensured her lasting relevance as an important symbol suited to a myriad of political, theological, and social agendas. After her death on August 13, 587, Radegund became the object of a popular cult in Poitiers, which gradually expanded throughout the French- and German- speaking regions of Europe, into Sicily, across the channel into England, and even into France’s colonial possessions. As her cult became a global phenomenon, the two original sixth-century Merovingian biographies composed by individuals who personally knew her soon became the basis for new interpretations of Radegund in various social, religious, political, and geographic contexts. Throughout fourteen centuries, Radegund was "rewritten" by dozens of authors, artists, and devotees who used this figure as a vehicle to promote their different messages, concerns, and interests. Over the course of her afterlife, many different “Radegunds” were created and recreated that often projected contradictory meanings: she was envisioned as a stalwart virgin and an accommodating wife, a royalist rallying point and a republican national treasure, an accomplished queen and a self-effacing recluse, a healer that employed both medicine and miracles, a protectress of the harvest, of cities, and of the nation, a victim and a heroine, to name just a few. My research considers how her various identities shaped and were shaped by shifting needs on both the individual and communal level, by gradual structural changes and transformative events. My analysis of the Radegundian texts, art, and traditions covered in this study relies on methodologies derived from gender studies, global studies, and recent theories from memory studies and the reception of the Middle Ages. While most scholarship on Radegund is typically limited to an analysis of her two sixth-century biographies, my project is the first to feature post-medieval sources and cultic practices. Most of these sources, which range from Latin and vernacular vitae to monumental artistic programs to accounts of propitiating Radegund with packets of oats in rural French towns, have never been addressed in scholarship before or have never been discussed in terms of gender and their relation to women’s history. In this innovative study, I use Radegund's afterlife as a case study for exploring the fluctuating dynamics of the cult of the saints and to better understand how these forces operated in relation to women's history. Gender and the role of women are central considerations as I trace the themes of changing expectations and behavior for women both inside and outside the convent, conventions of elite and royal women's spirituality, as well as attitudes towards marriage and sexuality. My research makes a unique and valuable contribution to scholarship on Radegund, the cult of the saints, and the history of women’s spirituality by incorporating a considerably wider scope and type of sources than has hitherto been attempted. Ultimately, by tracing and analyzing the development of Radegund’s cult in this way, Rewriting Radegund contributes to a greater understanding of the roles saints have played – and continue to play – at the intersection of gender and politics.