The "Lives of the Saints" Project consists of two major components: an interactive database containing extensive textual, historical and material information about these works and their manuscript contexts, and a collection of hypertext editions and translations of Lives with images of their manuscripts.
Saints' Lives (known collectively as "hagiography") are stories about people been who have canonized by the Catholic Church. The "Lives of the Saints" Project will focus on those Lives that were written in French (including Anglo-Norman but not Occitan), in verse or prose or both between c. 880 and c. 1500 of the Christian era. When complete, the project will consist of two major components: an interactive database containing extensive textual, historical and material information about these works and their manuscript contexts, and a collection of hypertext editions and translations of Lives with images of their manuscripts.
Vernacular hagiography was arguably one of the most widely enjoyed and influential genres of the French Middle Ages, and yet, despite some increased interest, it has not gained a corresponding degree of recognition among modern scholars. Many of the Lives are hitherto undiscovered literary gems; others are not quite so aesthetically pleasing. All Lives, however, deserve increased attention both because of the genre's medieval importance and because of their engagement with the foremost issues of their day. Because hagiography, by definition, aims to teach its audience specific lessons, it articulates more explicit points of view than do other literary genres, such as romance and epic. Because saints' Lives must not only teach but also please their audiences in order to succeed, the genre addresses most of the same problems that made secular literature so popular. Finally, because the issues that were most pressing for the audiences shifted constantly, the Lives were not static texts, but rather changed substantially from copy to copy to attract new audiences. Hagiography therefore facilitates our exploration of a variety of medieval cultural matters: spirituality in general, but also gender, family dynamics, and law, to name a few.
The Lives of the Saints Project aims both to make easily accessible the information that is currently known about medieval French hagiography and to make evident the substantial holes in that knowledge. By providing this information, and by demonstrating the central role of hagiography in medieval French culture and the inherent appeal of the works, we hope to stimulate and facilitate further research, especially the preparation of editions and translations that will make the Lives accessible to all readers.