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UBC Theses and Dissertations
Gender, sanctity and sainthood : official and alternative saints as females exemplars in Roman Catholicism, 1939-1978 May, Laura J.
Abstract
Aside from studies on the Virgin Mary, of which there are many, little research has been done on the range of women the Roman Catholic church has promoted as exemplars--female saints, for example, in particular modern female saints. I have studied the women canonized by the Roman Catholic church from 1939 to 1978 through three types of sources: papal canonization speeches, official hagiographies, and varied writings by lay Catholic women. Saints mean very different things to each of these groups of people. To popes, canonization speeches provide an opportunity to comment on politics and society--from Pope Pius XII’s antifeminist remarks to Pope Paul V1s attempts to reconcile feminism and Catholicism. To hagiographers, female saints represented everything from a new Virgin Mary to a new imitation of Christ. Hagiographers did not establish a dual system of sanctity for men and for women: they did not describe all women as imitators of Mary and exemplars for other women. But they presented all female saints as, above all, obedient--and, in particular, obedient to the male hierarchy. Several lay Catholic women understood saints lives not as examples of obedience but as examples of autonomy. Overall, I show that saints lives are religious symbols; like other religious symbols, as Paul Ricoeur argues, their lives are polysemic--that is, subject to various interpretations.
Item Metadata
Title |
Gender, sanctity and sainthood : official and alternative saints as females exemplars in Roman Catholicism, 1939-1978
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1992
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Description |
Aside from studies on the Virgin Mary, of which there are many, little
research has been done on the range of women the Roman Catholic church
has promoted as exemplars--female saints, for example, in particular
modern female saints. I have studied the women canonized by the Roman
Catholic church from 1939 to 1978 through three types of sources: papal
canonization speeches, official hagiographies, and varied writings by lay
Catholic women. Saints mean very different things to each of these groups of
people. To popes, canonization speeches provide an opportunity to comment
on politics and society--from Pope Pius XII’s antifeminist remarks to Pope
Paul V1s attempts to reconcile feminism and Catholicism. To hagiographers,
female saints represented everything from a new Virgin Mary to a new
imitation of Christ. Hagiographers did not establish a dual system of
sanctity for men and for women: they did not describe all women as
imitators of Mary and exemplars for other women. But they presented all
female saints as, above all, obedient--and, in particular, obedient to the male
hierarchy. Several lay Catholic women understood saints lives not as
examples of obedience but as examples of autonomy. Overall, I show that
saints lives are religious symbols; like other religious symbols, as Paul
Ricoeur argues, their lives are polysemic--that is, subject to various
interpretations.
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Extent |
3769555 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2008-12-18
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0086599
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
1992-11
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.