Saints

Numerous saints were held to have lived, breathed and performed miracles across Britain, from only decades after Christ''s death, up to the eve of the Reformation, with all of its consequent destruction. In medieval narratives these saints are given nature''s blessing: a salmon finds Cadog''s handbook, the Thames parts for Alban, geese fill the sky to converse with Werbaugh. Moreover they fit the medieval view of British history at large. St Cadog and King Arthur are contemporaries; St Mungo meets Merlin in the woods; St Alban is implicated in the Roman persecution of Christians. And while there was no single history accepted across its islands and diverse populations, these stories do enable us to reconstruct a long, obsolete view on Britain''s deepest past. Through passages of narrative, deeply researched explanation and beautifully illustrated by the author with thirty woodcuts, Saints retells stories that enjoyed centuries of popular appeal among medieval Christians but were suppressed when their shrines were destroyed. These stories embraced the darkness of their heroes: sinister saints who sacrificed their followers and women who communed with geese, saints whose decapitated heads spoke to wolves.

Auteur
Dr Amy Jeffs is an author, artist and medievalist. During her PhD in Art History at the University of Cambridge, she co-convened a project researching medieval badges and pilgrim souvenirs at the British Museum. She then worked in the British Library's department of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern manuscripts. Now a Somerset-based author, she illustrates her books with print and paper cutout. Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain was published in 2021. It was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Waterstones Book of the Month, as well as being shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year. Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain was published in 2022. Its audiobook, illustrated with 7 original songs, was named Audiobook of the Week by the Guardian and the Times. Her latest project will be revealed in the Spring of 2024.

Texte du rabat

Medieval legends told and illustrated by the bestselling author of Storyland.

Résumé

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Storyland and Wild, comes a sweeping new legendary of miracles, magic, human frailty and heroic strength. Illustrated with over thirty original paper cutouts by the author.

'Jeffs writes beautifully, erring just on the right side of florid, and her linocut prints make for attractive illustrations . . . This gorgeous book should live on the bookshelves in every house that cares about the idea of Britain, what is was and where it came from' The Times on Storyland

'I have fallen so completely in love with this book; Storyland, by Amy Jeffs, just one of the finest, most covetable things around' Katherine Rundell

Saints' legends suffused medieval European culture. Their heroes' suffering and wonder-working shaped landscapes, rituals and folk beliefs. Their tales spoke of men raised by wolves, women communing with flocks of birds and severed heads calling from between bristling paws.

In Saints, Amy Jeffs retells legends born of the medieval cult of saints. She draws on 'official' lives, vernacular romances, artworks and obscene poetry, all spanning from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries. The legends' heroes originate from as far east as Turkey and North Africa and as far west as Britain and Ireland. Saints includes such enduring super saints as Brigid, George, Patrick and Michael, as well as some whose legends are less well known (Scoithín, Euphrosyne and Ia) or else couched in prejudice (William of Norwich).

The commentaries following the stories offer a history of each saint and, together, trace the rise and fall of the medieval cult of saints from the first martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. And all this maps onto the passing year: from St Mungo in January to St Thomas Becket in December.

Jeffs guides her readers from images high on the walls of medieval churches, through surviving treasures of the elite and into the shifting silt of the Thames, where lie the lowly image-bearing badges once treasured by pilgrims. She opens manuscripts that hold wondrous stories of the lives and deaths of wayfaring monks, oak-felling missionaries and mighty martyrs. With tales of demons and dragons, with the stubborn skull of a giant, with stories of sleepers in a concealed Greek cave, Saints will enchant and transport readers to other worlds.