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Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints
Author(s) -
Bailey Lisa Kaaren
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of religious history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1467-9809
pISSN - 0022-4227
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9809.12612
Subject(s) - metaphor , elite , motif (music) , sociology , service (business) , history , gender studies , literature , aesthetics , art , linguistics , law , philosophy , political science , politics , business , marketing
Merovingian hagiographies make extensive use of the metaphor of service to demonstrate the sanctity of their subjects. These religious images emerged from a society in which slaves and servants were both ubiquitous and demeaned, and the metaphors were embedded in the social realities of service. This article examines the Lives of three elite female saints who were depicted as slaves, or engaged in acts of servitude: Radegund, Balthild, and Austreberta. It argues that although service as a religious motif was central to each of these texts, the authors engaged with the image in strikingly different ways and to quite different ends, depending on the social world of the text.