Hagiography was one of the most prolific narrative genres in the Middle Ages. Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (c. 1260), the most popular compendium, was translated into every language in Western Europe. In the medieval Iberian peninsula, the number of conserved hagiographic documents dwarfs those belonging to other narrative genres. This book examines one collection of saints' lives, or sanctorals, and the twenty-five female saints witnessed therein. Their lives furnished exemplary models for women inside and outside the Church, and tell stories of maidens tortured by pagan sovereigns,...

This book provides the most comprehensive study to date of the full range of Marias' writing, including discussion and analysis of his literary and intellectual formation, his development as a novelist and short story writer, and his unique perspective offered in nearly twenty-five years of newspaper columns on topics ranging from religion to football. Above all, Marias is examined as a writer of fictions. As a translator of several canonical works from English to Spanish, Marias came to appreciate the preciseness of words as well as their ambiguity, their capacity to represent as well as...