{"title":"Martyrdom, Motherhood, and the Aetiology of Infanticide: The Legend of Saints Quiricus and Julitta in Early Iberian Art and Literature","authors":"Andrew Beresford","doi":"10.7203/mclm.10.25785","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The legend of Saints Quiricus and Julitta circulated in two different forms. The oldest, the Acta apocrypha, offers an implausible account of martyrdom, depicting the soon-to-be-three-year-old Quiricus as a militantly loquacious evangelizer, and his mother, Julitta, as an avid and enthusiastic disciple. This is the source preferred by early Iberian artworks. Conversely, the accounts descended from a fifth-century epistle composed by Theodore of Mopsuestia depict the saints in an entirely different light. In this version Julitta becomes the centre of narrative interest while Quiricus is reimagined as a figure at a pre-linguistic stage of development. This is the source favoured by medieval Iberian prose accounts. The distinction between the two branches raises questions concerning the relationship between orthodoxy and heterodoxy as well as the specific individual qualities of art and literature. This article argues that critical positions that fail to account for the influence of differing narrative forms will reveal only a small and potentially misleading part of the fuller picture. It becomes important in view of this to adopt a more holistic and nuanced approach towards questions of interpretation, reaching across traditional disciplinary boundaries so as to gain an insight into the richness and complexity of medieval production.","PeriodicalId":40390,"journal":{"name":"Magnificat Cultura i Literatura Medievals","volume":"46 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Magnificat Cultura i Literatura Medievals","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.7203/mclm.10.25785","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The legend of Saints Quiricus and Julitta circulated in two different forms. The oldest, the Acta apocrypha, offers an implausible account of martyrdom, depicting the soon-to-be-three-year-old Quiricus as a militantly loquacious evangelizer, and his mother, Julitta, as an avid and enthusiastic disciple. This is the source preferred by early Iberian artworks. Conversely, the accounts descended from a fifth-century epistle composed by Theodore of Mopsuestia depict the saints in an entirely different light. In this version Julitta becomes the centre of narrative interest while Quiricus is reimagined as a figure at a pre-linguistic stage of development. This is the source favoured by medieval Iberian prose accounts. The distinction between the two branches raises questions concerning the relationship between orthodoxy and heterodoxy as well as the specific individual qualities of art and literature. This article argues that critical positions that fail to account for the influence of differing narrative forms will reveal only a small and potentially misleading part of the fuller picture. It becomes important in view of this to adopt a more holistic and nuanced approach towards questions of interpretation, reaching across traditional disciplinary boundaries so as to gain an insight into the richness and complexity of medieval production.
期刊介绍:
Its coverage is threefold: (1) Cultural subjects for the Romance area, in the medieval and post-medieval era (up to 1600). (2) Literature, linguistics and cultural issues in general, concerning the Crown of Aragon and Occitania (and other related areas such as Naples and Navarre). (3) Digital humanities or otherwise methodological studies, provided that they may be of service to the medievalist. This annual publication has been created with the intention of serving as a platform for works that exceed the conventional length of journal articles. Therefore Magnificat CLM will preferably publish long articles, but articles of medium length are not excluded. Magnificat CLM is aimed at an audience of researchers and specialists in medieval studies, especially Romance philology, as well as of specialists in digital humanities. Magnificat CLM consists of a single section of articles, occasionally including a monographic dossier on particular subjects. All articles are indexed. Magnificat CLM published its first volume in 2014.