Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography

Miraculous cures were often events full of emotional drama in medieval miracle accounts: weeping, wailing, writhing, garment-rending and fainting frequently characterise the behaviour of female pilgrims depicted at healing shrines. Scholarship has taken little interest in this phenomenon, other than to dismiss it as female ' hysteria'. This article, however, argues that these descriptions represent a form of ritual lamentation, both in terms of popular religious practice but especially as a literary device. It explores some of the ways in which hagiographers incorporated lamentation motifs into their narratives, and concludes by suggesting that these gendered tropes also underlie the emotive and somatic piety characteristic of some forms of late medieval female sanctity.