HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

BIOGRAPHY 1000‒1350 361free ( franci) of sin and the devil; 4) Francis displayed the kind ofmagnanimity characteristic of the French; 5) this language assistedhis spoken eloquence; 6) it filled persons with the terror and the needto drive away the devil; and 7) he displayed composure, perfectdeeds, and honest talk. All of these virtues James ascribed to theFrench. He failed, however, to note that Francis’s mother was French,which surely would explain his early eloquence in that language. 22One of the most important first-hand accounts of a medieval saintare the recollections of the maidservants or ladies-in-waiting ofLandgravina Elizabeth of Thuringia (†1231), who had known hersince childhood and who testified at her canonization trial. Theirevidence was gathered together by an anonymous contemporaryauthor and served as the foundation of her abundant biographies,providing one of the most detailed accounts of the upbringing of amedieval saint. 23 The author provides the following justification forhis work:In order to glorify the dignity and honor of His clemency by makingknown to the faithful of the present generation the praiseworthy lifeof the blessed Elizabeth and to pass it on to posterity, we have decidedto commit this material to writing and afterward to conceal it awayin our hearts. [We have done this] lest her worthy memory and herbehavior, so worthy of imitation, be incorrectly obliterated from historyand disappear through the ravages of time; lest the road that shefollowed be blotted out, the example to be embraced perish and fallinto oblivion through negligence, and lest future generations cease topraise her because the evil disease of heresy has again suppressed andstrangled what the devotion of the church has nourished like a mother.Indeed, our Elizabeth has been a destroyer of vice, a planter [of theseeds] of virtue, a school of good morals, an example of penance anda mirror of innocence, which we will briefly explain one by one. 24The hagiographer’s immediate role as a warrior in the polemicalbattle against heresy, which is noted in this prologue, was especiallyevident in the later Middle Ages, when many of the saints activelypreached against disbelief. Elizabeth’s confessor and confidant, whostrongly supported her case, was the Inquisitor Conrad of Marburg,who was killed by heretics in 1233; although there is no real direct22Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, ed. Th. Graesse (Leipzig, 1850), 662–63.23Goodich (1996), 91.24“Prologus et epilogus in Dicta ancillarum S. Elisabeth Thuringiae lantgraviae”,ed. D. Henniges, in Archivum franciscanum historicum 3 (1910), 480.