Trickster Saints and Their Manifestations and Miracles in Late Antique Hagiography

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Julia Doroszewska

Trickster Saints and Their Manifestations and Miracles in Late Antique Hagiography

Julia Doroszewska

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English

Routledge
22 December 2025

Literary studies: general; History of religion; Christianity; Ancient religions & mythologies; Eclectic & esoteric religions & belief systems

Series: Religion, Medicine and Health in in Late Antiquity

This book explores how late antique miracle collections depict Christian saints as subversive, theatrical tricksters who blur the boundaries between sacred and profane, human and divine.

Readers will gain a fresh perspective on the cultural and theological imagination of Late Antiquity through a detailed analysis of Greek hagiographic texts. Doroszewska combines literary, religious, and anthropological approaches to show how saints functioned as shape-shifting, paradoxical figures – divine jesters who used ambiguity, humour, and disruption to communicate the sacred. The chronological framework of this study spans from the fifth to the seventh/ eighth century, exploring the emergence, heyday, and eventual decline of miracle collections following the Arab conquest. The volume demonstrates that idiosyncrasies in the characterization of the saints in these texts form a coherent model when approached with the template of the trickster paradigm, offering readers a new understanding of sainthood in late antique Christianity.

Trickster Saints and Their Manifestations and Miracles in Late Antique Hagiography is suitable for scholars and students of late antique Christianity, hagiography, religious studies, classical studies, and those interested in the intersections of literature, folklore, and cultural history.

By: Julia Doroszewska
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 620g
ISBN: 9781032892276
ISBN 10: 1032892277
Series: Religion, Medicine and Health in in Late Antiquity
Pages: 238
Publication Date: 22 December 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction; Part 1. Manifestations. Schema: The Looks; 1. Boundary Crossers: Ambiguous and Ambivalent Personalities; 2. Shape-Shifters: ‘True Guises’ and Disguises in Performative Saintly Manifestations; Part 2. Miracles. Schema: The Plots; 3. Sacred Bricoleurs; 4. Mischief-Makers and Trick-Players; 5. Situation-Invertors and Taboo-Breakers; 6. Conclusion: Divine Jesters as Messengers and Interpreters of God.

Julia Doroszewska is a research fellow at the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw, Poland. She is the author of The Monstrous World: Corporeal Discourses in Phlegon of Tralles’ ""Mirabilia"" and has published widely on liminal phenomena in Greek and Roman pagan and Christian cultures.