Retelling the Story: Intertextuality, Sacred and Profane, in the Late Roman Legend of St Eugenia
E. Gordon Whatley
Modern scholars of medieval hagiography have recognized for some time that the phenomenon mouvance, or variation and adaptation in retelling recopying stories saints, can offer important insights into shifting values, agendas anxieties, as well language literary tastes, writers, readers devotional communities. Timmie Vitz, to whom it is a pleasure privilege dedicate this essay, has contributed significantly impressive body scholarly work on oral written Latin legends European vernaculars during High Late Middle Ages. Variation transmission hagiographies also attracted attention. For example, Monique Goullet other studied art revision (réécriture) among named authors, Carolingian later, who produced hypertexts (revisions) hypotexts (original versions) saints’ lives. Retelling saints was not innovation, however. It widely practiced late antiquity formative stages great corpus mainly anonymous early Christian would bulk so large monastic legendaries popular devotion throughout period. In my representative specimen such literature legend – part vita, passio ‘transvestite’ saint martyr, Eugenia Rome, which circulated Europe (as further east). survives two main versions, one which, original, composed anonymously fifth century, while an sixth-century first. These are classified by Bollandists as, respectively, BHL 2667 2666. sake simplicity economy, what follows I will designate original version, hypotext (BHL 2667), M, revised hypertext 2666), R, after their earliest editors, humanist Mombritius Rosweyde.