Catalan Lives of Saints after Trent (1575–1602)

Abstract

Carme Arronis examines the first hagiographic samples to emerge in Catalan after the closure of Trent and tries to elucidate what specific changes were applied to the stories, and what were the intentions of the compilers of the new books of saints. She reviews three texts: the latest edition of the Flos sanctorum romançat (1575), which is a translation of the medieval Legenda aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, and the first two compilations of reformed hagiography, namely the handwritten notes of the Jesuit Pere Gil, known as Vides de sants de Catalunya; and the compilation by the Dominican Antoni Vicenç Domènec, Historia general de los santos y varones ilustres en santidad del Principado de Cataluña (1602). These three texts show strategies aimed at adapting the book of saints to post-Tridentine sensitivities, and the two new compilations allow us to appreciate the discursive efforts of the first post-Tridentine hagiographers to legitimise local devotions, trying to fit them in with the demands of authority and historicity that characterized the Church of the Counter-Reformation, in such a way that these works would help to refute Protestant criticism.