The “Changeling Saint” Revisited

Medieval Hagiography, Zeno , and the Afterlife of a Motif

Datos Bibliográficos

ID24140367
AutoresDavide Ermacora (0000-0002-6908-4500, University of Turin, autor de correspondencia)
Año2026
Volumen15
Número2
Páginas361-427
Fecha de publicación2026-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPreternature Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2161-2188 • E-ISSN: 2161-2196
EditorialThe Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5325/preternature.15.2.0361
OpenAlexW7203732942
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas17

This article examines the transmission of the changeling motif—a child replaced by a demonic double—in medieval hagiographic literature. While scholars have identified changeling legends in the apocryphal Vitae of SS. Stephen, Lawrence, and Bartholomew, the article proposes the inclusion of the fourteenth-century Middle Low German poem Zeno within the medieval changeling corpus. The Zeno narrative demonstrates how changeling motifs migrated from saints’ lives to chivalric romance while preserving core narrative structures. The article conceptualizes this appropriation of hagiographic narrative conventions for secular audiences as the “hagiographesque.” It further traces the origins of medieval changeling hagiography to twelfth-century central Italy and explores the relationship between written texts and oral tradition. Drawing on manuscript, iconographic, and folkloric evidence, it shows how hagiographically influenced child-substitution narratives were transmitted, adapted, and reinterpreted across centuries, including in the form of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European ballads and prose tales.

Afterlife · Appropriation · Ballad · Middle Ages · Middle English · Motif (music) · Narrative · Romance · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · Medieval History and Crusades · Medieval Literature and History