Anne E Bailey
Biographic Data
| ID | 125410 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anne E Bailey |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anne E |
| FAMILY NAME | Bailey |
| SIGNATURE | BAILEY A E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7326-7150 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Writing Holiness
Healing Journeys
R.I. Moore’s The Formation of a Persecuting Society explained that the medieval west viewed its transgressive elements as a source of social pollution and relocated them away from mainstream society. There was, however, another way of dealing with society’s perceived dangerous misfits: rehabilitation through pilgrimage. Drawing on evidence from miracle collections compiled in England during the long twelfth century, this article uses ritual theor…
The Hagiographical Landscape of Twelfth-Century England
This article explores hagiographic landscapes as depicted in miracle narratives from twelfth-century England. These stories, which focus on miraculous healing sought by pilgrims at saints’ shrines, often situate their protagonists in locations that, although based on real places, are reimagined for didactic purposes. The article argues that the journeys undertaken by pilgrims in the stories were meant to be read on a metaphorical level and that t…
Revisiting Female Pilgrimage in Medieval Oxford
The most common form of female pilgrimage in medieval England was local pilgrimage to a saint's shrine. One English pilgrimage destination which is especially associated with women is St Frideswide's shrine in Oxford, owing to a collection of miracle stories compiled in the 1180s in which women are particularly prevalent. Drawing on a new edition and translation of the Miracula sancte Frideswide , this article revisits the cult of Frideswide in t…
Journey or Destination? Rethinking Pilgrimage in the Western Tradition
Pilgrimage is undergoing a revival in western Europe, mainly as newly established or revitalised pilgrim routes, such as the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. These trails have helped to foster the widespread idea that pilgrimage is essentially a journey: a spiritual or "meaningful" journey undertaken slowly, and preferably on foot, in the medieval tradition. The purpose of this article is to problematise this journey-oriented understanding o…
Micro Pilgrimages
The word "micro" or "mini" is increasingly appearing in relation to pilgrimage. A Guardian article in December 2021 described a guided pilgrimage walk in Sussex as a "micro pilgrimage"; in the spring of 2022, six "micro pilgrimages" took place in southern England. However, what is a micro pilgrimage, and what has prompted its sudden surge in popularity? This article explores this seemingly innovative practice, focusing on Britain, where it is par…
The Female Condition
This article explores the intersection of medicine, religion and gender within the context of miracle narratives compiled in England and France in the High Middle Ages. Women in miracle accounts have much to tell us about medieval ideas of gendered sickness and health, yet this is an area which has received little scholarly attention. Focusing on stories of female deformity and disfigurement, it is argued that sickness has a feminising effect on …
Reconsidering the medieval experience at the shrine in high medieval England
This article reassesses pilgrimage practices in eleventh- and twelfth-century England and questions the assumption that pilgrims had relatively unrestricted access to saints’ shrines and relics in this period. Drawing on hagiographical evidence, and focusing on six case studies, the article finds that remarkably few pilgrims are depicted in close proximity to a saint's shrine in these narrative sources; they are instead shown venerating at altern…
The Troublesome Relic of a “Troublesome Priest”? Negotiating the Boundaries of Religion, History, and Popular Culture in Anglican Canterbury
In 2016, an extraordinary holy relic arrived in England from Hungary: a fragment reputedly of the murdered medieval archbishop, Thomas Becket. The relic found a warm reception at Canterbury Cathedral—the foremost seat of Anglicanism and the scene of Becket’s martyrdom—five centuries after saint veneration had been banned by King Henry VIII. In the meantime, Becket had entered popular culture not as a saint but, rather, as a controversial historic…
Miracle Children
Approaches from social history, medical anthropology, and the history of the emotions can aid in the understanding of sick and physically impaired children as they appeared in the miracle stories of medieval England. An analysis of the medical and religious meanings attached to bodily defects in the Middle Ages discovers that hagiographers harnessed the emotions evoked by childhood illness to create a distinctly Christian concept of childhood imp…
The Rich and the Poor, the Lesser and the Great’
This article explores the intersection between society and culture in medieval England by examining the ways in which the social identities of female pilgrims were represented in twelfth-century miracle narratives. Miracle stories are written accounts of miraculous events associated with saints' shrines, and often include detailed sociological information about medieval pilgrims. The article focuses on women in these texts, and investigates the e…
Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography
Wives, mothers and widows on pilgrimage
This article examines the types of women undertaking pilgrimage in medieval England as recorded in a range of twelfth-century miracle collections. Miracle narratives provide details of pilgrims visiting local saints' shrines, and are often used by scholars to conduct sociological surveys of a shrine's clientele. This article extends this methodology by analysing women pilgrims within two common medieval frameworks of collective identity: the six …
Modern and Medieval Approaches to Pilgrimage, Gender and Sacred Space
This article examines both modern ethnographical, and medieval hagiographical, constructs of sacred space in the context of female pilgrimage. Beginning with an overview of the ways in which anthropological theories of sacred space and gender have informed pilgrimage scholarship over the last fifty years, it focuses in particular on two conceptual models: that which argues that spatial practices employed by cult centres served to distance women f…
Flights of Distance, Time and Fancy
Journey or Destination? Rethinking Pilgrimage in the Western Tradition
Pilgrimage is undergoing a revival in western Europe, mainly as newly established or revitalised pilgrim routes, such as the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. These trails have helped to foster the widespread idea that pilgrimage is essentially a journey: a spiritual or "meaningful" journey undertaken slowly, and preferably on foot, in the medieval tradition. The purpose of this article is to problematise this journey-oriented understanding o…
Modern and Medieval Approaches to Pilgrimage, Gender and Sacred Space
This article examines both modern ethnographical, and medieval hagiographical, constructs of sacred space in the context of female pilgrimage. Beginning with an overview of the ways in which anthropological theories of sacred space and gender have informed pilgrimage scholarship over the last fifty years, it focuses in particular on two conceptual models: that which argues that spatial practices employed by cult centres served to distance women f…
The Female Condition
This article explores the intersection of medicine, religion and gender within the context of miracle narratives compiled in England and France in the High Middle Ages. Women in miracle accounts have much to tell us about medieval ideas of gendered sickness and health, yet this is an area which has received little scholarly attention. Focusing on stories of female deformity and disfigurement, it is argued that sickness has a feminising effect on …
Reconsidering the medieval experience at the shrine in high medieval England
This article reassesses pilgrimage practices in eleventh- and twelfth-century England and questions the assumption that pilgrims had relatively unrestricted access to saints’ shrines and relics in this period. Drawing on hagiographical evidence, and focusing on six case studies, the article finds that remarkably few pilgrims are depicted in close proximity to a saint's shrine in these narrative sources; they are instead shown venerating at altern…
Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography
Flights of Distance, Time and Fancy
Flights of Distance, Time and Fancy
Lamentation Motifs in Medieval Hagiography
Wives, mothers and widows on pilgrimage
This article examines the types of women undertaking pilgrimage in medieval England as recorded in a range of twelfth-century miracle collections. Miracle narratives provide details of pilgrims visiting local saints' shrines, and are often used by scholars to conduct sociological surveys of a shrine's clientele. This article extends this methodology by analysing women pilgrims within two common medieval frameworks of collective identity: the six …
Modern and Medieval Approaches to Pilgrimage, Gender and Sacred Space
This article examines both modern ethnographical, and medieval hagiographical, constructs of sacred space in the context of female pilgrimage. Beginning with an overview of the ways in which anthropological theories of sacred space and gender have informed pilgrimage scholarship over the last fifty years, it focuses in particular on two conceptual models: that which argues that spatial practices employed by cult centres served to distance women f…
The Rich and the Poor, the Lesser and the Great’
This article explores the intersection between society and culture in medieval England by examining the ways in which the social identities of female pilgrims were represented in twelfth-century miracle narratives. Miracle stories are written accounts of miraculous events associated with saints' shrines, and often include detailed sociological information about medieval pilgrims. The article focuses on women in these texts, and investigates the e…
Miracle Children
Approaches from social history, medical anthropology, and the history of the emotions can aid in the understanding of sick and physically impaired children as they appeared in the miracle stories of medieval England. An analysis of the medical and religious meanings attached to bodily defects in the Middle Ages discovers that hagiographers harnessed the emotions evoked by childhood illness to create a distinctly Christian concept of childhood imp…
The Troublesome Relic of a “Troublesome Priest”? Negotiating the Boundaries of Religion, History, and Popular Culture in Anglican Canterbury
In 2016, an extraordinary holy relic arrived in England from Hungary: a fragment reputedly of the murdered medieval archbishop, Thomas Becket. The relic found a warm reception at Canterbury Cathedral—the foremost seat of Anglicanism and the scene of Becket’s martyrdom—five centuries after saint veneration had been banned by King Henry VIII. In the meantime, Becket had entered popular culture not as a saint but, rather, as a controversial historic…
The Female Condition
This article explores the intersection of medicine, religion and gender within the context of miracle narratives compiled in England and France in the High Middle Ages. Women in miracle accounts have much to tell us about medieval ideas of gendered sickness and health, yet this is an area which has received little scholarly attention. Focusing on stories of female deformity and disfigurement, it is argued that sickness has a feminising effect on …
Reconsidering the medieval experience at the shrine in high medieval England
This article reassesses pilgrimage practices in eleventh- and twelfth-century England and questions the assumption that pilgrims had relatively unrestricted access to saints’ shrines and relics in this period. Drawing on hagiographical evidence, and focusing on six case studies, the article finds that remarkably few pilgrims are depicted in close proximity to a saint's shrine in these narrative sources; they are instead shown venerating at altern…
Micro Pilgrimages
The word "micro" or "mini" is increasingly appearing in relation to pilgrimage. A Guardian article in December 2021 described a guided pilgrimage walk in Sussex as a "micro pilgrimage"; in the spring of 2022, six "micro pilgrimages" took place in southern England. However, what is a micro pilgrimage, and what has prompted its sudden surge in popularity? This article explores this seemingly innovative practice, focusing on Britain, where it is par…
Revisiting Female Pilgrimage in Medieval Oxford
The most common form of female pilgrimage in medieval England was local pilgrimage to a saint's shrine. One English pilgrimage destination which is especially associated with women is St Frideswide's shrine in Oxford, owing to a collection of miracle stories compiled in the 1180s in which women are particularly prevalent. Drawing on a new edition and translation of the Miracula sancte Frideswide , this article revisits the cult of Frideswide in t…
Journey or Destination? Rethinking Pilgrimage in the Western Tradition
Pilgrimage is undergoing a revival in western Europe, mainly as newly established or revitalised pilgrim routes, such as the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. These trails have helped to foster the widespread idea that pilgrimage is essentially a journey: a spiritual or "meaningful" journey undertaken slowly, and preferably on foot, in the medieval tradition. The purpose of this article is to problematise this journey-oriented understanding o…
The Hagiographical Landscape of Twelfth-Century England
This article explores hagiographic landscapes as depicted in miracle narratives from twelfth-century England. These stories, which focus on miraculous healing sought by pilgrims at saints’ shrines, often situate their protagonists in locations that, although based on real places, are reimagined for didactic purposes. The article argues that the journeys undertaken by pilgrims in the stories were meant to be read on a metaphorical level and that t…
Writing Holiness
Healing Journeys
R.I. Moore’s The Formation of a Persecuting Society explained that the medieval west viewed its transgressive elements as a source of social pollution and relocated them away from mainstream society. There was, however, another way of dealing with society’s perceived dangerous misfits: rehabilitation through pilgrimage. Drawing on evidence from miracle collections compiled in England during the long twelfth century, this article uses ritual theor…
History (10 works) · Medieval Literature and History (9 works) · Religious Tourism and Spaces (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Miracle (8 works) · Ancient history (7 works) · History (7 works) · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Literature (5 works)