Saints George, Sebastian, and Eustace in Medieval Castilian Prose Hagiography

Abstract

This thesis explores the legends of Saints George, Sebastian, and Eustace as presented in five fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts of the corpus of Castilian prose hagiography known as Compilation B. Chapter One provides an introduction to the thematic and codicological contexts of the legends, asking whether it is possible to identify unifying literary or conceptual features. An analysis of the prehistory of the accounts is presented in Chapter Two, which explores how they were reworked into Castilian from their Latin forms in Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea (ca. 1260). Chapter Three presents codicological, textual, and palaeographic studies of each manuscript in order to establish hypotheses of textual affiliation. The second half of the thesis offers a thematic and conceptual analysis of the three legends. Chapter Four looks at the tension between knighthood and martyrdom in representations of George, exploring the rich interpretations that are made possible by the juxtaposition of the secular and the religious. Chapter Five examines the nature of social relationships and interweaving narrative strands in the legend of Sebastian in order to assess the use of multiple protagonists. Finally, Chapter Six considers the use of symbolism and typology in the account of Eustace, identifying and exploring the wide range of traditions from which the account draws. The conclusion draws attention to the importance of studying each text both independently and as part of a wider hagiographic and literary discourse. In an appendix, I provide complete editions of each text, presented here for the first time, along with critical apparatus and sample xeroxes of the manuscripts.