CFP: *Old Testament Saints in the Medieval Latin West*

*Old Testament Saints in the Medieval Latin West*

Organizer: Alison Locke Perchuk, Yale University
Presider: Edward Schoolman, UCLA

Christianity's Judaic roots meant that it inherited an extensive roster
of worthy men and women whose deeds were memorialized in the books that
came to comprise the Old Testament and related apocrypha. These
worthies included the ancestors of Christ, and those who predicted
Christ in word or deed, enjoyed a special relationship with the God of
Israel, or fought or suffered for that God. When the Western Church
began to build its community of saints, it focused primarily upon
martyrs of the Apostolic and post-Apostolic ages, to the near exclusion
of its Jewish forefathers and -mothers. This proscription loosened
slightly across the Middle Ages, in particular during the martyrological
explosion of the Carolingian era, but cults of Old Testament figures
never became as prominent in the Latin West as they did in the Greek
East and in the Holy Land itself, where sites connected to these men and
women could serve as the impetus to devotion. Not surprisingly,
scholarship mirrors this pattern, with the bulk of research focusing on
the Patristic period and Byzantium.

This session seeks to draw attention to that void, by revealing traces
and exploring structures of the consideration of and devotion to Old
Testament figures as holy men and women—saints—in the Medieval Latin
West. It encourages contributions from scholars working on any aspect
of this topic, including archaeology, art history, history, liturgical
studies, musicology, and theology. Papers might include case studies of
specific figures or cultic locations, examinations of the cultural or
intellectual positioning of Old Testament figures at particular moments
or in particular locations, or analyses of the intersections between
pre-Christian figures and the cultic needs of Christianity at the
various stages of its development. While the focus is on the Latin
Christian West, comparative papers that consider the Latin West in
relation to the Greek East or Christianity in relation to Judaism and/or
Islam are also welcome.

Please send 300-word abstract and completed Participant Information Form
(available on line at
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html) to:

Alison Locke Perchuk
1052 S Mansfield Ave
Los Angeles CA 90019
213 210 2311
alison.locke@gmail.com

Submissions may be sent electronically or in paper format. Applications
must be postmarked no later than September 15, 2009.