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medieval worlds • no. 8 • 2018Transcultural Contacts and Literary Exchanges
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Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
A-1011 Wien, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2
Tel. +43-1-515 81/DW 3420, Fax +43-1-515 81/DW 3400 https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at, e-mail: verlag@oeaw.ac.at |
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DATUM, UNTERSCHRIFT / DATE, SIGNATURE
BANK AUSTRIA CREDITANSTALT, WIEN (IBAN AT04 1100 0006 2280 0100, BIC BKAUATWW), DEUTSCHE BANK MÜNCHEN (IBAN DE16 7007 0024 0238 8270 00, BIC DEUTDEDBMUC)
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medieval worlds • no. 8 • 2018, pp. 22-41, 2018/11/30
Transcultural Contacts and Literary Exchanges
Sanctity and the holy have been useful concepts for scholars seeking to compare religious cultures. This paper seeks to extend the project of comparisons by investigating the organisational contexts that produced collected biographies about holy women and men. It focuses on case studies from Latin and Byzantine Christianity and Buddhist China in the sixth century CE to highlight useful similarities in the authors’ conceptions of their work in the face of fluid traditions and contested religious environments. It also sketches some of the ways in which manuscript production and library organisation helped to generate the texts we have. Without consideration of these organisational factors, it is argued, the traditional project of comparing holy figures is on uncertain ground.
Keywords: collected biographies, hagiography, manuscripts, libraries, Gregory of Tours, Gregory the Great, John of Ephesus, Cyril of Scythopolis, Baochang, Huijiao, Mahāyāna Buddhism, Christianity