Sacred fictions
Subtitle: holy women and hagiography in late antiquity
By: Lynda L. Coon.
Series: The Middle Ages series
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 228
Subjects: Women in Christianity -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Women in Christianity -- History -- Middle Ages, 600-1500; Christian women saints -- Biography -- History and criticism; Christian hagiography -- History -- To 1500
Description: Late antique and early medieval hagiographic texts present holy women as simultaneously pious and corrupt, hideous and beautiful, examplars of depravity and models of sanctity. In Sacred Fictions Lynda Coon unpacks these paradoxial representations to reveal the construction and circumscription of women's roles in the early Christian centuries.

The sacred fictions of holy women were written within the context of the institutionalization of the male priesthood and the masculinization of church worship, Coon contends. The windows they open on the past are far from transparent; driven by both literary invention and moral imperative, the stories they tell helped shape Western gender constructs that have survived into modern times.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-219) and index.