The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

Saints’ legends suffused medieval European culture. Their heroes’ suffering and wonder-working shaped landscapes, rituals and folk beliefs. Their tales spoke of men raised by wolves, women communing with flocks of birds and severed heads calling from between bristling paws. In this book, Amy Jeffs retells legends born of the medieval cult of saints. She draws on ‘official’ lives, vernacular romances, artworks and obscene poetry, all spanning from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries. The legends’ heroes originate from as far east as Turkey and North Africa and as far west as Britain and Ireland. Saints includes such enduring super saints as Brigid, George, Patrick and Michael, as well as some whose legends are less well known (Scoithín, Euphrosyne and Ia) or else couched in prejudice (William of Norwich).