Jehangir Malegam

The Miracula sancti Ursmari recounts an eleventh-century tour of relics during which monks from Lobbes brought peace to squabbling Flemish knights. While it could be assumed that the monks mediated between antagonists or organized reconciliation ceremonies, peacemaking in this text is not the arbitration of disputes but rather a conveyance of transformative grace; it is a sacrament offered to Flemish communities whose ethos of fighting reflects the region’s need for religious reform. Methods of arbitration or compromise undertaken in the absence of the saint are parodies of peace: any tranquility they bring is illusory and consequently betrayed by renewed conflict. This text prompts us to reexamine conflict narratives for theological understandings of pax that structure the depiction of a dispute resolution. The descriptions should not be taken as prima facie evidence of medieval social ordering but treated as guides to monastic aspirations during a period of church reform.

This article explores the range of cultural scripts made available to medieval hagiographers when they depicted anger in accounts of mission and conversion. The focus is communities with prominent " lapsed " Christians, who then become targets of reconversion. By reconstructing templates of emotional change and redemption associated with anger in these narratives, we are better able to see how mission hagiog-raphers reconciled extended, politicized and violent Christianization processes with sudden, dramatic conversions. The use of these emotional templates can also be located in the immediate circumstances and longstanding communal pressures of the monastic communities that produced these conversion narratives.