Amy Jeffs in conversation with Tony McAleavy
Amy Jeffs is in conversation with Tony McAleavy discussing her book “SAINTS” newly published in paperback.
Wednesday 30th April 7.30pm : The Rausing Building Malmesbury.
Author bio
Amy Jeffs is an art historian specialising in the Middle Ages. In 2019, she gained a PhD in Art History from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, having studied for earlier degrees at the Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Cambridge. During her PhD Amy co-convened a project researching medieval badges and pilgrim souvenirs at the British Museum. She then worked in the British Library's department of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern manuscripts. She is now based in Somerset as a full-time author and artist printmaker. Her first book, STORYLAND: A New Mythology of Britain, was a Sunday Times Bestseller.
About the Book
In Saints, 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).
The commentaries following the stories offer a history of each saint and, together, trace the rise and fall of the medieval cult of saints from the first martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. And all this maps onto the passing year: from St Mungo in January to St Thomas Becket in December. Jeffs guides her readers from images high on the walls of medieval churches, through surviving treasures of the elite and into the shifting silt of the Thames, where lie the lowly image-bearing badges once treasured by pilgrims.
She opens manuscripts that hold wondrous stories of the lives and deaths of wayfaring monks, oak-felling missionaries and mighty martyrs. With tales of demons and dragons, with the stubborn skull of a giant, with stories of sleepers in a concealed Greek cave, Saints will enchant and transport readers to other worlds.
Amy Jeffs is in conversation with Tony McAleavy discussing her book “SAINTS” newly published in paperback.
Wednesday 30th April 7.30pm : The Rausing Building Malmesbury.
Author bio
Amy Jeffs is an art historian specialising in the Middle Ages. In 2019, she gained a PhD in Art History from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, having studied for earlier degrees at the Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Cambridge. During her PhD Amy co-convened a project researching medieval badges and pilgrim souvenirs at the British Museum. She then worked in the British Library's department of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern manuscripts. She is now based in Somerset as a full-time author and artist printmaker. Her first book, STORYLAND: A New Mythology of Britain, was a Sunday Times Bestseller.
About the Book
In Saints, 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).
The commentaries following the stories offer a history of each saint and, together, trace the rise and fall of the medieval cult of saints from the first martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. And all this maps onto the passing year: from St Mungo in January to St Thomas Becket in December. Jeffs guides her readers from images high on the walls of medieval churches, through surviving treasures of the elite and into the shifting silt of the Thames, where lie the lowly image-bearing badges once treasured by pilgrims.
She opens manuscripts that hold wondrous stories of the lives and deaths of wayfaring monks, oak-felling missionaries and mighty martyrs. With tales of demons and dragons, with the stubborn skull of a giant, with stories of sleepers in a concealed Greek cave, Saints will enchant and transport readers to other worlds.
Amy Jeffs is in conversation with Tony McAleavy discussing her book “SAINTS” newly published in paperback.
Wednesday 30th April 7.30pm : The Rausing Building Malmesbury.
Author bio
Amy Jeffs is an art historian specialising in the Middle Ages. In 2019, she gained a PhD in Art History from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, having studied for earlier degrees at the Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Cambridge. During her PhD Amy co-convened a project researching medieval badges and pilgrim souvenirs at the British Museum. She then worked in the British Library's department of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern manuscripts. She is now based in Somerset as a full-time author and artist printmaker. Her first book, STORYLAND: A New Mythology of Britain, was a Sunday Times Bestseller.
About the Book
In Saints, 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).
The commentaries following the stories offer a history of each saint and, together, trace the rise and fall of the medieval cult of saints from the first martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. And all this maps onto the passing year: from St Mungo in January to St Thomas Becket in December. Jeffs guides her readers from images high on the walls of medieval churches, through surviving treasures of the elite and into the shifting silt of the Thames, where lie the lowly image-bearing badges once treasured by pilgrims.
She opens manuscripts that hold wondrous stories of the lives and deaths of wayfaring monks, oak-felling missionaries and mighty martyrs. With tales of demons and dragons, with the stubborn skull of a giant, with stories of sleepers in a concealed Greek cave, Saints will enchant and transport readers to other worlds.