Rutger Kramer, 'Naughty and Nice: Gendering, Othering, and Biopolitics in the Lives of Saint Nicholas'

On Thursday 28 November 2024, we will convene for an invited expert guest lecture within the Medieval Seminar Series of Pirenne Institute. The lecture will be delivered by Dr. Rutger Kramer (Utrecht University). He will deliver a paper titled 'Naughty and Nice: Gendering, Othering, and Biopolitics in the Lives of Saint Nicholas'.

Please note that this lecture will take place at Lecture Room 0.1. of the Plateau building (entrance Jozef Plateaustraat 22). It will start at 12.30.

Abstract

Few saints are as ubiquitous as Saint Nicholas. Through his penchant for gift-giving and standing up for the downtrodden, the otherwise enigmatic late antique bishop of Myra became the fount for many different stories throughout the medieval West. As is the case for most saints, these stories invariably highlight his generosity and helpfulness, and set him up to be an exemplary Christian in a world full of dangers. Unlike most saints, however, the stories of Nicholas proved so flexible and attractive, that the spread of his cult went hand in hand with a veritable deluge of local variations to his story, each one tailor-made to fit the specific priorities and interests of the community for whom the individual stories were composed. While this means that each vita of Nicholas needs to be studied for its own sake, when they are put together some common themes do emerge nonetheless – common themes that can become a jumping-off point for comparative research into the various iterations of the same story. This paper will present some initial results from such a comparative approach to the hagiographical dossier of Nicholas. On the one hand, it will be argued that the many lives of ‘Sinterklaas’ indeed are a gift that keeps on giving. On the other hand, however, it will be shown that the gifts within those stories do come at a price.

Speaker

Rutger Kramer is an assistant professor in Medieval History at Utrecht University. Throughout his career, he has held a special interest in questions of authority, community formation, and the ideologies and mentalities that link rulers to their subjects – topics for which Carolingian Europe has proven an especially fertile ground. This previous focus on monks and bishops, saints and kings from the 8th and 9th centuries has somehow formed the inspiration for a new research project into the ‘long history’ of the cult of Saint Nicholas from late antique Anatolia to late medieval Iceland.