Human, All Too Human: Space, Time, and Beyond in Benedicts Saga

As has long been observed, hagiography’s main purpose is to portray its protagonists (martyrs, blessed, saints, etc.) as models of morality and virtue, focusing on their works and miracles, and elevating them above common human experience. However, legendary accounts also occur in a given space and time, something which may play a role in the narrative and therefore deserves an in-depth examination. In the case of Benedikts saga, moreover, time and space also represent the dimensions in which St Benedict appears to best exercise his role of authority over other characters. In this chapter, I will identify different means of analysis, according to the literary, textual, and narrative elements in Benedikts saga that the significance of space and time can be witnessed in.This way, their role in the saga will emerge as a structural feature (i.e., in the organization of the material), as an external feature (predominantly the historical and geographical setting), and eventually as an internal feature (the dimensions in which the narrative unfolds and the characters act and interact with each other). In some cases, the analysis benefits from a comparison of Benedikts saga with its main source, the second book of Gregory the Great’s Dialogi, in terms of the common aspects and substantial differences between these works, bearing in mind the textual restructuring that the saga underwent, as well as their different target readers. Taken together, all of these aspects contribute to weaken the relation of the legend with the physical human world and progressively elevate the figure of the saint to a higher level and rank, culminating in a cosmic vision that causes both space and time to lose their meaning entirely.