With Saints, Amy Jeffs makes her own contribution to the centuries-old tradition of abridging and compiling saints’ lives. Medieval hagiographies, or lives of saints, served as edifying examples of piety from which lessons could be learned. They might be recited aloud in social settings, woven into sermons or popular song, or used for private devotion. The prevailing view among late 20th-century scholars was that they acted as bridges between the laity and the educated clergy, with folklore added to the mix to bring townspeople closer to orthodox religion. More recently, the presence of folklore in hagiographies has been seen as evidence of the interchange of oral cultures between the two classes. In her new book, Jeffs chooses to foreground the miraculous and magical components of hagiography. Perhaps inspired by the current mania for folklore, myths and fairy tales, she sets out ‘to enchant you, to appal you, to transport you to another world’.

Jeffs has already succeeded in laying out Britain’s wealth of medieval literature in two anthologies, Storyland and Wild, each illuminated with her own lino prints and woodcuts. This book is similarly illustrated, Jeffs having created the black-and-white images by making cuts in paper. Like the lives of saints produced in medieval Europe, Saints is arranged according to the liturgical year, taking in feast days and the Labours of the Months. Each narrative is accompanied by a brief commentary, describing the sources she has drawn on, along with alternative versions. These exegeses are somewhat academic in tone, reflecting the breadth of research that went into the book, but they are nevertheless in keeping with the style of the retellings. The lives of the individual saints are linked to one another through recurring themes, such as male virtus (bodily strength in relation to moral virtue), the survival of cults, shrines and relics, animal transformation and religious syncretism. Anecdotal asides from Jeffs’s university days give a sense of this material still being studied. 

Most of the tales Jeffs relates involve bodily transformation or resurrection. The royal virgin Werburgh not only brings a digested goose back to life, but also reconstitutes it in midair, sinews and all. The servant who ate it collapses to the floor ‘in a pool of his own vomit’.