The life of St. Ildefonso and the imaginary linked to the Marian cult in the Visigoth Kingdom of Toledo (VII-VIII centuries)

Abstract

The Hagiography, a privileged source for the analysis of the medieval imaginary, can show us elements that concerning daily life, practices, the history of the hagiographic characters and its social environment, and is an instrument often used pedagogically in the religious education of members of the clergy and the whole audience, by the example of holiness and the actions of man or woman who becomes a mediator of the causes of God. This work aims to analyze, through the mediaeval imaginary and Critical Discourse Analysis, one of the shorter and less explored hagiographies produced on one of the great bishops of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo (7-8th centuries A.D.), the Vita Vel Gesta Sancti Ildefonsi Toletaneae Sedis Metropolitani Episcopi, the Life of St. Ildefonso of Toledo. Beyond the authorship and tradition of the work, the political quarrels that involved the monarchy and the Visigothic clergy in the period, the supernatural and symbolic elements that had the purpose of impressing and embracing the hearers and readers, we see in this Vita a direct intention to expand at Toledo and, later in other places of Europe, the Marian cult and the figure of one of its most faithful devotees, Ildefonso of Toledo.