The Childhood of Saint Gerard Majella: from “Classical” Hagiography to Comics and to the Web
Abstract
Through this article I intend to analyse the childhood of St. Gerard Majella (1726-1755), an Italian lay brother of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. The goal is not so much to verify which aspects of his hagiographies correspond to the truth, but to examine the complex stratification of traditions about the saint’s childhood, to understand how it was formulated and how even in more recent years it is narrated. To this end I will examine a rich corpus of sources, composed between 18th century ant the contemporary age, consisting of the bio-hagiographic notes of Father Caione, hagiographies, depositions to ordinary and apostolic processes, to arrive at a comic strip, a popular song, and a cartoon.
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