Description of weeping in Serbian hagiography (The tears of the woman ruler and of the mother)

Abstract

Studying the texts from a corpus of old Serbian biographies, we left out examples of the genre of weeping, and emphasized the descriptions of weeping as events. In this paper, we focus on the examples of female weeping in hagiographies as well as the examples when the heroines and the events related to them resulted in weeping of the other participants in the hagiographic events. The topic of the study is placed in the context of private lives of people in the Middle Ages. The descriptions of weeping and the author's interpretation are linked with the institution of the family; they follow two types of expressing emotions through weeping: weeping for a dear person who died and weeping as an expression of being close to God, as a form of ischaistic praying mode. Focusing on the first hagiography dedicated to a woman, 'The Life of Queen Helen', we come to the conclusion that medieval hagiography did not insist on gender differences but on the closeness of the male and female elements, based on spiritual similarity and eschatological endeavors.

Keywords

• weeping
• hagiography
• female
• the middle ages
• tearful prayer