The Cult of Henry VI: Medieval Memory, Sainthood and Kingship

亨利六世崇拜：中世纪记忆、圣徒身份和王权

• 批准号: 2284443
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2284443
• 关键词: Cult; Henry; VI; Medieval; Memory

Contemporaries widely regarded the reign of Henry VI as a disaster. Subject to mental debilitation, overpowered by the French, and twice deposed, he died a prisoner in the Tower. Yet despite his woeful record as a ruler, for a time he became the most popular saint in late medieval England; such veneration of the worst king in living memory is both greatly surprising and anomalous. The large number of pilgrim badges bearing his image is the only collection to come close to that of St Thomas Becket. A contemporary collection of miracle stories (miracula) records 166 accounts of people invoking the name of the dead king to help with their problems. This project will examine the cult of Henry VI and the reasons why his popularity rose so dramatically amongst all strata of society after his death in 1471. In doing so it seeks to examine both the nature of late medieval religiosity and its relationship with notions of kingship. There is ample scholarship on his religiously focused life and his abjectly poor record as king yet, comparatively, very little work has been devoted to Henry's cult. Moreover, those scholars who have written on the subject have explained it narrowly in terms of the patronage of Henry Tudor came to power in 1485. The rise of Henry's cult is a much more intriguing and layered phenomenon than has been acknowledged.

当时的人普遍认为亨利六世的统治是一场灾难。由于精神衰弱，被法国人制服，两次被废黜，他在伦敦塔的囚犯中死去。然而，尽管他作为统治者的记录令人遗憾，但他一度成为中世纪晚期英格兰最受欢迎的圣人;对人们记忆中最糟糕的国王的崇拜既令人惊讶又反常。大量印有他肖像的朝圣者徽章是唯一接近圣托马斯贝克特的收藏。一本当代的奇迹故事集（miracula）记录了166个关于人们呼唤已故国王的名字来帮助解决他们问题的故事。这个项目将研究亨利六世的崇拜和为什么他的受欢迎程度在他于1471年去世后在社会各阶层中急剧上升的原因。在这样做的时候，它试图研究中世纪晚期宗教的性质及其与王权观念的关系。关于他的宗教生活和他作为国王的糟糕记录，有大量的学术研究，但相对而言，很少有人致力于亨利的崇拜。此外，那些写过这方面文章的学者，都狭隘地解释说，都铎王朝是在1485年掌权的亨利的庇护下建立的。对亨利崇拜的兴起是一个比人们所承认的更有趣、更有层次的现象。