Vidas de santa Osith y santa Fe

The Lives of Saint Osith and Saint Faith, composed in England between the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries in Anglo-Norman French, narrate the legends of two virgins martyred by their pagan persecutors: Osith flees from an unwanted marriage to found an abbey and is assassinated. by the Danish invaders on the shores of Essex; Faith she is a victim of the Roman persecutions in the city of Agen, where after facing a debate with the prefect she is tortured in the flames. Both stories are framed within one of the richest aspects of medieval European literature: hagiography. Despite their enormous differences, Osith and Fe embody the same model, that of the virgin martyr, the main type of representation of female holiness. These stories offer a narrative space in which the female subject, aware of the political, economic and symbolic capital of her virginity, stands out as the owner of her decisions. By exalting the ability of women to dispose of her body and her destiny, these suffering heroines thus became a very attractive example for the female audiences to whom the lives of saints were primarily destined.