Date of Submission
Spring 2024
Academic Program
Literature
Project Advisor 1
Karen Sullivan
Project Advisor 2
Franco Baldasso
Abstract/Artist's Statement
In April of 2020, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben took the Catholic Church to task for failing to live up to the standards of one her greatest saints, St. Francis of Assisi, in her response to the acceleration of the crisis of modernity. This project poses the figure of Blessed Carlo Acutis, beatified by Pope Francis in October of 2020, as a unique response from out of the Franciscan tradition of the Church to Agamben's concerns. Analyzing two important thirteenth century hagiographies of St. Francis alongside two of the most interesting hagiographies which have emerged in the twenty-first century of Blessed Carlo, I discover the renegotiation of key medieval Franciscan motifs in the context of postmodernity.
Open Access Agreement
On-Campus only
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Junceau, Martial C., "Hagiography (Theorem) of a Postmodern Saint: Reading Blessed Carlo Acutis Through St. Francis of Assisi" (2024). Senior Projects Spring 2024. 146.
https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2024/146
This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.
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