Abstract

In the oldest versions of the Old French Vie de Saint Alexis, the saint’s renunciation of the profane takes the form of movement. Alexis’s flight from Rome and his return after seventeen years are the defining moments of this version of the Life in Old French, yet scholars have tended to focus on place as it reveals the holy identity of Alexis. This article contends that movement, defined as the absence of fixed place, indicates holiness throughout the text and that Alexis’s flight and return are the true markers of his progression towards perfection. Ultimately, this article posits that Alexis’s holiness in the oldest redactions is always an absence for the audience and movement is one metaphor by which this absence is expressed in the text. Similarly, the narrative movement in the text and the transmission of the tradition of the Life both undermine the centrality of place and reinforce the relationship between movement and holy revelation. In contrast to later, more popular redactions, the oldest witnesses of the Life in Old French present a more universalizing view of the saint and ultimately contribute to the formation of the hagiographic paradigm.

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