Hagiography by the Book: Bibliomancy and Early Modern Cultures of Compilation in Francisco Zumel's De vitis patrum (1588)

This article probes the interplay of religious belief and early modern textual culture in Francisco Zumel's 1588 vita of Peter Nolasco. Like many hagiographers before and after, Zumel drew on earlier saint's lives to supply missing details; to choose his diverse set of sources, however, turned to bibliomancy, opening Laurentius Surius's hagiography collection De probatis sanctorum historiis at random. The intersection of divination and compilation constitutes not only a new and picturesque chapter in the story of early modern textuality, but also calls attention to the role of non-deliberative processes in reading and composition.