Kerala Christian Sainthood: Collisions of Culture and Worldview in South India
Corinne G. Dempsey
Abstract
Kerala Christian Sainthood is an ethnography‐based study that celebrates the multivocal function of saints. Drawing on pilgrim anecdotes, shrine practices, official hagiographies, and regional folklore, it shows how the business of saints routinely extends beyond their capacity as earthly conduits of miraculous power. Saintly characters described in this book, hailing from the religiously pluralistic South Indian state of Kerala, not only tend to the health and happiness of individual devotees but also help craft and express the multiple identities and complex power relations of their devotion ... More
Keywords: Christian sainthood, female sanctity, folklore, hagiographies, Hindu, India, Kerala Christian, postcolonial, Sr. Alphonsa, St. George
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2001 | Print ISBN-13: 9780195130287 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 | DOI:10.1093/0195130286.001.0001 |
