Beyond Hagiography: Gender and Violence in the Earliest Liturgy for Pelagius

Abstract Pelagius is most famously known as the saint who was martyred by the tenth-century emir of Córdoba for not submitting to his advances. The story has fascinated historians of gender and sexuality for the ways in which it appears to challenge gendered standards of sanctity. But was this how Pelagius was remembered in the sources with which he was first venerated? This article looks beyond the hagiographical narrative that has mostly concerned historians to the existing liturgies for the saint as celebrated according to the Old Hispanic Rite, with a Mass and three distinct offices surviving in multiple manuscripts from early medieval Iberia. Close study of the liturgy reveals how liturgists consciously shaped the identity of Pelagius, borrowing materials and tropes from both male and female saints in order to anchor an unusual contemporary saint in old models.