Founding and Ineffable Identities: Pelagius, Virgin and Martyr

Abstract

Raguel's Vita vel passio sancti Pelagii (c. 967) and Hroswitha of Gandersheim's poem (10th century) devoted to Pelagius are keywords for the creation of an European literary and symbolic space against Muslims. Both texts were born in a crossroad of religious, political and sexual passions. This article analyses their foundational status in order to understand Christian first imaginaire related to the construction of a virile "Reconquista", which will underline, in literature and historiography, feminine and sodomitic features in many Jew and Muslim men (but also suspicious Christian) in Iberian Middle Ages.