Representing Wonder in Medieval Miracle Narratives

Miracles can be functionalized as an argument for Christian belief, as a proof of the sanctity and the virtue of a person or a relic, or as a didactic means in order to impress and to convince an audience of a theological message. [...] miracle stories do not constitute a genre, but rather a set of textual elements, susceptible of appearing in different textual and pragmatic contexts.2 They cannot be read without explicitly taking their function within a larger textual ensemble into account. [...] unlike the hésitation and the thrills coming along with it, wondering is named explicitly, but can hardly be described as the effect of a textual structure.5 In what follows I would like to examine how miraculous events and the feelings they arouse (astonishment, wondering, terror, delight) are represented in two different hagiographic texts, Virtutes sanctae Geretrudis and the Libellus de miraculo sancti Martini, and also the De miraculis libri duo by Petrus Venerabilis.