Savoir lire le corps de l’autre : la biographie hagiographique et le travail de la preuve (autour des Vies de Marthe d’Oraison et Agnès d’Aquillenqui)

“Learning how to read the body of another: hagiographic biography and the work of proof(The Lives of Marthe d’Oraison and Agnès d’Aguillenqui)”Exploring in parallel two spiritual figures of the Seventeenth Century, who died in famasanctitatis and became the subject of several Vitae, this article attempts to show how corporality plays a part in biographies as a proof of holiness. References to the body enlighten the links between canonical and uncanonical holiness, in a context where it was forbidden to call a figure who had not yet been officially recognized by Rome a “saint”. The body is first seen as a tangible epiphanic manifestation of sanctifying virtues or states. Yet, thanks to a figurative work of the biographers, singular bodies are then transformed into hagiographic topoi thereby becoming “canonisable”. This work of figuration is also a way to make the extraordinary more acceptable, by placing it at the crossroads of admirable and imitable, of celebration and caution