6 - Meanderings

Summary

Many stories about river miracles and wonders were repeatedly told, retold, and transformed as part of the process of establishing and understanding discussions about moral values, sanctity, and socioeconomic behaviors. This chapter looks at some of these, following the stories over time and space. The section “Reversing the Rivers,” framed around a specific set of narratives involving the bodies of saints, tackles medieval ideas about what is “natural” and the ways that saints were understood as capable of both sustaining and reversing the natural. The chapter ends with an exploration of a series of stories that stretches into the 1100s and 1200s, encouraging readers to imagine themselves transported both backwards to the Edenic past and forward to a future salvation.