Beyond Telling a Story. On the Role of Narrative in and for Medieval Prayers and Devotional Texts

Abstract

This article explores the role of narrative in and for medieval prayers and devotions. Challenging the assumption that such texts fall outside the scope of narratological inquiry, I show how medieval theological works typically conceptualize prayer as including a constitutive narrative element embedded within a non-narrative textual framework. Drawing on Hugh of Saint Victor’s De virtute orandi and William of Auvergne’s Rhetorica divina, I identify two interconnected functions that these works ascribe to narrative: the rhetorical grounding of petition and the affective-cognitive formation of the praying subject. A reading of Henry Suso’s Hundred Meditations further demonstrates how this text employs second-person narration to stimulate immersion and enable the devotee to participate in the Passion narrative as both its narrator and, ultimately, its beneficiary. Bringing historical narratology into dialogue with medieval theories of prayer, I propose a framework for understanding narrative elements in medieval prayers and meditations as mediating between storytelling, affective engagement, and religious self-formation.