Afterlives of the Saints

by Colin Dickey

  Part Four

  The history of spontaneous human combustion I relate borrows from work done by an excellent essay by Warren S. Walker titled "Lost Liquor Lore: The Blue Flame of Intolerance." John Heymer's theories on the matter can be found in his book The Entrancing Flame. Material on Saint Foy, including firsthand accounts of her miracles, can be found in The Book of Sainte Foy, translated and edited by Pamela Sheingorn; Hannah Green's Little Saint is also excellent. And though the priests Green talked to in the late 1970s maintain that Foy's bones were not stolen, a detailed account of the theft of her relics can be found in Patrick Geary's Furta Sacra, on which I relied for my account. The history of Saint George in England is detailed in depth in Jonathan Good's The Cult of St. George in Medieval England; his influence in the Middle East is described in William Dalrymple's excellent From the Holy Mountain. The translation of Dante I used is Robert and Jean Hollander's; their notes were also extremely helpful, as was John Freccero's book Dante: The Poetics of Conversion. The quoted letters from Van Gogh are translated by Arnold J. Pomerans.

  Part Five

  Heloïse and Abelard's letters are translated by Betty Radice. More information on the Skoptsy cult can be found in Laura Engelstein's Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale. My discussion of crying benefits from Tom Lutz's excellent Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears. For Margery Kempe's writings, I used Lynn Staley's edition; the essays accompanying her edition of the text were also quite useful in the writing of this book. Robert Glück's book Margery Kempe is well worth seeking out.

  Acknowledgments

  This book could not have been written without the help of a number of people. From the start, (the explosive) Barbara Galletly was an enormously enthusiastic supporter of this project, and this book would not have happened without her ideas, encouragement, and friendship.

  Many thanks to Mark Allen and Michele Yu at Machine Project in Los Angeles and Amaranth Borsuk and Bryan Hurt of the Loudest Voice reading series for hosting the early readings that became this book. Joanna Ebenstein, founder of the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn, also hosted some early talks and has been a constant friend and sounding board for advice and ideas. Endless thanks as well to the wonderful people at Lapham's Quarterly, particularly Timothy Don, who was invaluable in securing image permissions for the book, and Michelle Legro, for reasons too numerous to mention. Thanks also to Susan Lester, M.D., for patiently answering many of my weirder medical questions.

  Perpetual thanks to Libby Jordan, Rachel Kinbar Grace, Caitlin Hamilton Summie, Rich Rennicks, and the rest of the wonderful team at Unbridled Books. And deepest thanks once again to Fred Ramey, whose editorial advice and support made this book what it is.

  COLIN DICKEY is the author of Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius. His work has appeared in Lapham's Quarterly, Cabinet, TriQuarterly and elsewhere. He is also co-editor— with Nicole Antebi and Robby Herbst— of Failure! Experiments in Aesthetic and Social Practices. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he lives in Los Angeles.