St Hyacinth and the Madonnas: Itinerant Images and Material Leitmotifs in Early Modern Hagiography

Abstract

This article examines the early modern development of the legend and iconography of St Hyacinth (Jacek Odrowąż, c. 1185–1257) and his encounters with the Virgin Mary, focusing on the interaction between textual narratives, visual representations, and material objects. Two key episodes are analysed: the vision of the Virgin granted to Hyacinth in the Dominican church of Holy Trinity in Cracow and the later legend of the saint rescuing the Blessed Sacrament and an alabaster statue of the Virgin during a Tatar raid on the Dominican monastery in Kyiv. While the vision appears in the fourteenth-century vita written by Stanislas the Lector, the Kyiv miracle emerged only in the late sixteenth century, during the final stages of Hyacinth’s canonization process. The study argues that this later narrative reflects broader mechanisms of hagiographic transformation. Recurrent motifs circulated across saints’ lives and were adapted to new contexts, while material objects increasingly functioned as tangible proof of miracles and as instruments supporting local cults and institutional prestige. Particular attention is given to alabaster sculptures of the Virgin preserved in Dominican convents in Cracow, Przemyśl, and Lviv, which became associated with the legend and competed for recognition as the authentic ‘St Hyacinth Madonna’. By analysing these developments, the article demonstrates how saints’ legends were reshaped through the interaction of narrative traditions, visual culture, and local religious and political contexts in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.