Marianne Sághy


Marianne Sághy was a Hungarian expert on the religious and social culture of Late Antiquity, with an especial focus on the cult of saints and hagiography. She was Associate Professor at the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, and at the Department of Medieval and Early Modern Universal History, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.

Biography

Early life and education

Sághy was born in 1961. She attended the Szilágyi Erzsébet Secondary School, Budapest. She graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in 1985 with a degree in History and French. She received a French government scholarship to study at the Centre d'Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale, Université de Poitiers. Her Master's thesis was entitled Pierre Dubois’ Plan for the Recovery of the Holy Land in 1306. Between 1986 and 1987 she was a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford, receiving a stipend from the Soros Foundation. In 1989 she began her PhD at the University of Princeton. Her supervisors were Natalie Zemon Davis and Peter Brown. She was awarded her PhD in 1998 for a thesis entitled Patrons and Priests: The Roman Senatorial Aristocracy and the Church, AD 355-384.

Career

In 1993 she was a founding member of the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University, where she was employed as a lecturer. From 1999 to 2003 she was the Academic Director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute, Paris, where she sought to promote French-Hungarian scientific and cultural relations. Sághy held the position of President of the Hungarian Hagiography Society. She sat on the editorial boards of such academic journals as the Annual of the Department of Medieval Studies and the Hungarian Historical Review.
Sághy has been described as 'a well-versed and fruitful author, a translator of important works and a writer of serious scholarship'. Her contribution to scholarship on late antique and medieval religion and hagiography through teaching, organising and presenting at international conferences, authoring and editing books and source editions, and publishing around 60 individual scholarly studies, was 'internationally recognised'.

Death

Sághy died on 21 September 2018 at the age of fifty-seven. Her last book, Saint Martin, Soldier of Christ, was published only a few weeks before her death. A Colloquium in her honour will be held at the Central European University in June 2019, entitled 'Dis/embodiment and Im/materiality: Uncovering the Body, Gender and Sexuality in Philosophies of Late Antiquity - In Memoriam Marianne Sagh. Speakers include Professor Susanna Elm.
The Hungarian Institute of Paris honores her in November 2019 with a presentation of a book published a few weeks after her death: an edition, french translation and presentation of the works of Pierre Dubois, De la reconquête de la Terre Sainte - De l'abrègement des guerres et procès du royaume des Francs, intro, éd. et trad. M. SAGHY, A. LEONAS et P.-A. FORCADET, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2019.

Publications

Monographs and edited volumes

Translated from English to Hungarian:
Translated from Latin to French