Hagiographic narrative offered the opportunity to explore and dramatise the complex issues of sexual violation and virginity. In the lives of the saints, the theological tenets debated in the summae and sententiae, and in canon law, could be explored in approachable story form, and conveyed not only to scholastic audiences but also to women themselves. As we have seen, manuals and handbooks tend to refer briefly to the stories of saints such as Lucy, and employ them as miniature case studies of the rape victim. While the form of these works does not allow for any development of these miniatures into full-fledged narratives, the popular appeal of the inset stories of the saints is such that they are told and retold elsewhere. These hagiographic texts connect with the religious thought and writings of the period, yet also differ fundamentally from these in their literary quality, which can strain against the intricate arguments of the theologians regarding rape. In hagiographic treatments of rape, human empathy and sentiment intersect with intellect and theology to create a locus of narrative tension: as Marina Warner argues of the fairy tale, in the saint's life we enter ‘another kingdom … in which the traditional categories of good and evil clash and find resolution.’

Hagiography, more than any other genre, engages with the question of the sanctity of the raped virgin so central to theological discussions. Because the lives of the female saints depend upon the intersection of virginity and holiness, the possibility of rape takes on enormous symbolic import, and the figure of the saint threatened with rape focuses the question of female holiness and the cult of virginity. Again as in the fairy tale, the untouchability of the saint allows for the exploration of dangerous themes.