As the previous chapters have suggested, kinship constitutes an important part of the human social system that the saint rejects. Chapters One and Two considered several cases where the saint's relationship to human kin – by both blood and marriage – is redefined by forms of renunciation performed through the gift. The saint's relationship to kinship within the narrative model I have been outlining nonetheless requires further elucidation. For, as anthropologists and gender theorists have indicated, kinship is one of the primary means of anchoring and reproducing heterosexual social formations. Given that saints are frequently obliged to spurn human kinship as part of their dedication to god, this raises important questions concerning the sexual as well as the social implications of such a rejection. The saint's refusal of kinship, as well as constituting a repudiation of human society, is also a rejection of the claims that kinship makes upon sexuality and desire in a human setting. As such, the refusal or redefinition of kinship in hagiographic literature challenges us to similarly redefine the forms of sexuality and desire that these relationships underwrite.

The argument of this chapter relies upon the notion that vernacular saints' lives have an interest in appropriating and reworking the way in which kinship is defined in social contexts. What I shall focus on are the representational dynamics of this process. It is nonetheless worth underlining the fact that, historically speaking, this interest in reassessing secular notions of the family occurs during a period when kinship is subject to shifting, not always entirely compatible, definitions.