Hagiography

MONICA M. WHITE

Hagiography is a diverse body of devotional literature connected with the cults of saints. Although its content is usually biographi­cal, hagiography can take almost any form – prose or poetry, extended stories or brief calendar entries, dialogues or first-person narratives – and is a vital aspect of the veneration of saints. It is therefore a wide­spread genre in all of the eastern churches, and something which continues to be pro­duced today.

The earliest hagiography probably appeared as part of Christians’ commemorations of the deceased, at which eulogies might be read out and later incorporated into narratives (Van Ommeslaeghe 1981:158–60). The most wide­spread type of early hagiography was the Acts of Martyrs, which were based (or purport­edly based) on transcripts of trials and embellished with details about the saint’s conversion, arrest, imprisonment, and mar­tyrdom (Musurillo 1972).

This emphasis on struggle and combat continued to influence hagiography after the end of the persecutions, as pagan tormen­tors were replaced with demons and tempta­tions. Yet hagiography also changed as new types of saints emerged. Monastic hagiogra­phy, for example, usually includes descrip­tions of the saint’s ascetic training (often with a spiritual father), attainment of full powers, and posthumous miracles (Louth 2004).

There was little standardization or sys­tematic collection of hagiography until the middle Byzantine period. During the 10th century the imperial official Symeon Metaphrastes led a project to rewrite important hagiographic texts and compile them into a Menologion (Hogel 2002). Sim­ilar efforts during the same period resulted in the appearance of the Synaxarion of Constantinople, a collection of abridged versions of saints’ lives (Delehaye 1902) that had a profound influence on liturgical calendars. Both of these works became stan­dard throughout Byzantium and beyond, although they were also widely adapted to incorporate local saints.

Hagiography is primarily concerned with describing ideals of Christian behavior and spiritual attainment rather than historical fact. The hagiography of some of the most famous saints is sometimes so fabulous that it cannot even be taken as evidence for their existence, much less for details of the society in which they lived. Even less obvi­ously embellished texts can present inter­pretative difficulties, yet scholars in many fields have used hagiographic texts as major sources for the study of the early Eastern Christian world. Some of the most impor­tant work has been carried out by the Bollandists, a Jesuit society devoted to the critical study of hagiography (Van Ommeslaeghe 1981). In the Orthodox Church today hagiographies are widely read as a devotional exercise in monastic communities and in the homes of the faithful.

SEE ALSO: Calendar; Canonization; Feasts; Liturgical Books; Miracles

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Delehaye, H. (ed.) (1902) Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae. Brussels: Typis Regis.

Delehaye, H. (1998) The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, trans.

D. Attwater. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

Hogel, C. (2002) Symeon Metaphrastes: Rewriting and Canonization. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.

Louth, A. (2004) “Hagiography,” in F. Young, L. Ayres, and A. Louth (eds.) The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 358–61.

Musurillo, H. (1972) The Acts of the Christian Martyrs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Van Ommeslaeghe, F. (1981) “The Acta

Sanctorum and Bollandist Methodology,” in S. Hackel (ed.) The Byzantine Saint. London: Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, pp. 155–63.