Hagiography
A hagiography (
Christian hagiographies focus on the lives, and notably the
Hagiographic works, especially those of the Middle Ages, can incorporate a record of institutional and local history, and evidence of popular cults, customs, and traditions.[8]
However, when referring to modern, non-ecclesiastical works, the term hagiography is often used today as a pejorative reference to biographies and histories whose authors are perceived to be uncritical or excessively reverential toward their subject.
Christianity
Development
Hagiography constituted an important
The genre of lives of the saints first came into being in the Roman Empire as legends about Christian martyrs were recorded. The dates of their deaths formed the basis of martyrologies. In the 4th century, there were three main types of catalogs of lives of the saints:
- annual calendar catalogue, or menaion (in Greek, μηναῖον, menaion means "monthly" (adj, neut), lit. "lunar"), biographies of the saints to be read at sermons;
- synaxarion("something that collects"; Greek συναξάριον, from σύναξις, synaxis i.e. "gathering", "collection", "compilation"), or a short version of lives of the saints, arranged by dates;
- paterikon("that of the Fathers"; Greek πατερικόν; in Greek and Latin, pater means "father"), or biography of the specific saints, chosen by the catalog compiler.
In Western Europe, hagiography was one of the more important vehicles for the study of inspirational history during the Middle Ages. The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine compiled a great deal of medieval hagiographic material, with a strong emphasis on miracle tales. Lives were often written to promote the cult of local or national states, and in particular to develop pilgrimages to visit relics. The bronze Gniezno Doors of Gniezno Cathedral in Poland are the only Romanesque doors in Europe to feature the life of a saint. The life of Saint Adalbert of Prague, who is buried in the cathedral, is shown in 18 scenes, probably based on a lost illuminated copy of one of his Lives.
The
Medieval England
Many of the important hagiographical texts composed in medieval England were written in the vernacular dialect
Imitation of the life of Christ was then the benchmark against which saints were measured, and imitation of the lives of saints was the benchmark against which the general population measured itself. In
Of all the English hagiographers no one was more prolific nor so aware of the importance of the genre as Abbot
There are two known instances where saint's lives were adapted into vernacular
Other examples of hagiographies from England include:
- the Chronicle by Hugh Candidus[11]
- the
- the list of John Leyland[14][15]
- possibly the book Life by Cadog[16]
- Vita Sancti Ricardi Episcopi et Confessoris Cycestrensis/ Life of Richard of Chichester by Ralph Bocking.[17]
- The Book of Margery Kempe is an example of autohagiography, in which the subject dictates her life using the hagiographic form.
Medieval Ireland
Ireland is notable in its rich hagiographical tradition, and for the large amount of material which was produced during the Middle Ages. Irish hagiographers wrote primarily in Latin while some of the later saint's lives were written in the hagiographer's native vernacular
Eastern Orthodoxy
In the 10th century, a
The genre of lives of the saints was introduced in the Slavic world in the
The Life of Alexander Nevsky was a particularly notable hagiographic work of the era.
Today, the works in the genre of lives of the saints represent a valuable historical source and reflection of different social ideas, world outlook and
Oriental Orthodoxy
The
Judaism
Jewish hagiographic writings are common in the case of Talmudic and Kabbalistic writings and later in the
Islam
Hagiography in Islam began in the
Likewise influenced by early Islamic research into hadiths and other biographical information about the Prophet, Persian scholars began writing Persian hagiography, again mainly of Sūfī saints, in the eleventh century CE.
The Islamicisation of the Turkish regions led to the development of Turkish biographies of saints, beginning in the 13th century CE and gaining pace around the 16th. Production remained dynamic and kept pace with scholarly developments in historical biographical writing until 1925, when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (d. 1938) placed an interdiction on Ṣūfī brotherhoods. As Turkey relaxed legal restrictions on Islamic practice in the 1950s and the 1980s, Ṣūfīs returned to publishing hagiography, a trend which continues in the 21st century.[26]
Other groups
The pseudobiography of L. Ron Hubbard compiled by the Church of Scientology is commonly described as a heavily fictionalized hagiography.[27][28]
See also
- Jean Bolland
- Boniface Consiliarius
- Alban Butler
- Danilo's anonymous pupil
- Hippolyte Delehaye
- Namtar (biography)
- Pseudepigrapha
- Reginald of Durham
- Secular saint
References
- ^ "hagiography". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- ISBN 978-1474235792.
- ISBN 978-1532672828.
- ISBN 978-9004226494.
- ISBN 978-0415646291
- ISBN 978-8190227261, pp. 120–121
- ISBN 978-0520230347
- ISBN 978-1906214159
- ^ Ælfric of Eynsham. The Lives of the Saints. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
- ISBN 1851094407. Retrieved 23 November 2009.
- Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (Continuum, 2003) p. 22
- ^ Stowe MS 944, British Library
- ^ G. Hickes, Dissertatio Epistolaris in Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archeologicus (Oxford 1703–05), p. 115.
- ^ John Leland, The Collectanea of British affairs, Volume 2. p. 408.
- ^ Liuzza, R. M. (2006). "The Year's Work in Old English Studies" (PDF). Old English News Letter. 39 (2). Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University: 8.
- S2CID 163470282. p. 345
- ISBN 0854450408.
- ISBN 978-9004419582.
- ^ Kefyalew Merahi. Saints and Monasteries in Ethiopia. 2 vols. Vol. 2, Addis Ababa: Commercial Printing Press, 2003.
- ^ Tamrat, Taddesse (1970). Hagiographies and the Reconstruction of Medieval Ethiopian History.
- ^ "Lives of Ethiopian Saints". Link Ethiopia. Archived from the original on 5 March 2017. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
- ISBN 978-0691164212.
- .
- ^ "Hagiography", Jewish Virtual Library.
- .
- .
- OL 9824980M.
- ISBN 978-0-521-86479-4. Retrieved 8 August 2016.
Further reading
- DeWeese, Devin. Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tukles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition. State College, PA: Penn State University Press, 2007.
- Eden, Jeff. Warrior Saints of the Silk Road: Legends of the Qarakhanids. Brill: Leiden, 2018.
- Heffernan, Thomas J. Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press, 1992.
- Ivanović, Miloš (2019). "Serbian hagiographies on the warfare and political struggles of the Nemanjić dynasty (from the twelfth to the fourteenth century)". Reform and Renewal in Medieval East and Central Europe: Politics, Law and Society. Cluj-Napoca: Romanian Academy, Center for Transylvanian Studies. pp. 103–129.
- Mariković, Ana and Vedriš, Trpimir eds. Identity and alterity in Hagiography and the Cult of Saints (Bibliotheca Hagiotheca, Series Colloquia 1). Zagreb: Hagiotheca, 2010.
- Renard, John. Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and Servanthood. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
- Vauchez, André, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge (1198–1431) (BEFAR, 241). Rome, 1981. [Engl. transl.: Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1987; Ital. transl.: La santità nel Medioevo. Bologna, 1989].
External links
- Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography (1907)
- Delehaye, Hippolyte (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). pp. 816–817.
- Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. .
- James Kiefer's Hagiographies
- Societé des Bollandistes Archived 29 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- Hagiography Society