Ahagiography (/ˌhæɡiˈɒɡrəfi/; from Ancient Greekἅγιος, hagios'holy' and -γραφία, -graphia'writing')[1] is abiography of asaint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions.[2][3][4] Early Christian hagiographies might consist of a biography orvita (from Latinvita, life, which begins the title of most medieval biographies), a description of the saint's deeds or miracles, an account of the saint's martyrdom (called apassio), or be a combination of these.
Hagiographic works, especially those of theMiddle Ages, can incorporate a record of institutional andlocal history, and evidence of popularcults, customs, andtraditions.[8]
However, when referring to modern, non-ecclesiastical works, the termhagiography is often used today as apejorative reference tobiographies andhistories whose authors are perceived to be uncritical or excessively reverential toward their subject.
Hagiography constituted an importantliterary genre in theearly Christian church, providing some informational history along with the more inspirational stories andlegends. A hagiographic account of an individual saint could consist of a biography (vita), a description of the saint's deeds or miracles, an account of the saint's martyrdom (passio), or be a combination of these.
The genre of lives of the saints first came into being in theRoman Empire as legends aboutChristianmartyrs were recorded. The dates of their deaths formed the basis ofmartyrologies. In the 4th century, there were three main types of catalogs of lives of the saints:
annual calendar catalogue, ormenaion (inGreek,μηναῖον,menaion means "monthly" (adj,neut), lit. "lunar"), biographies of the saints to be read atsermons;
synaxarion ("something that collects"; Greekσυναξάριον, fromσύναξις,synaxis i.e. "gathering", "collection", "compilation"), or a short version of lives of the saints, arranged by dates;
paterikon ("that of the Fathers"; Greekπατερικόν; in Greek and Latin,pater means "father"), or biography of the specific saints, chosen by the catalog compiler.
The earliest lives of saints focused ondesert fathers who lived as ascetics from the 4th century onwards. The life ofAnthony of Egypt is usually considered the first example of this new genre of Christian biography.[9]
InWestern Europe, hagiography was one of the more important vehicles for the study of inspirational history during theMiddle Ages. TheGolden Legend ofJacobus 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 visitrelics. The bronzeGniezno Doors ofGniezno Cathedral in Poland are the onlyRomanesque doors in Europe to feature the life of a saint. The life of SaintAdalbert 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.
TheBollandist Society continues the study, academic assembly, appraisal and publication of materials relating to the lives of Christian saints (seeActa Sanctorum).
Many of the important hagiographical texts composed in medieval England were written in the vernacular dialectAnglo-Norman. With the introduction ofLatin literature into England in the 7th and 8th centuries the genre of the life of the saint grew increasingly popular. When one contrasts it to the popular heroic poem, such asBeowulf, one finds that they share certain common features. InBeowulf, the titular character battles againstGrendel andhis mother, while the saint, such asAthanasius'Anthony (one of the original sources for the hagiographic motif) or the character ofGuthlac, battles against figures no less substantial in a spiritual sense. Both genres then focus on the hero-warrior figure, but with the distinction that the saint is of a spiritual sort.
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. InAnglo-Saxon andmedieval England, hagiography became a literary genre par excellence for the teaching of a largely illiterate audience. Hagiography provided priests and theologians with classical handbooks in a form that allowed them the rhetorical tools necessary to present their faith through the example of the saints' lives.
Of all the English hagiographers no one was more prolific nor so aware of the importance of the genre as AbbotÆlfric of Eynsham. His workLives of the Saints[10] contains set of sermons on saints' days, formerly observed by the English Church. The text comprises two prefaces, one in Latin and one inOld English, and 39 lives beginning on 25 December with the nativity ofChrist and ending with three texts to which no saints' days are attached. The text spans the entire year and describes the lives of many saints, both English and continental, and harks back to some of the earliest saints of the early church.
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 vernacularIrish. Of particular note are the lives ofSt. Patrick,St. Columba (Latin)/Colum Cille (Irish) andSt. Brigit/Brigid—Ireland's three patron saints. The earliest extant Life was written byCogitosus. Additionally, several Irish calendars relating to thefeastdays ofChristian saints (sometimes calledmartyrologies orfeastologies) contained abbreviated synopses of saint's lives, which were compiled from many different sources. Notable examples include theMartyrology of Tallaght and theFélire Óengusso. Such hagiographical calendars were important in establishing lists of native Irish saints, in imitation of continental calendars.
In the 10th century, aByzantinemonkSimeon Metaphrastes was the first one to change the genre of lives of the saints into something different, giving it a moralizing andpanegyrical character. His catalog of lives of the saints became the standard for all of theWestern andEastern hagiographers, who would create relative biographies and images of the ideal saints by gradually departing from the real facts of their lives. Over the years, the genre of lives of the saints had absorbed a number of narrative plots and poetic images (often, of pre-Christian origin, such asdragon fighting etc.), mediaevalparables, short stories andanecdotes.
The genre of lives of the saints was introduced in the Slavic world in theBulgarian Empire in the late 9th and early 10th century, where the first original hagiographies were produced onCyril and Methodius,Clement of Ohrid andNaum of Preslav. Eventually the Bulgarians brought this genre toKievan Rus' together withwriting and also intranslations from the Greek language. In the 11th century, they began to compile the original life stories of their first saints, e.g.Boris and Gleb,Theodosius Pechersky etc. In the 16th century,Metropolitan Macarius expanded the list of the Russian saints and supervised the compiling process of their life stories. They would all be compiled in the so-calledVelikiye chet'yi-minei catalog (Великие Четьи-Минеи, orGreat Menaion Reader), consisting of 12volumes in accordance with each month of the year. They were revised and expanded by St.Dimitry of Rostov in 1684–1705.
Today, the works in the genre of lives of the saints represent a valuable historical source and reflection of different social ideas, world outlook andaestheticconcepts of the past.
TheOriental Orthodox Churches also have their own hagiographic traditions. For instance,Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church hagiographies in theGe'ez language are known asgadl (Saint's Life).[19] There are some 200 hagiographies about indigenous saints.[20] They are among the most importantMedieval Ethiopian written sources, and some have accurate historical information.[21] They are written by the disciples of the saints. Some were written a long time after the death of a saint, but others were written not long after the saint's demise.[22][23] Fragments from anOld Nubian hagiography of Saint Michael are extant.[24]
Hagiography in Islam began in theArabic language with biographical writing about the ProphetMuhammad in the 8th century CE, a tradition known assīra. From about the 10th century CE, a genre generally known asmanāqib also emerged, which comprised biographies of theimams (madhāhib) who founded different schools of Islamic thought (madhhab) aboutshariʿa, and ofṢūfī saints. Over time, hagiography about Ṣūfīs and their miracles came to predominate in the genre ofmanāqib.[26]
Likewise influenced by early Islamicresearch into hadiths and other biographical information about the Prophet, Persian scholars began writingPersian hagiography, again mainly of Sūfī saints, in the eleventh century CE.
The Islamicisation of the Turkish regions led to the development ofTurkish 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, whenMustafa 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.[27]
^Rapp, Claudia (2012). "Hagiography and the Cult of Saints in the Light of Epigraphy and Acclamations".Byzantine Religious Culture. Brill Academic. pp. 289–311.doi:10.1163/9789004226494_017.ISBN978-9004226494.
^Jonathan Augustine (2012),Buddhist Hagiography in Early Japan, Routledge,ISBN978-0415646291
^Robert Ford Campany (2002),To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong's Traditions of Divine Transcendents, University of California Press,ISBN978-0520230347
^Davies, S. (2008).Archive and manuscripts: contents and use: using the sources (3rd ed.). Aberystwyth, UK: Department of Information Studies, Aberystwyth University. p. 5.20.ISBN978-1906214159
^Ch. Pellat, "Manāḳib", inEncyclopaedia of Islam, ed. by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs, 2nd edn, 12 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2005),doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0660.
^Alexandre Papas, "Hagiography, Persian and Turkish", inEncyclopaedia of Islam, Three, ed. by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson (Leiden: Brill, 2007–),doi:10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_23914.
Berschin, Walter.Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter. 5 volumes. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1986–2004,ISBN3-7772-8606-0.
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.
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].
von der Nahmer, Dieter.Die lateinische Heiligenvita. Eine Einführung in die lateinische Hagiographie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994,ISBN978-3-534-19190-1.
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