Everything about Hagiography totally explained
Hagiography [hægi'ɒgrəfi] is the study of
saints. A
hagiography refers literally to writings on the subject of such
holy people, and specifically the
biographies of
ecclesiastical and
secular leaders. The word comes from Greek
(h)ağios (ἅγιος, "holy" or "saint") and
graphē (γραφή, "writing"). The term
hagiology is also current in English, though less common. (This in fact follows original Greek practice, where ἁγιογραφία refers to visual images of the saints, while their written lives (βίοι or vitæ) or the study thereof are known as ἁγιολογία.)
Though many hagiographies focus on the lives of men and women
canonized by the
Christian Church, other religions such as
Buddhism and
Islam also create and maintain hagiographical texts concerning saints and other individuals believed to be imbued with the sacred.
The term "hagiography" has also come to be used as a
pejorative reference to the works of contemporary
biographers and
historians whom critics perceive to be uncritical and even "reverential" in their writing.
Development of hagiography
Hagiography constituted an important
literary genre in the early millennia of the
Christian church, providing informational
history as well as inspirational stories and
legend. A hagiographic account of an individual saint can constitute a
vita.
The
genre of lives of the
saints first came into being in the
Roman Empire as
legends about
Christian martyrs and were called
martyrologies. In the
4th century, there were three main types of catalogs of lives of the saints:
- annual calendar catalogue, or menaion (in Greek, menaios means "month") (biographies of the saints to be read at sermons);
- synaxarion, or a short version of lives of the saints, arranged by dates;
- paterikon (in Greek, pater means "father"), or biography of the specific saints, chosen by the catalog compiler.
In
Western Europe hagiography was one of the more important areas in the study of history during the
Middle Ages. The
Golden Legend of
Jacob de Voragine compiled a great deal of mediæval hagiographic material, with a strong emphasis on
miracle tales.
The
Bollandist Society continues the study, academic assembly, appraisal and publication of materials relating to the
lives of Christian saints. (See
Acta Sanctorum.)
Hagiography of the mediæval period in England
With the introduction of
Latin literature into England in the 7th and 8th centuries the genre of the life of the saint grew increasingly popular. It isn't surprising that such a genre would become popular in England. When one contrasts it to the popular heroic poem, such as “
Beowulf,” one finds that they share certain common features. In “
Beowulf,” the titular character battles against
Grendel and his mother, while the saint, such as
Athanasius’
Anthony (one of the original sources for the hagiographic motif) or the character of
Guthlac, 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.
In
Anglo-Saxon and
mediæval England, Hagiography became a literary genre par excellence for the teaching of a largely illiterate audience. Hagiography provided priests and theologians with the classical handbooks in a form that allowed them the rhetorical tools necessary to defend the truth of their scriptures.
Of all the English hagiographers no one was more prolific nor so aware of the importance of the genre as Abbot
Ælfric of Eynsham. His work
The Lives of the Saints (MS Cotton Julius E.7) comprises a set of sermons on saints' days, formerly observed by the English Church. The text comprises two prefaces, one in Latin and one in
Old English, and 39 lives beginning on December 25 with the nativity of
Christ 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 hearkens back to some of the earliest saints of the early church.
Imitation of the life of Christ then was the benchmark against which saints were measured, and imitation of the lives of saints was the benchmark against which the general population measured itself.
Hagiography of the mediæval period in Ireland
Ireland is notable and its rich hagiographical tradition, and for the large amount of material which was produced during the mediæval period. Irish hagiographers wrote primarily in
Latin while some of the later saint's lives were written in the hagiographer's native vernacular
Irish. Of particular note are the lives of
St. Patrick,
St. Columba and
St. Brigit—Ireland's three patron saints.
Hagiography in Eastern Orthodoxy
In the
10th century, a
Byzantine monk Simeon Metaphrastes was the first one to change the genre of lives of the saints into something different, giving it a moralizing and
panegyrical character. His catalog of lives of the saints became the standard for all of the
Western and
Eastern 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 as
dragon fighting etc.),
mediaeval parables, short stories and
anecdotes.
The genre of lives of the saints was brought to
Kievan Rus' by the
South Slavs together with
writing and also in
translations from the
Greek language. In the
11th century, the
Rus' began to compile the original life stories of the first Rus'ian saints, for example
Boris and Gleb, Theodosius Pechersky etc. In the
16th century,
Metropolitan Macarius expanded the list of the Rus'ian saints and supervised the compiling process of their life stories. They would all be compiled in the so called
Velikiye chet’yi-minei catalog (Великие Четьи-Минеи, or Grand monthly readings), consisting of 12
volumes in accordance with each month of the year. They were revised and expanded by St.
Dimitry of Rostov in 1684-1705.
The genre of lives of the saints was often used as ecclesiastic and
political propaganda. Today, the works in this genre represent a valuable historical source and reflection of different social ideas, world outlook and
aesthetic concepts of the past.
Secular usage
The term "hagiography" has come to refer to the works of contemporary
biographers and
historians whom critics perceive to be uncritical and even "reverential." For example, critics of historian (and
John F. Kennedy associate)
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. often call him a "Kennedy hagiographer."
Aleister Crowley's
autobiography,
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, is
subtitled An Autohagiography.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Hagiography'.
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