Hagiography

AGIOGRAPHY. — From the Greek ἄγιος “holy” and γράφο “I write,” also called hagiology, it is the science concerned with the lives and legends of the saints and with all related questions. It may be considered a branch of ecclesiastical history. In the strict sense, hagiography concerns the saints and blessed whose cult is recognized by the Catholic Church, or may one day be so recognized; in the broad sense, it embraces the entire Christian hagiographical literary production of all times and regions. This applies especially to Christian antiquity and the early Middle Ages, rich in hagiographical texts written not only in Greek and Latin, but also in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Geʿez, and Arabic.

Hagiography is a historical discipline, to which the rules of the historical method are applicable; but in order to pursue it in depth, knowledge of theology and mysticism is also necessary. Today much emphasis is also placed on the psychology of the saints. As specialization has now been introduced into all the sciences, various other disciplines have become detached from hagiography properly so called, such as research on Relics, on Patrons of churches and of various arts and crafts, on Eortology (from the Greek ἄρτη “feast”), that is, on the origin of the feasts of the saints, on their Iconography, on the Acts of the Martyrs, and on Martyrologies.

The authors of lives and legends of saints are called hagiographers, and must be clearly distinguished from the biblical hagiographers, the name by which Catholic exegetes designate the authors of the inspired books. In the broad sense, scholars of hagiography are also called hagiographers, as, for example, the Bollandist hagiographers, continuators of Giovanni Bolland, who initiated the Acta Sanctorum. In applying the rules of criticism to hagiography, one must not lose sight of the fact that it is not the saints who are being criticized, but rather the authors of their lives, who wrote according to their talent, their culture—very different in different periods—and their good, and sometimes even bad, faith. Indeed, the hagiography of the past is not free from outright falsifications and fabrications, inspired by vanity and, more often, by particular interests or local claims. Hence the need for criticism in order to establish the truth, a need fully recognized by the Church with the establishment of the historical section within the S. Congregation of Rites (1930). Nor can one sharply distinguish in this regard between scientific hagiography and practical and popular hagiography, since from the beginning both have been interwoven and interdependent.

Leaving Acts of the Martyrs (v.) which are the most ancient hagiographical documents, a brief survey will be given of Latin hagiographical literature in its various periods. In general, it may be said that periods of intense religious life also produce important hagiographical works, whose form varies according to the character of the age.

The earliest lives of saints (not martyrs) are those of s. Antonio abate, written in Greek by s. Atanasio but immediately translated into Latin and avidly read; of s. Ambrogio, composed by the deacon Paolino; of s. Martino di Tours, written by Sulpicio Severo; of s. Agostino, composed by Possidio; and of s. Melania iuniore, written by the priest Geronzio, which has come down to us in Greek (perhaps the original) and in Latin. These lives are far removed from the later type of saints’ lives. They are written on the model of the ancient classical biographies, especially those of Svetonio. The life of the monk s. Milco, written by s. Girolamo, reads like a novella. The Dialogues of s. Gregorio Magno, because of their predilection for the legendary and popular element, already belong to the following period.

The Merovingian period is exceedingly rich in hagiographical literature, but its value is much debated. Since the classical traditions had disappeared with the barbarian invasions, the lives of the saints then assumed another form. The miraculous element predominates in them. This appears especially in the writings of s. Gregorio di Tours (d. in 594): De gloria martyrum, De gloria confessorum. Many of these hagiographical notices, written with naïve faith, record nothing but miracles, for the greater exaltation of the saints and the edification of the people. It must be acknowledged, however, that some lives of contemporary confessors are excellently composed. On the occasion of the numerous translations and elevations of the bodies of saints, then regarded as equivalent to canonization, there arose a desire to know their lives; in response to this desire, the hagiographers, often ignorant of the actual circumstances of the hero’s life, resorted to vague popular traditions, invented or simply copied other legends, changing only the saint’s name. The rather crude Merovingian literary form was sometimes polished at the time of the Carolingian revival. It is therefore difficult in some cases to establish whether a work is an original or a later reworking. B. Krusch, the editor of the lives of the Merovingian saints in the MGH, applies a very severe criticism in this regard.

Related in some way to Merovingian hagiography is the rich Irish hagiography, in which the miraculous element is in part excessive. Examples are the numerous lives of s. Brigida di Kildare, whose cult was widely spread on the Continent by the Irish monks, and the lives of s. Brendano, even if one disregards the Navigatio Brendani, an exceedingly fanciful and highly popular work, which was later woven into the more ancient lives.

In the seventh and eighth centuries, the biographies of the great Anglo-Saxon missionary saints, s. Vilibrordo, s. Bonifacio, and others, are noteworthy.

In the ninth and tenth centuries there is a great abundance of hagiographical literature, which is the principal literary production of the period, collected in vol. XV of the MGH. It deals especially with saintly bishops and abbots. L. Zoepf (v. below), who studied the hagiography of the tenth century in depth, divides it into three categories: legends, lives, and biographies. By the first name he means those works in which the legendary and miraculous element predominates; by the second, those which, alongside positive data, contain miracles performed during life; while the biography is properly historical, with individual traits and references to the events of the period, and without miracles performed during life. While the last category is not abundant, there are numerous examples of the other two in the tenth century and, one may add, also in the following centuries.

L. Hertling (Zeitschrift für Aszetik und Mystik, 8 [1933], pp. 260–68) has pointed out another characteristic in the legends of the sixth to the twelfth centuries: the catalogue of virtues. That is, at a given moment the author, although treating the individual virtues separately, gathers together, in a rhetorical outpouring, all the virtues he attributes to his hero into a single bundle, according to a pattern that varies from author to author but always has the same content. It is therefore a Commune Sanctorum. Examples of this are still found in the thirteenth century.

In the twelfth century we have the truthful lives of s. Bernardo di Chiaravalle, written by various contemporary authors, whereas the Liber miraculorum of Eriberto, bishop of Sassari, and the Exordium magnum cisterciense are already legendary.

The life of s. Norberto by an anonymous author and that of s. Ugo di Cluny, written by Raimondo di Semur, are also historical. Alongside these truthful lives, there is no shortage of legends of the usual popular character.

The thirteenth century is exceptionally rich in great and humble figures of saints. Their lives, written by contemporaries, inspire confidence and arouse our admiration for the great art displayed in them (the cursus). It is enough to recall the lives of s. Francesco d'Assisi by Tommaso da Celano and by s. Bonaventura, true literary monuments and hagiographical masterpieces. Also noteworthy are the lives of s. Domenico and of s. Elisabetta d'Ungheria, and the life of s. Maria d'Oignies, written by Cardinal Giacomo di Vitry. Yet the thirteenth century also produced hagiographical works of poor quality, such as the Dialogus miraculorum of Cesario di Heisterbach and the Bonum universale de apibus of Tommaso di Cantimpré, as well as the exceedingly improbable life of Cristina Mirabilis by the same author; or works of very doubtful value, such as the legend of s. Emiliano, an Irish bishop (seventh-eighth century), who died at Faenza; or, finally, works of pure imagination, such as the legend of s. Guniforte di Pavia.

Beginning in the thirteenth century, we find Latin collections of the lives of saints. The Order of s. Domenico was especially distinguished in this field. Leaving aside the passionaries or lectionaries intended for cathedral churches, we should mention the very numerous hagiographical texts (900 chapters) included in the Speculum historiale of Vincenzo di Beauvais, and above all the Leggenda aurea of Giacomo da Varagine (Varazze), which enjoyed enormous diffusion through printing from the fifteenth century onward (approximately 90 Latin editions and several translations). This naïve work, entirely lacking in criticism, achieved such great popular success that its influence is also apparent in iconography and folklore.

More critical in the fourteenth century were the Speculum sanctorale of Bernardo Guidonis (d. in 1331) and the Legendae de Sanctis of Pietro Calo (d. in 1348). These two collections remained unpublished; Calo’s work, however, was extensively exploited by Pietro de Natalibus (d. ca. 1400) in the Catalogus Sanctorum, published at Vicenza in 1493 and subsequently reprinted many times. As regards historical method, the Catalogus scarcely surpasses the Leggenda aurea. Today the Sanctuarium Vitae Sanctorum of Bonino Mombrizio is held in much higher esteem; it was published at Milan ca. 1480 and reprinted by the monks of Solesmes in 2 vols. in-4°, Paris 1910. Mombrizio follows the alphabetical order of the saints’ names. His legendary is valuable because it has preserved ancient hagiographical texts whose manuscripts are now lacking.

Humanism and the pseudo-Reformation of the sixteenth century greatly influenced hagiographical works: the former in their form, the latter in their criticism. The collections of Lipomano and Surio sought to eliminate deficiencies of style and concerned themselves with the spiritual benefit of their readers. In a brief addressed to Surio on 2 June 1570, s. Pio V praised the work because it was particularly well suited to refuting «haereticorum in easdem ss. Patrum historias male dicta» (G. Laderchi, Annales eccl., for the year 1570, no. 3).

Historical criticism and philological accuracy in hagiography were seriously initiated in the seventeenth century by the Bollandists, who published the first two volumes of the Acta Sanctorum, covering the month of January, at Antwerp in 1643. The work, continued for more than three hundred years and not yet completed, now consists of 70 volumes in folio. In 1882 the neo-Bollandists began the journal Analecta Bollandiana, a true centre and an exceptionally rich repository of hagiographical studies. The principles guiding such studies are set out in several monographs by Fr. H. Delehaye (d. in 1941). The Subsidia hagiographica, published by the same Bollandists, are also useful working tools. As a result of these works, the interest of scholars in every country and of all religious persuasions in the old hagiographical texts has increased immensely, and today we are witnessing a genuine flourishing of hagiographical studies, while popular taste for the lives of the saints is nourished by editions and collections in the vernacular, very numerous in various modern languages. As early as the sixteenth century, P. Ribadeneyra, following Lipomano and Surio, published in Spanish a Flos Sanctorum, Madrid 1599, translated several times into Italian, for example Venice 1743, 2 vols. in-4°. The Oratorian Carlo Massini published in two series in-16°, each consisting of 13 vols., Raccolta di Vite de' santi per ciaschedum giorno dell'anno, Rome 1763-67, which went through several editions; the fourth Roman edition dates from 1819-21. The collections of A. Butler are very well known (in English, recently revised by Thurston, 12 vols., London 1926-38), and were translated into Italian from the French version by G. Godescard, Vite dei Padri, dei Martiri e degli altri principali santi, 2nd ed., Venice 1857, 15 vols.; that of P. Guérin, Les Petits Bollandistes, Paris 1878, 17 vols. in-8°, 7th ed., Paris 1888. An example of sound criticism

and agreeable form is the collection Les Saints, published in Paris under the direction of H. Joly, more than 100 volumes, partly translated into Italian (Rome, Desclée). The collections of the various religious orders may be consulted under their respective names.

Collections of texts: Acta SS. of the Bollandists, of which there are three editions: 1st ed., original, Antwerp-Brussels 1643-1949; 2nd ed., Venice 1734-70, from January through vol. V of September; 3rd ed., Palmé, Paris 1863-70, through vol. XII of October. The number of volumes counted for the individual months is not always the same in these editions.

The lives of the Merovingian saints are found in MGH, Scriptores rerum merovingicarum, II–VII, Hannover 1888–1920, edited and in part revised by B. Krusch and K. V. Levison. The first volume, concerning the works of S. Gregorio di Tours, 1884–85, is not yet complete in the new edition. — Irish saints: Joh. Colgan, Acta SS. Hiberniæ, Louvain 1645, in-fol. (January–March); C. De Smedt–Jos. De Backer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniæ ex codice Salmanicorum, Edinburgh and London 1887, in-fol.; Carolus Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniæ, 2 vols., Oxford 1910 (the lives already published in the preceding work are excluded); id., Miscellanea hagiographica hiberniæ, Brussels 1925 (texts in Gaelic with English version, etc.). An important commentary on these lives is provided by J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland, I. Ecclesiastical, New York 1929; A. Tommasini, I santi irlandesi in Italia, Milan 1932, is also useful. — For England: C. Horstmann, Nova Legenda Anglore, 2 vols., Oxford 1901 (by Giovanni da Tynemouth, reworked by Gio

v. Capravo)

Of the medieval Greek hagiographical collections, the most complete is that of Simeone Logothetes, called Metaphrastes (10th cent.): PG 114–16, extensively used by Lipomano and Surius. On Greek hagiography: A. Ehrhard, Überlieferung und Bestand der hagiographischen und homiletischen Literatur der griechischen Kirche, 2 vols. (Texte und Untersuchungen, L–LI), Leipzig 1937–38 (on Metaphrastes: II, pp. 306–709), a fundamental work, but left incomplete (a few fascicles of vol. III have appeared); Le Synnaxure de Sirmond, in Anal. Boll., 14 (1896), pp. 306–434; Les Ménolages grecs, ibid., 16 (1897), pp. 311–29; H. Mertel, Die hagiographische Form des griechischen Heiligenlebens, Munich 1900; against him R. Holl, Die schriftstellerische Form des griechischen Heiligenlebens, in Gesammelte Aufsätze, II, 1, Tübingen 1928.

Dictionaries: Abbé Pétin, Dictionnaire hagiographique ou vies des Saints et Bienheureux honorés en tout temps et en tous lieux, 2 vols., in-47, Paris 1848–50 (vols. 40–41 of Migne, Encyclopédie Théologique), a work abridged and updated by J. Baudot, Dictionnaire d'hagiographie, Paris 1925; I. Stadler–I. Heim, Vollständiges Heiligenlexikon, 5 vols., in-8°, Augsburg 1858–62; F. G. Holweck, Dictionary of the Saints, St. Louis–London 1924, rich in information; Donald Attwater, Dictionary of the Saints, London 1938, is essentially the index of the new edition of A. Butler, The Lives of the Saints, ed. H. Thurston, 12 vols., London 1926–38. Also belonging to this category is The Book of Saints, London 1921, a work of the Benedictines of Ramsgate. Precious tools for scientific research in the field of ancient and medieval hagiography are: 1st, the BHL, Brussels 1898–1901, with supplement of 1911; 2nd, the BHO, ibid. 1895, 2nd ed., 1909; 3rd, the BHO, ibid. 1910.

On Martyrologies: Filippo Ferrari, Catalogus generalis Sanctorum qui in Martyrologio Romano non sunt, Venice 1625; H. Quentin, Les Martyrologes historiques du moyen âge, Paris 1908; V. MARTIBOLOGIO.

For the psychology of the saints: H. Joly, La psychologie des saints, Paris 1897; Italian version, Rome 1909; A. Rademacher, Das Seelenleben der Heiligen, 2nd ed., Paderborn 1917; J. Familier, Das Heiligenleben in der modernen Psychopathographie, Regensburg–Rome 1915; M. de Montmorand, Psychologie des Mystiques catholiques orthodoxes, Paris 1920. All these authors are Catholic; this is not the case with F. Moerchen, Die Psychologie der Heiligheit, Halle a. S. 1908. Livario Oliger