Hagiography

HAGIOGRAPHY. - From the Greek ἅγιος "saint" and γράφω "I write," also called hagiology, it is the science that deals with the lives and legends of the saints and with all related questions. It can be considered a branch of ecclesiastical history. In the proper sense, hagiography concerns the saints and blesseds whose cult is recognized by the Catholic Church, or which one day may be; in the broad sense it embraces the entire Christian hagiographic literary production of all times and all regions. This holds especially for Christian antiquity and the early Middle Ages, rich in hagiographic texts written not only in Greek and Latin, but also in Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Ge'ez and Arabic.

Hagiography is a historical discipline, to which the rules of the historical method are applicable, but to delve deeply into it a knowledge of theology and mysticism is also necessary. Today much emphasis is placed also on the psychology of the saints. Owing to the specialization now introduced into all the sciences, various other disciplines have detached themselves from hagiography properly so called, such as research on Relics, on the Patrons of churches and of various arts and crafts, on Heortology (from the Greek ἑορτή "feast"), that is, on the origin of the feasts of the saints, on their Iconography, on the Acts of the Martyrs, on the Martyrologies.

The authors of lives and legends of saints are called hagiographers, who must be carefully 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 John Bolland, who began 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 the various epochs — and their good and sometimes even bad faith. In fact, true falsifications and mystifications do not lie outside the hagiography of the past, inspired by vanity and more often by particular interests or local claims. Hence the necessity of criticism to ascertain the truth, a necessity fully recognized by the Church with the institution of the historical section within the S. Congregation of Rites (1930). Nor in this regard can one sharply distinguish scientific hagiography from practical and popular hagiography, because both have been interwoven and interdependent from the very beginning.

Leaving aside the Acts of the Martyrs (v.), which are the most ancient hagiographic documents, a brief picture will be given of Latin hagiographic literature in the various epochs. In general it may be said that epochs of intense religious life also produce notable hagiographic works, whose form varies according to the character of the time.

The first lives of saints (not martyrs) are those of St. Anthony Abbot, written in Greek by St. Athanasius but immediately translated into Latin and eagerly read; of St. Ambrose composed by the deacon Paulinus; of St. Martin of Tours, written by Sulpicius Severus; of St. Augustine composed by Possidius; of St. Melania the Younger written by the priest Gerontius, which has come down to us in Greek (perhaps the original) and in Latin. These lives are far from the later type of lives of saints. They are written on the model of the ancient classical biographies, especially those of Suetonius. The life of the monk St. Malchus, written by St. Jerome, reads like a novella. The Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great, because of their predilection for the legendary and popular element, already belong to the following epoch.

The Merovingian epoch is extremely rich in hagiographic literature, but of much-debated value. Classical traditions having faded with the barbarian invasions, the lives of the saints then take on another form. The marvelous element, the miracle, predominates in them. This appears especially in the writings of St. Gregory of Tours (d. 594): De gloria martyrum, De gloria confessorum. In many of these hagiographic accounts, written with ingenuous faith, only miracles are recorded, for the greater exaltation of the saints and the edification of the people. It must be recognized, however, that some lives of contemporary confessors are drawn in an excellent manner. On the occasion of the numerous translations and elevations of the bodies of saints, considered at that time as equivalent to canonization, there was a desire to know their lives; to respond to this desire the hagiographers, often ignorant of the true circumstances of the hero's life, resorted to vague popular traditions, invented or even copied other legends, changing only the name of the saint. The rather rough Merovingian literary form was sometimes polished up at the time of the Carolingian renaissance. It is therefore difficult in some cases to establish whether one is dealing with an original or a later reworking. A very severe criticism is used in this regard by B. Krusch, the editor of the lives of the Merovingian saints in the MGH.

Related to Merovingian hagiography is in a certain way the rich Irish hagiography, in which the marvelous element is in part overabundant. Examples are the numerous lives of St. Brigid of Kildare, whose cult was widely spread by Irish monks also on the continent, and the lives of St. Brendan, even if one sets aside the Navigatio Brendani, an exceedingly fantastic work of great vogue, which was later interwoven into the older lives.

In the 7th-8th centuries the biographies of the great Anglo-Saxon missionary saints are notable: St. Willibrord, St. Boniface and others.

In the 9th-10th centuries there is a great abundance of hagiographic literature, which is the principal literary production of the time, collected in vol. XV of the MGH. These are especially saints who were bishops and abbots. L. Zoepf (v. below), who has studied in depth the hagiography of the 10th century, divides it into three categories: legends, lives, biographies, meaning by the first name those productions in which the legendary and marvelous element predominates, by the second those which, alongside positive data, contain miracles worked during life, while the biography is properly historical, with individual traits and with references to the events of the epoch and without miracles worked during life. While this last category is not abundant, there are copious examples of the other two in the 10th century, and, one may add, in the following centuries as well.

L. Hertling (Zeitschrift für Aszetik und Mystik, 8 [1933], pp. 260-68) has pointed out another peculiarity in the legends of the 6th-12th centuries, the catalogue of virtues; that is, at a given moment the author, although treating the individual virtues separately, gathers together with rhetorical effusion, into a single bundle, all the virtues that he attributes to his hero, according to a scheme that varies from author to author but is always of the same content. It is therefore a matter of a Commune Sanctorum. Examples of this are still found in the 13th century.

In the 12th century we have the truthful lives of St. Bernard of Clairvaux written by various contemporary authors, while the Liber miraculorum of Heribert bishop of Sassari and the Exordium magnum cisterciense are already legendary.

The life of St. Norbert by an anonymous author is also historical, as is that of St. Hugh of Cluny written by Raymond of Semur. Alongside these truthful lives there is no lack of legends of the usual popular character.

The 13th century is exceedingly rich in great and humble figures of saints. Their lives, written by contemporaries, inspire confidence and excite our admiration for the great artistry displayed in them (the cursus). It suffices to recall the lives of St. Francis of Assisi by Thomas of Celano and by St. Bonaventure, true literary monuments and hagiographic masterpieces. Also noteworthy are the lives of St. Dominic, of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and the life of St. Mary of Oignies, written by Card. James of Vitry. In the 13th century, however, there are also hagiographic productions of poor quality, such as the Dialogus miraculorum of Caesarius of Heisterbach and the Bonum universale de apibus of Thomas of Cantimpré and the exceedingly implausible life of Christina Mirabilis by the same author, or of quite doubtful value such as the legend of St. Emilian, Irish bishop (7th-8th century), who died at Faenza, or finally of pure fantasy such as the legend of St. Gunifort of Pavia.

From the 13th century onward we have Latin collections of lives of saints. The Order of St. Dominic distinguished itself especially in this field. Leaving aside the passionaries or lectionaries for the use of cathedral churches, mention should be made of the very numerous hagiographic texts (900 chapters) inserted in the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais and above all the Golden Legend of James of Voragine (Varazze), which had an enormous diffusion with printing from the 15th century (about 90 Latin editions and several translations), a naive work lacking any criticism, whose great popular vogue appears also in iconography and folklore.

More critical were, in the 14th century, the Speculum sanctorale of Bernard Gui (d. 1331) and the Legendae de Sanctis of Pietro Calò (d. 1348). These two collections have remained unpublished; the work of Calò was, however, largely exploited by Pietro de Natalibus (d. c. 1400), in the Catalogus Sanctorum, published at Vicenza in 1493 and several times thereafter. As for historical criterion, the Catalogus does not greatly surpass the Golden Legend. Much more appreciated today is the Sanctuarium Vitae Sanctorum of Bonino Mombrizio, published at Milan c. 1480, reprinted by the monks of Solesmes in 2 vols. in-4°, Paris 1910. Mombrizio follows the alphabetical order of the names of the saints. His legendary is precious, because it has preserved ancient hagiographic texts whose manuscripts are today lacking.

Humanism and the pseudo-reform of the 16th century greatly influenced hagiographic works. The former influenced form, the latter criticism. The collections of Lipomano and Surius seek to eliminate deficiencies of style and are concerned with the spiritual usefulness of readers. St. Pius V in a brief addressed to Surius on 2 June 1570, praises the work, because it is most suited to confuting «haereticorum in easdem ss. Patrum historias male dicta» (G. Laderchi, Annales eccl., for the year 1570, n. 3).

Historical criticism and philological accuracy in hagiography were seriously begun in the 17th 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 over three hundred years and not yet finished, consists today of 70 volumes in folio. In 1882 the neo-Bollandists began the journal Analecta Bollandiana, a true center and very rich mine of hagiographic studies. The principles guiding such studies are set forth in several monographs by Fr. H. Delehaye (d. 1941). Useful working tools are also the Subsidia hagiographica published by the same Bollandists. As a result of these works the interest of scholars of all countries and all beliefs in the old hagiographic texts has grown immensely, and today we witness a true reflowering of hagiographic 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 16th century, P. Ribadeneyra, following Lipomano and Surius, published in Spanish a Flos Sanctorum, Madrid 1599, translated several times into Italian, e.g. Venice 1743, 2 vols. in-4°. The Oratorian Carlo Massini published in two series in-16°, each of 13 vols.: Raccolta di Vite de' santi per ciaschedum giorno dell'anno, Rome 1763-67, which had several editions, of which the fourth Roman is of 1819-21. Very well known are the collections of A. Butler (in English, recently reworked by Thurston, 12 vols., London 1926-38), and translated into Italian from the French version of 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 of pleasant 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 can be seen under their respective names.

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

The lives of the Merovingian saints are found in the MGH, Scriptores rerum merovingicarum, II-VII, Hannover 1888-1920, edited and in part re-edited by B. Krusch and K. V. Levison. The first volume, concerning the works of St. Gregory of Tours, 1884-85, is not yet complete in the new edition. - Irish saints: Joh. Colgan, Acta SS. Hiberniæ, Louvain 1645, in-fol. (Jan.-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 given by J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland, I. Ecclesiastical, New York 1929; also useful is A. Tommasini, I santi irlandesi in Italia, Milan 1932. - For England: C. Horstmann, Nova Legenda Angliae, 2 vols., Oxford 1901, (by John of Tynemouth, versified by John Capgrave). - Acta SS. Belgii, 6 vols., Brussels-Tongerloo 1782-94; J. Mabillon, Acta SS. Ordinis Benedicti, 9 vols. in-fol., Paris 1668-1701, 2nd ed., 6 vols. in-fol., Venice 1733-40. A new edition, edited by the monks of Solesmes, was undertaken by the publisher Protat, Macon 1935.

Of the medieval Greek hagiographic collections the most complete is that of Symeon Logothetes, called Metaphrastes (10th century): PG 114-16, largely exploited 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 (of vol. III a few fascicles have appeared); Le Synnaxure de Sirmond, in Anal. Boll., 14 (1896), pp. 306-434; Les Ménologes 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 basically the index of the new edition of A. Butler, The Lives of the Saints, ed. H. Thurston, 12 vols., London 1926-38. The Book of Saints, London 1921, a work of the Benedictines of Ramsgate, also falls into this category. Precious tools of scientific work 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 the 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. MARTIROLOGIO.

On 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 Catholics; not so: F. Moerchen, Die Psychologie der Heiligkeit, Halle a. S. 1908.

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