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32 - Hagiography

from A - LITERARY GUIDE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Andrew Louth
Edited by
Frances Young ,
Lewis Ayres  and
Andrew Louth
Assisted by
Augustine Casiday
Frances Young
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Lewis Ayres
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Andrew Louth
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Augustine Casiday
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

Lives of the saints became one of the most popular forms of Christian literature: indeed for some periods of the Middle Ages, both in the East and the West, our literary sources are dominated by the hagiographical. The earliest Christian biography extant is the Life of St Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258), by his deacon Pontius, but the most influential without doubt is the Life of St Antony, by his contemporary, the pope of Alexandria, Athanasius. Another early Christian biography is the Life of Origen, which originally formed part of the Defence of Origen, written by Pamphilus and Eusebius of Caesarea in the first decade of the fourth century: it is now lost, but it was almost certainly the source for most of book 6 of Eusebius’ History of the Church, which is mainly concerned with the life of the great Alexandrian. Both this lost Life of Origen and the Life of St Antony demonstrate marked similarities with the pagan genre of the Lives of the philosophers, which must therefore be counted as a literary source for the genre of the saints’ Lives. However, the nature of the saint’s Life, from its beginnings, was more deeply affected by the emerging Christian cult of the saint, of which the Life soon came to form a part. The cult of the saint was originally the cult of the martyr, a cult that can be traced back at least to the second century, as the Martyrdom of St Polycarp shows. The mortal remains of the martyr – the relics – were buried, if at all possible, and yearly commemorations, involving the celebration of the eucharist, were made at the place of burial.

Keywords

Life of PaulJeromehagiographyChristian literaturemonastic literatureLife of St AntonyMiddle Ages
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The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature , pp. 358 - 361
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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