Hagiography
Thomas Head
Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
Preliminary
Outline for
this Section:
- ORB
Encyclopedia--Original Essays
- Hagiography
: a brief introduction: essays by Tom Head.
- Primary
Sources--Literature, chronicles, other texts
- An
Introductory Guide to Research in Medieval Hagiography, compiled by
Tom Head.
- The Internet Medieval
Sourcebook: Saints' Lives, edited by Paul Halsall. A guide to
translations of hagiographic texts, and also some secondary resources,
available on the Internet.
- Hagiography
was closely linked to the liturgy for saints' feast days. Two
important liturgical texts for those liturgies was the Psalter
or Book of Psalms from the Bible and Books of Hours.
- Parallel
Latin/English Psalter, edited by Glenn Gunhouse. This Psalter
combines the Latin text of the Book of Psalms from the Vulgate
with the English text of the Book of Psalms from Challoner's revision
of the Douay translation.
- Book
of Hours, edited by Glenn Gunhouse. A hypertext version of the
Hours according to the Use of Rome recorded in The Primer, or Office
of the Blessed Virgin Marie, in Latin and English (Antwerp: Arnold
Conings, 1599).
- A List of
Lives of the Saints from the first ten centuries of the Christian
Era which are available in translation on-line. Made available through
The Ecole Initiative.
- Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten
Saints' Lives in English Translation, edited by Alice-Mary
Talbot.
- An Anthology Collection
of Texts Concerning the Cult of Saints, edited and translated by
Tom Head.
- Secondary Sources
-- Guides, Reviews
- An
Introductory Guide to Scholarship on Hagiography, compiled by Tom
Head (note: this essay is temporarily unavailable as it is being
updated).
- The most important
guide to the works of medieval western hagiography remains the Bibliotheca
hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, 3 vols. (Subsidia
hagiographica, 6 and 70; Brussels, 1898-1901 and 1986), preapared by
the Société des Bollandistes (see below under medieval centers). The
standard abbreviation for this work is BHL. This work is still
not available on-line, although plans are underway to make it so.
Several valuable supplemental guides to the BHL have been made
available on-line; for information on them, see below under medieval
centers.
- On-Line
Calendar of Saints' Days, edited by Glenn Gunhouse. A hypertext
guide to the feast days of Christian saints. It is based on several
different dictionaries of saints (but primarily on Hermann Grotefend's Taschenbuch
der Zeitrechnung). Unlike many of those other dictionaries,
however, this one is organized by date, rather than by the name of the
saint. When you look up a day, you will find the names of the saints
celebrated on that day, together with the names of some of the places
in which the feast is (or was) especially important.
- For a guide to
saints' feasts of the eastern, or Orthodox, churches, one may consult
either Feasts
and Saints of the Orthodox Church or Saint of the Day Calendar
and Feastdays and Lives of the Saints Search.
- One of the studies
which pioneered a modern or "scientifically" historical
approach to hagiography is Hippolyte Delehaye, Les legendes
hagiographiques, fourth edition (Subsidia hagiographica, 18;
Brussels, 1955). The English translation of this work as The
Legends of the Saints, trans. V. M. Crawford (from second edition;
London, 1907 and reprint, Notre Dame University Press, 1961) is now
available on-line. To set this work in its historiographic
perspective, see my essay "An Introductory Guide to Scholarship on
Hagiography" above.
- Another piece of
older scholarship which contains much still of value about saints, in
this case female, is Lina Eckenstein's Women Under
Monasticism: Chapters on Saint-Lore and Monastic Life A. D. 500 and
A. D. 1500 (Cambridge, 1896).
- The 1913 edition of the Catholic
Encyclopedia (as opposed to the newer, revised New Catholic
Encyclopedia published in 1967) is being slowly made available
on-line at traditionalist Roman Catholic site called New Advent.
The entries include many on the lives of the saints and other topics
relevant to the study of hagiography and the cult of the saints.
- Another site called
The
Theology Library provides direct access via an alphabetized list
to the entries on the lives of saints from the 1913 edition of the Catholic
Encyclopedia. This site also includes other material of
relevance to the study of hagiography and the cult of the saints,
including a number of official Catholic conciliar decrees on relics
and sanctity.
- Catholic On-line
is another site which provides a large, alphabetized guide to saints,
with links to abbreviated lives (largely based, it seems, on The
Catholic Encyclopedia).
- The Journal of
Early Christian Studies devoted volume
6.3 (summer 1998) to papers, originating in a conference held at
Berkeley, on the legacy of Peter Brown's concept of the "holy
man" in the study of late antique hagiography. (Note: this may
only be accessible to subscribers to the online journal service JStor.)
- Devotion
and Dissent: The Practice of Christianity in Roman Africa.
Papers from a scholarly working group which in large part concern the
cult of the martyrs in late antique North Africa.
- The Institut pour
recherche et d'histoire des textes has made the contents of a book
entitled Le
Médiéviste et l'Ordinateur (The Medievalist and the Computer)
available on-line.
- A number of useful
websites give access to material on specific individual saints or
groups of saints.
- The Military Martyrs treats
soldiers of the Roman empire who suffered martyrdom for their faith.
- Professor James
O'Donnell of the University of Pennsylvania tends a superb website
dedicated to the life and works of Augustine of Hippo.
- The Order of St.
Benedict provides access to materials concerning Benedict of Nursia.
- This is the best of
several sites devoted to Hildegard
of Bingen.
- Bibliographies
compiled by Tom Head
(Note: revised versions of these bibliographies will beging to appear in
2002. A * before the title indicates that it is a revised
version.)
- Resources for
Teaching
- Other Online
Resources
- Works of
art
- The Bibliothèque
Nationale de France maintains an on-line exhibit entitled The Age of King
Charles V (1338-1380). It contains over one thousand images of
illuminations from manuscripts of the period. One directly accessible
category of illumination is hagiology.
- The illuminations
from a Life of King
Edward the Confessor are available from Cambridge University:
"Cambridge University Library MS. Ee.3.59 contains the only copy
of an illustrated Anglo-Norman verse Life of St Edward the Confessor,
written in England probably in the later 1230s or early 1240s, and
preserved in this manuscript, executed c. 1250-60."
- An extraordinarily
useful resource for scholars doing research in hagiography is the Index of Christian
Art. This collection of images, many of which relate to saints and
their cults, has its home at Princeton University; several satellite
copies now exist, and on-line access is possible, although only by
subscription.
- All the Saints of the City of Angels, illus. J. Michael Walker
This site explores the cultural and spiritual heritage of Los Angeles, California, seeking connections between the lives of the saints and the histories surrounding the 85 streets that bear their names. ORB readers are invited to visit the site and to contribute related information within their areas of expertise.
- Centers for
medieval studies
- The most important
scholarly center devoted to the study of hagiography is that of the Société des Bollandistes, a
group of Jesuits formed in the seventeenth century. Based in Brussels,
they maintain a superb library, several important publishing ventures
including the journal Analecta Bollandiana, and a marvelous website which has guides to
their many activities and other useful links.
- An important new
venture of the Bollandists is the edition and maintenance of an
on-line index of hagiographic manuscripts, entitled BHLms. It is based on the
Bollandist catalogues of many important manuscript collections and is
keyed to the cataloguing of hagiographic texts in the Bibliotheca
hagiographica latina (see above).
- The Centre de
recherche "Hagiographies"
located at the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur,
Belgium. This center, directed by Professor Guy Philippart, is
responsible for the ongoing publication of an extremely important
overview of hagiographic studies: Hagiographies: Sociologie et
histoire de la littérature hagiographique en Occident des origines à
1550. A description of this project and the contents of the
volumes already published is available at this site.
- This center
maintains another important on-line adjunct to the Bibliotheca
hagiographica latina (see above) is a list of dates of
composition for many of the works listed in the BHL called the Chronology
of Latin Hagiography.
- Links to museums
and libraries
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York contains several collections of medieval objects with much to
interest the scholar of sanctity, particularly at the wonderful
collection in northern Manhattan known as The
Cloisters.
- The Musée de Cluny is
the specific French national collection of medieval art, and likewise
has many objects connected to the cult of saints.
- The Vatican
Museums are another collection rich in objects associated with the
heritage of various saints.
- Professional
organizations
- Scholarly
conferences
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