Hagiographies

Hagiography is the writing of the lives of saints and holy figures, a genre that blends biography, legend, and devotional purpose. The term comes from the Greek hagios, meaning holy, and graphia, meaning writing. In Christian usage, hagiographies typically recount the saint’s life, miracles, martyrdom, and the cult surrounding the saint, aiming to inspire devotion and support the authority of churches and religious orders. Common features include miraculous events reported during life or after death, accounts of miracles attributed to the saint, and the saint’s role as a model of virtue and intercessor for the living. Relics, pilgrimage, and feast days are often integrated to promote the saint’s veneration.

Historically, hagiography arose as communities sought to preserve the memory of martyrs and founders. In late antiquity and the Middle Ages, Christian hagiography flourished in Latin and Greek, producing collections such as the Acts of the Martyrs and the Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend). These texts were widely read in liturgy and education and helped justify ecclesiastical authority; they also shaped popular piety and local cults. Non-Christian traditions developed parallel biographical genres, including Buddhist hagiographies and Islamic biographies of saints, which played similar roles in their respective devotional cultures.

Modern scholarship treats hagiography as a valuable source for understanding religious practice, communal memory, and social history, while noting its rhetorical aims and legendary motifs. Scholars distinguish between historical core and hagiographic embellishment, with miracles and idealized portraits often serving devotional objectives. The genre continues in some religious communities today, typically in forms that contextualize devotion while critically examining historical claims.