32 Hagiography ANDREW LOUTH Lives of the saints became one ofthe 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. zsï), by his deacon Pontius, but the most influential without doubt is rhe Life of St Antony, by his contemporary, the pope of Alexandria, Athanasius. Another early Christian biography is the Lrf 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 ofbook 6 of Eusebius' History of the Clrurch, 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, ftorn 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 marryr, a cult that can be traced back at least to the second century, as dne Martyrdom of St Polycørp 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. When it became feasible, a small chapel, a martyrium, was built, with the altar placed over the relics of the saint. As the cult of the saints developed, it became a common practice for some portion of the relics of one or more saints to be placed beneath every Christian altar, a practice made obligatory by the Seventh CEcumenical Council (canon 7). The origin of the notion of the saint in the cult of the marryrs had a marked effect on the genre of the saint's Life. First, at a literary level, it suggests the already well-developed genre of the ,4.cts of the Marryrs as a source for the saint's Lfe, and this is borne out in several ways. The ,4cts ofthe Martyrs focused on the 358 Hagiography narryr's death, and saw this death as a struggle (an åyóv), used metaphors of athletic contest (cf. Heb. n't z.) and military combar (cf. Eph. 6:rr-zo) ro depict it, and saw the combat as directed principally against the demons. Al1 this is carried over into the saint's Lrfe. Secondly, it explains the close affiniry between hagiography and monastic literature, for the ascetic, too, saw himself as a successor to the marlyr, and engaged in the same struggle. Further, the very nature of Christian sanctity is affected by this lineage. Although Basil speaks of 'the lives of saintly men, recorded and handed down ro us, [as lyingì before us like living images of God's governmenr, for our imitation of their good works' (Ep. z: in fact, referring to rhe holy men of the Scriptur.es), the Christian saint was not regarded as simply an ethical model from the past: he \Mas seen much more as one who, in his earthly life, demonstrated his closeness to God, not only by his godly 1ife, but by his ready access ro God in prayer, and the divine power he was thus able to wield, and who now as a friend of God in the heavenly court, is able to intercede with God for those for whom he is concerned - in short, a figure of power that can be drawn on by those who cultivate a relationship with him. The sainr's Life, then, is concerned to depict one whose closeness to God is a source of poweq manifest in miracles not just the miracles worked by the saint during his lifetime, but also the miracles he continues to work through his earthly remains: his relics. TheLife of the saint came to conform to a conventional structure (though in ourperiodthis is still developing). Itbeganwiththebirthofthe saint, frequently accompanied by some miracle portending his future acclaim; something might be recounted about his childhood years (it would normally be pious invenrion, in the likely absence of any authentic rradition, and as such, again adorned with the miraculous); often there would be some dramatic conversion experience (more commonly with male than female saints, though inevitably essenrial in the Lives of converted harlots); a period of ascetic training followed, usually involving a spiritual father and often monastic; then the saint is depicted in the fulness of his earthly powers, manifesting his friendship with God and, consequently, his rroppr¡oío, meaning both his ready access to God and his directness with men and women, including those of great rank, together with his miracles, and in appropriare cases evidence of his wisdom (the Life of St Antony includes a lengthy sermon: a precedent sometimes foÌlowed); much attention was paid to the account of the death of the saint - it was usually disclosed by God to the saint in advance and was his passage into the presence of Christ and the heavenly court; finally, the continued activiry of the saint, principally through his relics (though somerimes, also, through dreams), was normally established. In many cases ir is clear that the author of the saint's L1fè 359 A. LOUTH, „Hagiography“, in F. Young et al. (Hgg.), The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, Cambridge 2004, 358–361 had litt1e information at his disposal, in which case material was adapted from other saints' Lives on the grounds of analogy. Saints' Líves from our period fall into a number of categories: they are not so narrowly focused as later medieval Líves (at least in the West), which almost invariably serve to validate some aspect (often the authenticiry of wonderworking relics) of what has been ca1led the vast 'thaumaturgy of the dead' that characterized medieval society. The vast majority of saints' Lives is monastic: the Life of St Antony is an important piece of monastic literature, as well as the archerypal saint's Lf ; there are several versions of the Life of St Pachomius: another early monastic saint's Lfe is the Life of Pøul the Hermit by Jerome. Although, however, there is no reason to doubt that there was an early hermit of that name, there is equally no reason to suppose thatJerome knew much about him: it is a romantic tale of the desert. Many other monastic texts are, in form, collections of saints'Lives, notably Palladius' LausiacHistory,theHistory of the Monks of Egypt, and Theodoret's Religrous History. Several saints' Lives take the form of panegyric sermons or eulogies. Basil gave eulogies on the local Cappadocian saintsJulitta and Mamas, as well as on the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, who were celebrated by many others, including Gregory of Nyssa and Ephrem the Syrian, and became popular saints in Byzantium. Gregory of Nyssa also celebrated his brother, Basil, and Stephen, the first martyr. Gregory of Nazianzus gave eulogies on Athanasius and on Basil, as well as on Cyprian of Carthage, whom he conflates with the legendary Cyprian, the Antiochene magician, thus preparing the way fol the Faust legend.'John Chrysostom pleached several hagiographic sermons, for example on the Antiochene sainrs, Ignatius, Babylas and Eustathius, as well as on Lazarus, raised from the dead by Jesus, and much celebrated in the East. In the West, Augustine preached many sermons on the martyrs, not least sermons on St Stephen the Protomarryr after the discovery of his relics in 4r5 and their journey down the Mediterranean. Hilary ofArles' sermon on Flonoratus, the founder ofthe monastic communiry on Lérins, is aVita. Some of these sermons conform very closely to the form of aVitø, thoughthis is no guarantee of historicity, as Gregory's largely fabulous account of Cyprian makes plain (it ends, closely following the form of a saint's Life,withthe discovery of his relics). Another apparent category of saints' Live.s is that oflives of bishops. This is very erratic: apart from the eulogistic sermons just mentioned there are no contemporary, or nearly contemporary, Lives of such figules as Athanasius, or Cyril, or any ofthe Cappadocian Fathers (though there is of the 'Cappadocian Mother', Macrina). But in the West there areLives of several bishops, notably Cyprian, Martin, Ambrose and Augustine: the first is linked to the genre of the Acts of the Marryrs, the latter three, however, all 360 Hagiography present their subjects not simply as bishops, but as monk-bishops, so they are flot urlrelated to monastic literature. Another, rather different, example of a bishop's Life is Palladius' dialogue on the life of John Chrysostom, which is ¡nainly concerned to defend the memory ofthe victim ofthe Synod ofthe Oak. yet another genre of saints' Liyes is represented by Prudentius' Crowns of the Martyrs (Peristephanon), though it is strictly a series of accounts of martyrdom, in verse. These saints' Lives, both by their conventionai form and the inclusion of the r¡iraculous, pose problems for modern historians. Traditionally modern histolians have approached them, rather in the way Spinoza approached the Bible, by fil1eting them and removing the indigestible element of the improbable. The classic statement of this approach to the Liyes of the saints remains the work of the great Bollandist, Hippolyte Delehaye, especially his Les Légendes hrtgiographiques.r 'What survives as historically usable often has little to do with the saints themselves: such material can provide evidence for historical events through which the saint lived, or by which his biographer marked rhe course of his life; it can also provide evidence for the social history of the period (of the bíographer, if not of the saint) an extreme example might be Kazhdan's account of sexual behaviour in Byzantium, drawn entirely from hagiography.a Another way of reading saints' Liyes, however, is to see them not so much as a rather grubby window through which we can catch glimpses of a few historical events and historical conditions, but rather as a mirror in which we can see reflected the mind and values of the society to which they belong.5 Notes r For a comparative discussion of the lrles of Origen and Plotinus, see Parricia Cox, Biograplry in Løte Antícluity. z See A.-J. Festugière, La RévéIation d'Hermès Trísmégiste,I, Appendix II, 16g BZ. 3 Originally published in r9o5: ET fi'om the 4th edition, ry55,by D. Attwater, The Legends of the Saints (London: Ceoffrey Chapman, 196z). q A.Kazhdan, 'Byzantine Hagiography and Sex in the Fifth ¡o Twelfrh Cenruries', in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 Q99o), 4r-43. 5 For two recent and complementary discussior-rs of the use of hagioglaphy by historians, see P Fouracre and R. A. Gerberding , Late Merovingian France. History and Hagiography 64o 7zo (Manchester ancl New York: Manchester Universiry Press, 1996), z6-58, and Rosemary Morris, Monl