hagiography

Definition

The study of saints and the documentation of their lives.

Etymology

From hagio- + -graphy.

Example Sentences

• "The second half of the eleventh century saw a notable surge of interest in hagiography throughout England, which meant that many of the Anglo-Saxon saints of earlier eras were furnished, often for the first time, with a Latin Vita."
• "Jacques LeGoff remarks, 'Hagiography tells us much about the mental infrastructure [of the middle ages]: the interpenetration between the tangible world and the supernatural world, the common nature of the corporeal and psychic, are the conditions which make miracles and related phenomena possible."
• "Charters, wills, and monastic rules offer evidence for this transformation, but it is hagiography and its double-scoped discourse that illuminates it best, and we will start with a vita that pursued the question of peroperty and prestige more comprehensively than the rest, the Vita Sadalbergae."

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