Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/137

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HAGI0GRAPH7


107


HAGIOGRAPHT


Other hagiographical compilations dating from the Middle Ages are worthy of mention, although they have not all enjoyed the same popularity. Such are the Sanctoral of Bernard Guy, Bishop of Lodeve (d. 1331), still unedited (see L. Delisle, "Notice sur les manuscrits de Bernard Guy " in " Notices et Extraits ", XXVII, 2, 1879); the legendary of the Dominican Pierre Calo (d. 1348), also unedited; the "Sanctilo- gium Angliae" of John of Tynemouth (d. 1366), which became the " Nova legenda Anglic " of John Capgrave (1-Ki4), of which we now have a critical edition by C. Horstmann (Oxford, 1901, 2 vols., Svo); the"Sanc- tuarium " of B. Mombritius, printed at Milan about the year 1480, in two folio volumes, and especially precious because it reproduces the lives and the Pas- sions of the old MSS. without any reshaping or rehand- ling; the great compilations of Jean Gielemans, a Brabantine canon regular (d. 1487), under the titles ' ' Sanctilogium " , " Hagiologium Brabantinorum " , "Novate Sanctorum" (see "Analecta Bollandiana ", XIV, pp. 5-S8) ; Hilarion of Milan's supplement to Jacobus de Voragine (Legendarium . . . supplcmen- tum illius de Voragine, Milan, 1494). After the middle of the sLxteenth century, the lives of the saints begun by Aloysius Lipomano, Bishop of Verona ("Sanctorum priscorum patrum vitie", Venice, 1.5.51-60), continued and completed by Surius (" De probatis sanctorum historiis", Cologne, 1.570-75), which were offered as both edifying reading and at the same time a polemical arsenal against the Protestants, enjoyed a considera- ble reputation and were several times reprinted. Father Ribadeneyra's " Flos Sanctorum " (first edition Madrid, 1599) had a greater popular success and was translated into several languages; it was followed by a great number of lives of the saints for every day in the year. Among the most famous of these must be mentioned Alban Butler's, "The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints", which first ap- peared in 17.56 and was often reprinted and translated, and Mgr Guerin's "Les petits BoUandistes", a collec- tion which has nothing in common with the "Acta Sanctorum" or with the publications of the BoUan- dists. Most collections of lives of the saints, particu- larly those in modern languages, are inspired by the idea of edifying and interesting the reader, and with- out any great solicitude for historical truth. We shall not speak here of isolated biographies, the number of which grew incessantly during the Middle Ages and in later times, and which as constantly served to swell the collections.

.^mong the Greeks the development of hagiography was — at least outwardly — the same as among the Latins. The Passions of the martjTS, biographies and panegyrics of the saints were gathered in just the same way into collections, arranged in the order of the Calendar, in the menologies mentioned as early as the ninth century (see "Analecta Bollandiana', XIV, pp. 396-494; XVI, pp. 311-29; XVII, pp. 448- .52). The Greeks, too, have their shorter menologies, composed of abridged lives (;3ioi ^v avvThfiif, see "Analecta Bollandiana", XVI, p. 325), and their Sjmaxaries, the use of which is chiefly liturgical, are mainly compositions in which the more extended lives and Passions are reduced to the form of brief notices (see H. Deleliaye, "Synaxarium ecclesis Constanti- nopolitanje, Propylieum et Acta Sanctorum Novem- bris", p. lix). Neither is there any lack of collections in popular (modern) Greek, while the saints' lives of Margunios, Agapios Landos, and others, down to the M^7as 2ura?apic7Tiis of C. Dukakis (14 vols., Svo, Athens, 1889-97), are widely read in Greek-speaking countries.

Closely connected with Greek hagiography is Sla- vonic hagiography. The reader is referred, for pur- poses of orientation, to Martinov, "Annus grceco- slavicus" in "Acta SS.", October, vol. XI, and the critical edition of the "Mensea" of Macarius now in


course of publication at St. Petersburg (Moscow) under the auspices of the Archaeographic Commission. The Orient has been the scene of an analogous devel- opment. Passions of the martyrs, lives of the saints, collections, synaxaries are all found in the various Oriental languages; but, in spite of the very praise- worthy efforts of the specialists, we are still insuffi- ciently informed as to details. Those desiring a summary account of the hagiography of the different peoples of those regions are referretl, for the i\rmenian, to the " VitiB et Passiones Sanctorum", published by the Mechitarists of Venice in 1874, the great Armenian Synaxary of Ter-Israel (Constantinople, 1834), and the "Acta Sanctorum pleniora" of Aucher (12 vols., Venice, 1810-35); for the Coptic, to H. Hy\'ernat, ".\ctes des martyrs de I'Egypte" (Paris, 1886), I. Balestri and H. Hyvernat, "Acta martyrum" in "Corpus scriptorum Orientalium; Scriptores Coptici" (Paris, 1907), the Coptic Jacobite Synaxary, two edi- tions of which are in course of publication, one by I. Forget in "Corpus script, christ. Or.: Scriptores Arabici ", and the other by R. Basset in the " Patrolo- gia Orientalis", I; for the Ethiopian, to the "Acta martyrum" by Esteves Pereira, and the "Vitae Sanc- torum indigenarum ", by C. Conti Rossini and B. Turajev, in "Corpus script, christ. Or.: Scriptores J<;thiopici ", the " Monumenta ^Ethiopis hagiologica " of Turajev, and the Ethiopian Synaxary, by I. Guidi, in the "Patrologia Orientalis", vol. I; for the Syriac, to the "Acta martjTum Orientalium" of St. Ev. Assemani (2 vols., folio, Rome, 1748) and the "Acta martyrum et sanctorum" of Bedjan (7 vols., Svo, Leipzig, 1890-97); for the Georgian, to the "Sakart- 'hvelos Samot'hkhe" of G. Sabinin (St. Petersburg, 1832). We must content ourselves here with a rapid glance; a complete bibliography of hagiographical materials would require several volumes. For fuller details we refer the reader to the three works pub- lished by the Bollandists: " Bil:)liotheca hagiographica latina" (2 vols., 1898-1901); "Bibliotheca hagio- graphica graeca " (2nded., 1909); " Bibliotheca hagio- graphica orientalis" (1910).

(h) Scientific hagiography has for its object the criticism of documents belonging to all the categories which we have enumerated above. It involves two operations which are hardly separable: the study of written tradition for the purpose of establishing texts; and research into sources with the object of determin- ing the historical value of those texts. The earliest attempts at a methodical hagiographic criticism date from the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is known that Rosweyde (d. 1629) first conceived that project of forming a collection of the "Acta Sanc- torum" which since 1643 has been put into execution by Bollandus and his collaborators (see Boll.\ndi.sts), and which has for its essential aim the critical sifting and the publication of all the hagiographic texts which have come down to us relating to the saints quatquot toto orbe coluntur. From the first volumes Bollandus and his colleagues have submitted their documents to a criticism as severe as the means of information and the state of historical science permitted. With the developments attained by all branches of science in the course of the last century, the importance of archaeological discoveries in that period, the progress of philology and pala;ography, the possibility of using means of rapid communication to obviate the diffi- culty of scattered material, hagiography could not but take a new orientation. The Bollandists have been induced to undertake, side by side with the compila- tion of the "Acta Sanctorum", a cour.se of labours which, without modifj-ing the spirit of their work, assures for it a broader and firmer basis and a more rigorous application of the principles of historical criticism. But they have not been alone in their devo- tion to the science of hagiography as constituted since the inauguration of their work; Mabillon, "Acta SS.