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Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Saints' Lives 

Paul Halsall, ORB sources editor

The Internet Medieval Sourcebook is now part of 
ORB, the Online Reference Book 
for Medieval Studies.

Since January 20, 1996, this page has been accessed  times
note - this counter is approximate since it only records graphical hits

Last Modified: March 27, 2006

Guide to Contents

The structure of this section of the Sourcebook is as follows. You can browse through the entire list, or jump directly to the part that interests you by selecting the underlined links.

  • Main Page
    will take you back to Sourcebook main page.
  • Selected Sources  will take you to the index of selected and excerpted medieval sources.
  • Full Text Sources will take you to the page on non-hagiographal full etexts.
  • Search the Sourcebook will enable searches of the full texts of all the source texts at Fordham, at ORB, or selected ancient, late antique, and medieval text databases.

SAINTS' LIVES

Introduction 

Saints' lives are a major resource for anyone concerned with the history of the late ancient world, Byzantium, or the Latin Middle ages. Just as whole genres of ancient literature vanished or diminished, the genre of hagiography became a major form of literary production. Such saint's Lives - or vitae - survive in astonishing numbers. Careful reading of them reveals, as one might expect, a great deal about the religious life of the periods that produced them. Frequently, however, such Lives are also our best sources for basic social and cultural history. They provide information on, among other things:- details of daily life; food and drink; organization of local rural and urban society; the impact of commerce; gender relations; class relations; and even, on occasion, specific dates for military and political history.

This page's goal is to present ancient, Byzantine, and medieval hagiographic original texts - in translation and otherwise - along with basic data on the cult of saints. Modern Christians, especially Orthodox Christians, still read such lives for their religious value. They will find some of these texts profitable for that goal. But the emphasis here is on the historical understanding of the texts and the cult of saints. [The word cult, by the way, is a technical term referring to the religious practices surrounding devotion to saints.]

Web Sites for Hagiography 

  • WEB Christian Hagiography
    The web site of the Bollandists, a society within the Jesuits which for three centuries has lead the way in the scientific investigation of hagiography and the cult of the saints.
  • WEB Hagiography Site [At ORB]
    Web site by Thomas Head, one of the leading experts on Western Hagiography. This site contains translations made by Prof. Head, truly excellent bibliographies, and an incipient encyclopedia of hagiography.
  • WEB St. Pachomius Library
    The St. Pachomius Library is a Greek Orthodox project to put Byzantine texts on the internet, including many saints' lives.
  • WEB Ecole Initiative: Vitae
    Comprehensive listing of online source texts (including those here) in alphabetical order.
  • WEB The Military Martyrs
    A web site by David Woods focused on the military martyrs.


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Non-Christian Biography 

Hagiography is not "biography" as such, but the genres clearly overlap. A number of classical authors wrote "lives" which greatly influenced later Christian hagiographical writings. Moreover, the accounts of the Jewish martyrs under the Seleucids provided important themes to Christian writers.


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I: Apostolic Era Saints 

The following texts - all accounts of the martyrdoms of the apostles - are apocryphal. See Vol. 8 of Ante-Nicene Fathers for further notes and details.


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II: Early Christian Martyrs 

LATIN AND GREEK

SYRIAC, COPTIC and OTHER ORIENTAL

MILITARY MARTYRS

RISE OF THE CULT OF SAINTS IN THE WEST


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III: Early Monks [Eastern] 


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IV: Patristic Era Saints 


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V: Byzantine Saints 

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VI: Western Europe: Original Lives 

EARLY MEDIEVAL

CAROLINGIAN ERA (9th-10th Centuries)

HIGH MIDDLE AGES (11-13th Centuries)

LATE MIDDLE AGES

  • John Lydgate: The Lives of Ss. Edmund and Fremund, 15th century, [At U. Alberta]
    A web project presenting the [quite readable] late Middle English text.
  • Archbishop Richard le Scrope, d. 1405. [At CUA]
    [This page has been created not only as an archive of textual and pictorial materials pertaining to Archbishop Scrope, but also as an experiment to see how emerging technologies might serve the purposes of interdisciplinary projects in medieval studies. In short, Hyper/Hagiography is intended as a model of one way in which students of ecclesiastical, political, and literary history might developinterdisciplinary hypermedia sites relevant to their own research interests.]
  • St. Bridget of Sweden: Revelations to the Popes, d. 1373, Latin edition by Arne Jönsson, [and Microsoft Word Version],  
  • Heliga Birgittas: Uppenbarelser, [Revelations of St. Bridget], in Swedish [At Göteborg University]
  • The Life and Doctrine of Saint Catherine of Genoa [At CCEL]
    Includes a Life, The Spiritual Dialogue, and Treatise on Purgatory, all from a 1874, 1907 English version. It is unclear from the etext if this Life is a translation of the Libro de la vita mirabile e dottrina santa de la beta Caterinetta da Genoa, or a modern work.
  • Transcript of Trial of Joan of Arc, 1431
    Joan was not canonized until the 20th century.
  • Sieur Louis de Conte: Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc [in fact, a fictional account by Mark Twain]
  • Image and Story of Anderl von Rinn: A Blood Libel Saint, supposedly 1462, but the cult is 17th-century.
  • A Legend of the Austrian Tyrol: St. Kümmernis [At this Site]
    A female saint who grows a beard.

PILGRIMAGE IN THE MIDDLE AGES

MEDIEVAL CRITIQUES OF THE CULT OF SAINTS


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VII: Western Europe: Latin/Vernacular Versions of Older Saints' Lives 


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VIII: Celtic Saints 


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IX: Metaphrastes and The Golden Legend 

Historians interested in the "real lives" of individual saints value the earliest texts above all others. But for assessing the cult of saints in Byzantium and in Western Europe, two rewritten collections of saints' lives dominate the manuscript record. There are about 700 surviving manuscripts of the 10th-century Byzantine "re-phraser" St. Symeon Metaphrastes. As a result his work dominates the later Byzantine conception of sanctity. Jacobus de Voragine, writing about 1260, achieved a similar dominance in later western hagiographical literature - about 900 manuscripts of his Golden Legend survive. From 1470 to 1530 it was also the most often printed book in Europe. This section of the Saints' Lives page will list online translations, or texts, of Lives from these two major collections.


RESOURCES


TEXTS


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X: Post Medieval Saints- 

With the advent of printing, and the massive increase in available source material of all types, hagiography after the middle ages becomes less central to historians researching non-religious topics. It remains of interest, however, for religious history.

But the nature of hagiography also changes. For ancient, Byzantine, and early Western Medieval saints, the Life often provided the unique data on the saint. When the popes took control, especially after the mid-thirteenth century, and increasingly formalized the process of canonization, the nature of available materials about a saint changed. Catholic saints (as also, in a less methodical way Orthodox saints) now acquired at dossier organized as a legal brief.


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XI: Modern Lives of Medieval Saints 

With the following texts, available on the net, I have not been able to ascertain who wrote them, or when. As a result, they are listed as "modern" texts.


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Appendix I: Aspects of Sainthood: Modern Discussions  

CANONIZATION

Canonization procedures varied over the centuries, and from one Christian Church to another. The Roman Catholic situation is summarized as follows:

"In the first six centuries of the Church, the sanctity, at first of martyrs, then of confessors of the faith, and later of those of heroic Christian virtue and of those exemplary in their apostolic zeal for the Church -- doctors, bishops, missionaries -- was so acclaimed by the vox populi of the faithful. From the sixth to the tenth century the definitive pronouncement of approval on the part of the local bishop gradually became a necessary culmination of a process of inquiry into the validity of such a veneration, the cult of doulia on the part of the faithful. Canonization has By 973 formal approval of the Roman Pontiff was deemed a matter of greater prestige for the veneration of a venerated saint, St. Udalricus. Under Gregory IX (1234) papal canonization became the only and exclusive legitimate form of inquiry into the saints' lives and miracles according to newly established procedural formes and canonical processes. In 1588 Pope Sixtus V, by his Immensa Aeterni Dei, entrusted the process of papal canonization to the Congregation of Rites. In 1642 Urban VIII ordered all the decrees and studies of canonizations during his own pontificate to be published in one volume -- and a century later, Benedict XIV systematized in a clear and definitive manner the basic expectations of heroic virtue and the indispensable requirements of the canonical processes according to the evidences of the Congregation of Rites. Pius X (1914) divided this Congregation into two sections: one, the liturgical section, and the other assigned entirely to the causes for canonization. In 1930, Pius XI established the historical section devoted to the critical-historical scrutiny of the evidences put forth in the causes for canonization."
[from a critical book on Hans Kung by Joseph F. Costanzo S.J.: On the net at http://www.ewtn.com/library/THEOLOGY/KUNGINF.HTM]

In 1917, the formal procedure was incorporated in the Church's Code of Canon Law. In 1982, Pope John Paul II introduced a new simplified process. After a rigorous examination of a candidate's life, work and writings, undertaken by the Postulator of the Cause, the Pope accepts that the Servant of God has practised the Christian virtues in a heroic degree, and declares them Venerable, the first of three steps on the road of sainthood.Following a physical miracle, such as an unexplained healing, the candidate is Beatified by the Pope, and declared Blessed. A further physical miracle is required before the person is Canonised and declared a Saint of the Church.
[Info supplied by The British Royal Mail, 27 Feb., 1997.

  • Catholic Encyclopedia: Canonization and Beatification.
  • P.E. Hallet: The Canonization of Saints (London: CTS, 1952) [At EWTN]

    • CALENDARS

  • Calculation of the Ecclesiastical Calendar [At Smart.net]
    A splendid website which calculates both Catholic and Orthodox church calendars. It also contains much other information on religious calendars.
  • Catholic Encyclopedia: The Christian Calendar. Descriptive article on origins.
  • Catholic Encyclopedia: The Jewish Calendar. Descriptive article.
  • Online Calendar of Saints' Days. [At Medievalist.net]
    By Glenn Gunhouse. Based on Hermann Grotefend's Taschenbuch der Zeitrechnung.
  • The Roman Calendar, that is the current General Calendar, [At EWTN]
  • Franciscan Calendar of Saints. [At WTU]
  • Irish Calendar of Saints. [At EWTN]
  • Patron Saints. (Roman Catholic) [At EWTN]
  • Orthodox Ministry ACCESS Saint of the Day Calendar. [At GOArch]
    This page is in fact an online Calendar of Greek and Orthodox saints. It also has a Greek version of the calendar, PLUS icons of the saint and an audio version of Saint's Troparion (in Greek)
  • Orthodox Church in America: Feasts and Saints of the Orthdox Church.
  • Database: Russian Saints Page. in Russian, in Russia. [with transliteration - it is quite usable!]. [Nb if this does not work as a link, try going to the URL http://http://kuz1.pstbi.ccas.ru/index.htm - which is the index page of the St. Tikon Orthodox Theological Institute].
  • Database: Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church. in Russian, in Russia. [with transliteration - it is quite usable!].

    • HISTORY OF SAINTHOOD

  • Catholic Encyclopedia: The Roman Catacombs.
  • Stefania Falasca: The Humble Splendor of the First Witnesses: The Catacombs of Saint Callixtus in Rome, [At EWTN]
    Pious, but still informative, account of the the third century Pope Zephyrinus' entrusting the administration of the Church of Rome's first cemetery to his deacon, Callixtus.
  • Joseph McCabe (1867-1955): The Story of Religious Controversy: Chapter 15: Legends of Saints and Martyrs [At infidels.org]
    McCabe, a former Franciscan, became an extremely prolific writer in support of atheism and against all religion, especially Catholicism. His "rationalism" can now be seen for the ideology it was. His account of saints and sainthood reflects the rationalist view, a view which was unable to see the value of either the texts, or the religious culture that produced them. He ended up being as intolerent and blinkered as those he criticized.
  • Michael Roberts: Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs, [At Upenn]
    On Prudentius' Peristephanon
  • Laurent Terrade: Hilarius of Arles Life of Honoratus, [At Ecole]
    A discussion on life of a fifth-century bishop, Honoratus. The Sermo de Vita Sancti Honorati was probably delivered to the Christians of Arles in 430 by Hilarius (401-449).
  • Hippolyte Delehaye: The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography (1907)
    The full text of a classic work.
  • Jeffrey Conrad: Egyptian and Syrian Asceticism in Late Antiquity: A Comparative Study of the Ascetic Idea in the Late Roman Empire during the Fourth and Fifth Centuries. [At SFSU]
  • Margaret Kenny: Distinguishing between dreams and visions in ninth-century hagiography, Gouden Hoorn, Volume 4, issue 1 (summer 1996) [At Gouden Hoorn]
  • Kenneth Baxter: Christian Martyrs in Muslim Spain-(Cambridge University Press, 1988) [At Libro]
  • Sandra Miesel: The Golden Legend (Review) Catholic Twin Circle, November 6, 1994 [At EWTN]
  • Evelyn Underhill: Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spritual Consciousness [At CCEL]
    The full text of a classic work.
  • Catholic Encyclopedia: The Bollandists.
    The history of the scholalry society within the Jesuits which created the modern study of saints and hagiography, and in the process established many of the conventions of scientific historical study in general.

    • RELICS

  • Catholic Encyclopedia: Relics.
  • Summa Theologica III, 25, 6: The adoration of the relics of saints
  • A Modern Relic Certificate, 1952
    For the bones of St. George.
  • Medieval Attitudes Towards Dismemberment of the Body.
  • Sacred Relics. [Buddhist views?]
  • Mike Epstein: Electroscopy of St. Januarius Blood. [At ASU]
  • Catholic Encyclopedia: Oil of the Saints.
  • Jessica A. Browner: "Viking" Pilgrimage to the Holy Land fram! fram! cristmenn, crossmenn, konungsmenn! (Oláfs saga helga, ch. 224.). Essays in History 34 (1992) 

    • WOMEN AND SANCTITY

  • Lina Eckenstein: Women Under Monasticism, Chapters on Saint-Lore and Convent Life Between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), chaps. 4, 6, 7, 9 [At Yale]
  • Kevin Corrigan: Syncletica and Macrina: Two Early Lives of Women Saints, Vox Benedictina 6/3 (1989) 241-256. [At Peregrina Press's Matrologia Latina site]
  • Onnie Duvall: Radegund of Poitiers (ca. 518-587), [At ORB]. See also Alex Perkins: Life of Radegund, [At Cambridge]
  • Margot H. King: The Desert Mothers: A Survey of the Feminine Anchoretic Tradition in Western Europe, [At Peregrina Press's Matrologia Latina site],
  • Margot H. King: The Desert Mothers Revisited: The Mothers of the Diocese of Liège, [At Peregrina Press's Matrologia Latina site]
  • Abby Stoner: Sisters Between:Gender and the Medieval Beguines [At sfsu.edu]
  • Katherine Gill: Open Monasteries for Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Italy: Two Roman Examples [At Monastic Matrix]
    Part of Matrix - A Collection of Resources for the Study of Women's Religious Communities, 500-1500 [At USC]


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    APPENDIX II: Mystical Writings by, or Ascribed to, Saints 

    These are links only to mystical writings by saints. For writings by the Church Fathers, most of whom are considered as saints, see the Medieval Sourcebook: Full Texts page.