Ready to discover the definition of the term hagiography ? A somewhat sophisticated word – but not to be ignored – it is part of early Italian literature. The word can have a double meaning.
Hagiography, etymology and meaning
As for the Greek etymology , hagiography derives from agiògrafo , which in turn comes from the Greek agiògraphos , composed of àgios (saint) and grapheys (writer). As anticipated, it can take on different meanings.
In fact, this word can be used to refer to both the individual work and the literary genre having saints as their object. Specifically, it can indicate the story of events related to Saints and martyrs such as their biographies (vita, legenda, historia), the collections of their miracles (mirabilia), or the stories of the translation of mortal remains and relics; or, alternatively, the critical study of hagiographic sources and therefore of the stories of the lives and cult of saints.
But not only that: it can also indicate an exaggeratedly celebratory biography , that is, the tendency to mythologize a character or present a historical event by accompanying it with legendary elements.
Hagiography as a literary genre
Hagiography can be defined almost as a literary genre in itself: it was born in the first centuries of Christianity (around the 2nd century AD) with a devotional character, and developed especially in the Middle Ages in the convents of copyists who spent their days writing and copying large hagiographic manuscripts. Today they are texts exclusively linked to clerical worship and certainly less and less used.
Synonym of hagiography
Based on the above, the terms apologetic, celebratory, eulogistic, encomiastic, laudatory, laudatory, laudatory, panegyric can be considered synonyms of hagiography .
