NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN HAGIOGRAPHY: THE REDISCOVERY OF BYZANTINE HAGIOGRAPHY

Stephanos Efthymiadis Jannina, Greece

Hagiography is one of the few literary genres, if not the only one, in our field which has over the past years undergone considerable renewal but still needs re-assessment. Renewal emerged as a result of its growing entanglement with more and more areas of scholarly research, whereas re-assessment remains necessary in order to remove the remnants of bias, preconception and contempt that still haunt its study. Both renewal and re-assessment have affected the two ways hagiography has come to be understood: as a literature (or a way of expressing oneself) and as a discipline (with its particular methods).1 On the one hand, hagiography is a vast terrain of which it is still hard to give an overview, master its varieties and intricacies and define its character. On the other hand, its study has repeatedly intrigued all kinds of scholars, be they theologians, philologists, historians of all orientations, or folklorists. Having already been fruitfully explored by many social and art historians with a cultural or anthropological perspective, by the 1980s it incited interest also among literary scholars. Leaving aside some partial and short-lived efforts, the task involved scholars of such different backgrounds as Kazhdan and Rydén, who were the first to treat hagiography both as a way of expressing oneself and as a reflection of social realities.

The passage of Alexander Kazhdan from East to West was decisive in his becoming an avid reader of saints’ Lives and in his attempt at their literary interpretation. In the first place, in some of his hagiographical notes he called attention to texts, especially of the Middle period which, despite their merits, had passed unnoticed by other scholars or deserved to be looked with fresh eyes. In the same vein, he for the first time systematically surveyed subjects not conforming to a traditional view of hagiography, like sex and art, but which from then onwards have become ‘trendy’. As a record of ideas and mentalities, hagiography reflected the change in how a society might view older exempla of holiness (e.g., stylitism) and ‘imagine’ imperial figures and legacies like that of Constantine. For Kazhdan change was a Lieblingsthema and medieval hagiography, which had by then started to be explored exclusively for historical information, provided a good forum for locating social transformation. Departing from similar considerations and keen on statistical analysis, Kazhdan was the person ultimately behind the computerized Dumbarton Oaks database based on Lives and Synaxarion notices of saints from the eighth through the tenth centuries. As we all know, this was completed by 1997, the year of Kazhdan’s death, and is now available at the Dumbarton Oaks website (www.doaks.org). This useful tool comprised only vitae of contemporary saints, several of whom remained virtually unknown to Byzantinists as they were either confined to a Synaxarion notice or were accessible in rare editions; to name a few, Dounale-Stephanos, Bacchos the Younger, Germanos of Kosinitza, Theodoros of Edessa. The database was furnished with a general introduction giving a summary and bibliography for no fewer than 118 saints. It is a pity that on account of copyright permission or other considerations, Greek could not be used in the form of a thesaurus. If only partially, this ‘shortcoming’ is now gradually being rectified as words of lexicographical interest are being stored in the Lexicon zur byzantinischen Gräzität and more and more hagiographical works are being entered in the TLG.2

1 See G. Philippart, ‘Hagiographes et hagiographie, hagiologes et hagiologie: des mots et des concepts,’ Hagiographica 1 (1994), 1-16, esp. p. 2. 2 Cf. E. Trapp, ‘Die Bedeutung der byzantinischen Hagiographie für die griechische Lexicographie,’ in ΛEIMΩN. Studies presented to L. Rydén on his 65th Birthday, ed. J.-O. Rosenqvist (Uppsala 1996), 1-10.

Dumbarton Oaks was the host institution of another worthwhile but smaller-scale project: the annotated translation into English of a number of vitae ranging again from the eighth to the eleventh century. Women and Iconoclasm were respectively the subject matters of the first two volumes, whereas the third was exclusively devoted to the long Life of St Lazaros of Mt Galesion. The primary concern was again to make Greek hagiographical texts accessible to a wider public as well as to increase the number of Byzantine narrative sources of the Middle period translated into English. In the introductory pages of the first volume, the editor of the series, Alice-Mary Talbot, underscored that, being formerly used as a source of data for the lives and histories of saints, religious controversies, and monastic institutions, vitae were recently being used to illuminate aspects of everyday life and the histoire des mentalités. No word, however, was reserved here for their literary dimension although the first volume comprised such exceptional medieval texts as the Lives of Theoktiste of Lesbos, Mary the Younger and Thomaïs of Lesbos. On the same page of the introduction one could also read that writing a vita and painting an icon aimed at demonstrating the sanctity of the holy man or woman.3 Yet, whereas icons have long since been regarded as objects of art, this is not so with Lives of saints.

Towards the end of his life, Kazhdan focused his tireless energy on another pioneering project: the writing of a History of Byzantine Literature that would treat texts not according to literary genres but as individual works imprinting the ways and means employed by the authors to express themselves.4 Inevitably, in the first and hitherto only published volume, which dealt with the Dark Age and its aftermath (650-850), hagiography had the lion’s share in the whole literary output. By their number or, more significantly, by their quality, vitae produced in the eighth or early ninth century could, at first glance, incite doubt as to what extent the Dark Age was really dark. Moreover, although this was not explicitly stated in the book, for a few decades following the exodus from the Dark Age it was hagiography that represented the most sophisticated expression of Byzantine literature in that it hosted a great deal of theological polemic, fostered interest in historical reality, and demonstrated a tendency for linguistic innovation. Though in this book Kazhdan did not tilt the balance further by granting to any hagiographer of the period an autonomous discussion like the one he elsewhere granted to the historiographer Ioannes Kantakouzenos, he should receive the indisputable credit for applying literary analysis to texts lying dormant among Byzantinists and placing them in their social-historical context.

Unlike Kazhdan, Lennart Rydén was versed in the study of hagiography since his first steps as a scholar. As was the norm in those days, he had the training of a classicist who, at the instigation of his teacher David Tabachowitz, soon turned to a field that in the following decades proved to be both rewarding for himself and a trendy subject among Medievalists.5 His work was devoted to the critical edition of three jewels of Byzantine literature: the vitae of Sts Symeon and Andreas, both holy fools for Christ, and that of St Philaretos the Merciful. Clearly, though set in different periods, the kind of sanctity all three holy men professed was a stimulus for literary interpretation and elaboration. In a posthumously published article, Rydén was to note that ‘this masterpiece (i.e., the vita of Philaretos) had to wait until 1999 to be included in a history of Byzantine literature’, i.e., Alexander Kazhdan’s aforementioned History.6 Like Kazhdan, by the end of his

3 Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives in English Translation, ed. A.-M. Talbot (Washington, D.C. 1996), VII. For a similar focus on their use as sources opening window onto aspects of social life neglected by chronicles and histories see also the General Introduction to the Dumbarton Oaks Hagiography Database, 2-3. 4 Full reference: A. Kazhdan, A History of Byzantine Literature (650-850). In collaboration with Lee F. Sherry-Christine Angelidi (Athens 1999). 5 For a sketch of L. Rydén’s course as a scholar see the obituary signed by J.-O. Rosenqvist, in Les Vies des saints à Byzance (see below n. 21), 13-17. 6 ‘Literariness in Byzantine saints’ Lives,’ in Les Vies des saints à Byzance, (see below n. 21), 51.

life he came to openly declare what in one way or another he had defended in separate studies published since the 1980s. Indeed, it was in 1986 in a paper delivered at the Washington Congress that he first emphasized the diversity among the heroes of medieval hagiography and singled out texts which deserved attention and further analysis.7 In a word, his aim was to redress the balance between the late-antique renowned predecessors and the ninth- and tenth-century vitae which were not at all deprived of literary qualities. By the end of the 1990s, participating in a debate on the use of literary criticism in Byzantine historical writings, the Swedish scholar drew the line distinguishing historiography from hagiography and made a number of acute observations about both the literary character of hagiography itself and the personal endeavour of hagiographers. Confronted with the static picture of a man or a woman predestinated to spiritual perfection, hagiographers had few stimuli for creative writing and thereby turned their attention to matters of style. Rydén wisely reminded us that for the medieval intellectual ‘style is more important than narrative’ and highlighted several texts that could be now adduced in support of hagiographic elaboration and inventiveness. His (wrong) view of bride-shows in the Byzantine court as a fictional element in ninth- and tenth-century Lives was a further indication that Rydén believed more in literary invention than in literary re-adaptation of historical reality. Making the distinction between routine hagiography and hagiography with literary qualities, he once again assessed that ‘all sorts of narrative structures may be found in Byzantine saints’ Lives’, a rich variety, we may add, sometimes comparable to that found in works of historiography. He ended by affirming that ‘hopefully narrative studies of the whole as well as of the parts will one day give hagiography its proper place in the history of Byzantine literature’.8

Rydén died in 2003, having long since instilled his scholarly interests in Jan-Olof Rosenqvist, his successor in the single Scandinavian chair of Byzantine studies in Uppsala and an editor himself of saints’ Lives with a literary appeal. Their common practice of editing and commenting on vitae as wholes was met with the praise of an occasional but serious student of hagiography. It was in the mid-1990s that Ihor Ševčenko published his own progress report on Byzantine hagiography. Taking Hippolyte Delehaye’s death in 1941 as a starting point, he praised the Bollandist critical method of extracting truth from hagiography, but treated its modern use as ‘a quarry for something else’ with much skepticism. Puzzled by the modern tendency to apply uncritically ways of thinking from outside disciplines, mostly the social sciences, he questioned ‘to what extent do the recent writings help us better understand hagiographic texts, the world these texts describe – or conceal – and the world they really reflect’.9 In sum, the concreteness of the Byzantine past as reflected in hagiography was at risk of being overshadowed by twentieth-century debates; despite their undisputed utility, modern mentalities and techniques should by no means replace the treatment of the Lives as wholes. To that end, he underscored the constant need for new editions followed by ‘a complete, elegant and reliable translation’ and ‘a good commentary’. Clearly, on the one hand, Ševčenko was endorsing the way Rydén and several other European scholars used to work and still work with texts whereas, on the other, he disapproved of the use of hagiography in some American quarters. His concluding paragraphs served again as another reminder that this discipline constantly needs re-assessment. Hagiography

7 I am referring to his ‘New forms of hagiography: Hheroes and saints’, The 17th International Byzantine Congress, Major Papers, Washington, D.C., 1986, 537-554; formulated differently as ‘Byzantine hagiography in the ninth and tenth centuries: literary aspects’, Annales Societatis Litterarum Humaniorum Regiae Upsaliensis (Årsbok 1986), 69-79. 8 SO Debate. Jakov Ljubarskij, ‘Quellenforschung and/or Literary Criticism: narrative structures in Byzantine historical writings’, Symbolae Osloenses 73 (1998), 48-52. 9 Observations on the Study of Byzantine Hagiography in the Last Half-Century or Two Looks Back and One Look Forward (Toronto 1995), 11.

is where we should seek that Other Byzantium, i.e., ‘the Byzantium of flesh and blood, the real world of poor people, of smells, of cruelty and of passion, of greed and of concrete suffering’.10

If that Other Byzantium is what we Byzantinists are still in the process of discovering, the body of texts which hagiography encompasses can yield the most generous harvest. The decade divided by the setting of the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty-first saw the digitalization of the whole series of Acta Sanctorum which is now accessible on the Internet (acta.chadwyck.co.uk); more significantly, it also witnessed the publication of an impressive number of monographs and collective works on Byzantine hagiography. These publications, especially the books, which draw on hagiography by far exceed the number of those that relate to other fields and, judging from others still in preparation, one expects the drive to be equally strong in the years to come. But, I should add, the overwhelming majority are about saints, not about hagiography itself.11

To Ševčenko’s satisfaction, new critical editions and translations, especially of vitae of the Middle period, have been published as monographs or in journals and a few more are under way. We must stress here that the edition of a hagiographical text entails much labour in terms of collecting manuscripts, establishing a stemma codicum and providing a readable translation; the latter might turn out to be a painstaking process given that the language of hagiography is rich and varied, no matter whether it is built upon elaborate, ‘mixed’ or demotic vocabulary. A general impression is that over the last two decades Greek hagiography has moved away from its traditional venue (the Subsidia Hagiographica and the Analecta Bollandiana) to find a home in new or already established series, such as the Eastern Medieval Mediterranean (Brill), Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations, Berliner Byzantinistische Arbeiten, Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs (Ashgate), Byzantina Upsaliensia, Byzantinisches Archiv, Corpus Christianorum, Le monde byzantin and, most recently, Millenium Studies. To be sure, this ‘dispersion’ is a sign that the field has won wider and international acclaim but, at least in some instances, it also betrays a new orientation towards a historical rather than a philological handling of the text. Though publication has for long been delayed, the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae still includes a single hagiographical text in its list, the vita of the Patriarch Ignatios, no doubt because it is regarded as a historical document.12

Besides publishing ‘Lives as wholes’, hagiography with its rich variety of texts has not ceased to draw the attention of historians working on ecclesiastical, urban and cultural history, monasticism, pilgrimage, the role of saints in society and gender studies.13 These remain the main

10 Ibid., 18. 11 This is also the case of the prosopography of saints of the Middle Byzantine period as in the Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit (Berlin) to be consulted jointly with The Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire (641-867). Cf. Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen Zeit. Erste Abteilung (641-867). Prolegomenon (Berlin-New York 1998), 56-114 (enlisting saints of the period). 12 To be edited and translated by A. Smithies with notes by J.M. Duffy in Series Washingtonensis; cf. JÖB 54 (2004), 361. 13 To name a few, more or less, recent monographs in chronological order: R. Morris, Monks and Laymen in Middle Byzantium, 843-1118 (Cambridge 1995); A. Kiousopoulou, Χρόνος καὶ ἡλικίες στὴ βυζαντινὴ κοινωνία. Ἡ κλίμακα τῶν ἡλικιῶν ἀπὸ τὰ ἁγιολογικὰ κείμενα τῆς μέσης ἐποχῆς (7ος-11ος αἰ.) (Athens 1997); Claudia Ludwig, Sonderformen byzantinischer Hagiographie und ihr literarisches Vorbild. Untersuchungen zu den Viten des Äsop, des Philaretos, des Symeon Salos und des Andreas Salos (Frankfurt am Main 1997); Cordula Scholz, Graecia Sacra. Studien zur Kultur des mittelalterlichen Griechenland im Spiegel hagiographischer Quellen (Frankfurt 1997); Claudia Sode, Jerusalem-Konstantinopel-Rom. Die Viten des Michael Synkellos und die Brüder Theodoros und Theophanes Graptoi (Stuttgart 2001); Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: the nature of Christian leadership in an age of transition (Berkeley 2005); H. G. Saradi, Urban Space and Transformation in the Sixth Century: the disintegration of the

subjects to which the ‘genre’ still offers fertile ground for scholarly discussion, regardless of the fact this may be done outside, on the fringe, or within the territory of modern ‘theory’. It is no surprise that ‘modern views’, though predominantly shaping studies on Late Antiquity, have not yet exerted a strong influence on our understanding of Medieval Byzantium, at least as far as methodology and scientific jargon are concerned. Hagiographical texts of the period from the fourth to the seventh century, written in a variety of languages, have amassed a considerable amount of secondary literature, encouraging rather than discouraging a revolutionary or revisionist reading.14 More significantly, discussion, especially as found in the publications of Mark van Uytfanghe, has extended to such questions as the definition and identity of hagiography itself and its constitution as a popular genre or not. This discussion concerns the early period, mostly the Latin domain (from the Acta martyrum to Sulpicius Severus), and has not yet ‘reached’ later centuries; at any rate, they have not so far caused any reaction among Byzantinists.15

We should bear in mind that discussions about the genesis and meaning of hagiography are more permissible if they concern Late Antiquity; this was a formative period in which ‘hagiographic’ discourse was not too tightly attached to the rules of a genre. Besides that, some Lives were signed by eminent authors, mostly Church Fathers, who, in their prefaces or elsewhere, made programmatic statements to orientate their readers towards what they were going to hear or read.16 Reasonably, these works have accumulated a great deal of scholarly attention, extending beyond a simple edition to a theological or cultural interpretation. In more practical terms, by virtue of making attractive reading and being available in annotated editions and translations, Late antique hagiography, however it may be defined, contrasts with the reception of its Medieval successor which, despite recent decisive steps, still seeks serious students to make it ‘reader-friendly’. In spite of these ‘technical’ weaknesses, it is encouraging to note that some of the studies dealing with the subjects we already hinted at either break through the chronological boundaries of the mid-seventh century or completely fall within the medieval period.17 It is a pity that no one refers to the Palaiologan period, which still comes a very poor third and awaits brighter light to be cast by philologists and historians alike.18

Nonetheless, aside from editions, translations and monographs by historians based on Lives of saints, powerful witness to the progress of Byzantine hagiographical studies over the last decade

antique city. Literary Images and Historical Reality (Athens 2005; ch. 4 draws mostly on hagiography). All are signed by female scholars! 14 A latest example is provided by Derek Krueger’s, Writing and Holiness: the practice of authorship in the early Christian East (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2004). 15 ‘Heiligenverehrung II (Hagiographie)’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, vol. 14 (1988), 150-183; ‘L’hagiographie: un “genre” chrétien ou antique tardif ?,’ Analecta Bollandiana 111 (1993), 135-188; ‘L’hagiographie antique tardive: une literature populaire?’, Antiquité Tardive 9 (2001), 201-218. Ideas contesting common conviction that hagiography is a genre have been expressed also by C. Veyrard-Cosme, ‘Hagiographie latine du haut moyen age,’ Lalies 15 (1995), 193-225; and Claudia Rapp, ‘For next to God, you are my salvation’: reflections on the rise of the holy man in late antiquity,’ in The Cult of Saints… (see below n. 22), p. 63-81. 16 See, for instance, the long introduction of Theodoret of Cyrus to his Religious History where he makes the distinction between story-telling and Encomium (§ 9); see Histoire des moines de Syrie, ed. P. Canivet and Alice Leroy-Molinghen, vol. 1, Sources chrétiennes 234 (Paris 1977), 141. 17 These are the books by Kiousopoulou, Morris, Scholz, Sode, and, to some extent, Ludwig (see above n. 13). 18 M. Hinterberger has announced a detailed study of the hagiographical output of the period between 1330 and 1360 and the work of Nikephoros Gregoras, Philotheos of Selymbria and Philotheos Kokkinos; see his ‘Les Vies des saints du XIVe siècle en tant que biographie historique: l’oeuvre de Nicéphore Grégoras’, in Les vies de saints à Byzance (see below n. 21), p. 281, n. 1.

is born by studies on authors and areas that for a long time had met with scholarly contempt, not to say boredom. The monographs on Niketas David Paphlagon by Symeon Paschalides and on Symeon Metaphrastes by Christian Høgel represent the first full-scale studies of these authors. Along with an article by Elisabeth Schiffer on Metaphrastes’ literary method, they have contributed to a re-appraisal of these systematic hagiographers and have shaken previous monolithic views.19 As a literary practice, metaphrasis can now be regarded as a creative re-adaptation of a given author or text to new tastes and mentalities; to be sure, this applies not only to hagiography but to other genres too, for instance historiography. Besides a small collection of seminar papers under the title Metaphrasis,20 we should warmly greet the organization of a colloquium exclusively devoted to hagiography with a large number of participants, including scholars not previously known as hagiography’s devotees. Despite its obvious but inevitable lack of thematic coherence, the volume contains studies based on a sequential reading of vitae and that discuss theoretical problems in connection with particular texts.21 With equal profit one may browse another two collective volumes which, however, have saints, not hagiography, as their focus: the first, dedicated to Peter Brown, includes a few studies which treat texts from a literary perspective; the extensive study of the vitae of Sts Andreas the holy fool and Basil the Younger by Paul Magdalino stands out for its perspicacious analysis.22 Points of a literary interest one may cull also from the second volume pertaining to Medieval Byzantium and later.23

Despite this indisputable progress, we should regard the aforementioned studies and collective volumes as a prolegomenon to more thorough and profound analyses. Much remains to be done in terms of the working methods and techniques of hagiographers, be they anonymous or ‘systematic and professional’, like Niketas David Paphlagon and Symeon Metaphrastes. A student of mine at the University of Ioannina, Ms Photeini Karmire, has worked in this direction and is expected to soon publish her MA thesis on Secularization and Rationalism in the Work of Symeon Metaphrastes. Apart from reconfirming the creative aspect of the latter’s ‘massive enterprise’, this study may shed light on how and why Symeon consciously updated the content of his originals.

Interestingly, reconsideration of neglected authors seems, to some extent, to have gone along with the reconsideration of ‘underrated’ areas of a hagiographical text. The study by Dr Thomas Pratsch of the topoi of Middle Byzantine hagiography may help us to understand the functional character of standard phrases and stereotyped imagery in a text, their underlying goal and, sometimes, their variety from author to author.24 This fresh look at what can be termed ‘repetition

19 S. A. Paschalides, Νικήτας Δαβὶδ Παφλαγών. Τὸ πρόσωπο καὶ τὸ ἔργο του. Συμβολὴ στὴ μελέτη τῆς προσωπογραφίας καὶ τῆς ἁγιολογικῆς γραμματείας τῆς προμεταφραστικῆς περιόδου (Thessalonike 1999); C. Hǿgel, Symeon Metaphrastes. Rewriting and Canonization (Copenhagen 2002); and E. Peyr (Schiffer), ‘Zur Umarbeitung rhetorischer texte durch Symeon Metaphrastes’, JÖB 42 (1992), 143-155. 20 See Metaphrasis: redactions and audiences in Middle Byzantine hagiography, ed. Chr. Hǿgel (Oslo 1996). 21 Les vies de saints à Byzance. Genre littéraire ou biographie historique? Actes du colloque international philologique, Paris, 6-7-8 juin 2002, ed. P. Odorico and P.A. Agapitos (Paris 2004). 22 See The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown, ed. by J. Howard-Johnston and P.A. Hayward (Oxford 1999); the study by P. Magdalino (p. 83-112) is entitled ‘“What we heard in the Lives of the saints we have seen with our own eyes”: the holy man as literary text in tenth-century Constantinople’. 23 The Heroes of the Orthodox Church. The New Saints, 8th-10th c., ed. Eleonora Kountoura-Galake (Athens 2004). 24 Der hagiographische Topos. Griechische Heiligenviten in mittelbyzantinischer Zeit (Berlin 2005). See also N. Delierneux, ‘L’exploitation des « topoi » hagiographiques : du cliché figé à la réalité codée,’ Byzantion 70 (2000), 57-90.

and re-writing’, the key elements of hagiographical prose, may by itself yield sufficient proof that our reading of hagiography has finally been relieved of the burden of ‘suspicion’ and ‘caution’, notions that were central for treating both the emergence of a saint’s cult and his related hagiographical tradition. In the introductory note to his Origines du culte des martyrs, Father Delehaye warned his readers that ‘ces oeuvres, tantôt naïves et spontanées, tantôt rédigées avec quelque recherche, attestent généralement plus de zèle que de talent, laissent trop souvent l’impression d’un effort sincère mais impuissant, et ne nous disent pas, la plupart du temps, ce qu’il importe le plus de savoir’.25 Time cannot erode the validity of this statement, especially if our main concern is still to extract ‘historical knowledge’ and not to ‘read and enjoy a Byzantine text’. Delehaye was himself aware that hagiographical texts, betraying as they did in some cases the pen of serious authors, could admit literary readings, but this was far from a pressing priority in those days.26 What mattered was the quest for an Urtext or the process of formation or falsification of a ‘holy’ tradition pertaining to the cult or veneration of a saint; in other words, for the ‘hagiographical’ concealing or displaying of truth. What matters today is rather the text itself and its context: its hero or heroes, author, language, writing style and models and, finally, the audience it addressed and its underlying message. The days of fact-finding are over: Rubens’ paintings are not worth gazing at only to confirm European society’s former preference for fat women.

It will be some time before medieval hagiography is studied from the perspective of literary and authorial composition in connection with other literary works of a certain period, be they historiography, theological treatises or hymnography. This dialectical method requires a fresh look at texts already known and discussed as well as taking ‘underrated’ texts seriously even though they were formerly perceived as being not literarily attractive at all and of minimal historical value.

Though independently of the historical orientation and critical methodology of Father Delehaye, François Halkin worked within the same saint-centred tradition as his eminent Bollandist predecessor. He compiled manuscript inventories and updated the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca; yet his major contribution to the field is his editing of unpublished texts, an enormous task and a service to us, which extended from piecing together the hagiographical corpus of a particular saint (e.g., Pachomios and John Chrysostom) to editing separate vitae and Encomia usually hiding unnoticed in manuscripts. He followed this practice of publishing membra disiecta chiefly in the last two decades of his life and, although his concise introductory jottings betray contempt for several texts, we must feel no less grateful to him for granting us access to a number of them that a critical eye may now judge more favourably. In other words, what used to pass for a blemish, such as a lack in new or concrete information or excessive verbosity, may be understood in its proper and wider context and eventually evaluated more positively.

A few examples selected from Father Halkin’s publications may illustrate this point. Though written a few years before the restoration of icons (843), the Life of St Nikephoros of Medikion (BHG 2297), a monastic founder in the interim period between the two Iconoclasms, is a text poor in historical data. What is more, in its editor’s words, the anonymous biographer writes ‘en un style prétentieux et boursouflé, où abondent les mots rares, les composés insolites, les formes archaïques ou dialectales, les constructions recherchées, les expressions alambiquées’.27 As a

25 Les origines du culte des martyrs, Subsidia Hagiographica 20 (Brussels 1933), v. 26 See his Les Passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires (Subs. Hag. 13B), and Les légendes hagiographiques (Subs. Hag. 18a), of which chapter III (pp. 57-100) is entitled ‘Le travail des hagiographes’. 27 ‘La Vie de S. Nicéphore, fondateur de Medikion en Bithynie,’ An Boll 58 (1960), 396-430, esp. 398-399.

matter of fact, apart from a five-page proem consisting of rhetorical platitudes, the text is replete with words not recorded in lexica and syntactic anomalies such as the insistent use of the dative replacing the accusative. Why, then, was this rhetorical elaboration necessary for the praise of a contemporary saint who might otherwise have received a historical biography? In part, Nikephoros’ anonymous biographer was less concerned with recording the deeds of the founder of Medikion than he took delight in serving rhetoric itself and manipulating a literary language that, to be sure, he did not know perfectly. Clearly, to quote Rydén’s words, for him ‘style was more important than narrative’. This author was the literary scion of an age seeking new means of expression, whether this was linguistic innovation or the maximalistic application of Menander Rhetor’s patterns.

Halkin was also the editor of an Encomium to Nektarios, patriarch of Constantinople and successor to Gregorios of Nazianzos. This work was signed by a certain Leon of Sicily (BHG 2284), who wrote in high-style Greek and was keen to mingle prose with twelve-syllable verse. The Bollandist Father surmised that sophistication and lack in concrete information must have been the reasons why this Encomium was not published. Indeed, it is a text hard to date and poor in biographical data, but overwhelmed by rhetorical language and imagery. A careful reading may interpret these ‘shortcomings’ differently, as providing insight not into the saint’s but into the hagiographer’s personality and worldview. His main concern was not only to show off his classical erudition but also to wonder why ‘some of our right-minded people treat secular education with repulsion’. In sum, this was a text more about the author’s self, not about its hero’s.28

Unlike Nikephoros of Medikion and the patriarch Nektarios, Thomaïs of Lesbos is a well-studied spousal saint and one with a rich hagiographical dossier consisting of three texts in prose and one in verse. In his late years, Halkin edited, not without omissions and flaws, the longest among those in prose, the version BHG 2455, on the basis of Atheniensis gr. 2104; it is an anonymous rhetorical text thirty pages long, dateable to the twelfth or the thirteenth century, i.e., far from the age of the vita Antonii and the beginnings of the genre. As its author includes no account of new miracles other than an autobiographical account of the cure of his own headache, we can assume that he only minimally contributed to the propagation of St Thomaïs’ cult; yet, beyond that, his version is telling of his personal interest in the literary elaboration of the exceptional life of a female saint. Retaining the main frame-story but not paying much attention to it, he rhetorically explores the positive achievements and virtues of Thomaïs in balance with the negative and nasty character of her ruthless husband. Compared to the other biographers of the saint, he felt that hagiography is an art of figures rather than an art of adventures.29

The examples of Rydén and Kazhdan suffice to show that it requires some time for students of hagiographical texts to come to grips with their literary qualities and ‘social dimension’. It takes time to acknowledge in a positive way that, though ridden with stereotypes and clichés, hagiography is a genre more open to literary invention and creative imagination than, say, historiography or court poetry. The personal touch of the author in achieving an artistic result is more drastic here than in any other branch of Byzantine literature. Hagiography certainly echoes the voice of society and is influenced by contemporary trends; yet, this is done differently, case by case, and not according to literary schools. For instance, five or six vitae of the ninth and tenth centuries are known to have been produced in the monastic milieu of Stoudios, but their style, content and place of action vary considerably.

28 ‘L’éloge du patriarche S. Nectaire par Léon de Sicile (BHG 2284),’ Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 23-24 (1985-1986), 173. 29 Hagiologie byzantine. Textes inédits publiés en grec et traduits en français, Subsidia Hagiographica 71 (Brussels 1986), 185-219.

The aesthetic quality and the meaning of a hagiographical text can be fully appreciated only when questions of authorship, language, style, patronage and historical context have been discussed. To be sure, this discussion may not automatically lead to ranking this or that text among the masterpieces of Byzantine literature, but it serves to reveal aspects such as the reason it was written or the main argument lurking behind the surface narrative. The vita of Theoktiste of Lesbos, which we have already mentioned, provides a good example; through the narrative technique of a story hiding within a story, its author Niketas Magistros not only played with the expectations of his reader, creating an atmosphere of mystery, but also aimed at conveying the message that his heroine is well hidden and long-forgotten. The way the text is structured may suggest that for the medieval man holy life in the desert is likewise forgotten and must be tracked down far from the cares of this world. Granted, if this is not the only interpretation this text might afford, it is one associating its author, heroine and literary technique with a definite social context.

Unlike theology and historiography, hagiography represents a fluid, flexible and ever-changing format. We should remember in this connection Karl Krumbacher’s dictum ‘quot codices, tot recensiones’ which emphasizes both that the same work of hagiography may have a variety of versions, roughly corresponding to the number of manuscripts in which it has been preserved, and that the length of a text may fold and unfold like an accordion. Moreover, metaphrasis in the sense of replacing one word with another may be due to the initiative of a scribe and so after the text has left the hands of its author. Like any rhetorical artifice, a saint’s Life, whether canvassed on a simple frame-story or not, may be subjected to a series of transformations, in practice undertaken not only by the author, but by its reader as well.

Halkin’s lifetime devotion to the editor’s solitary task is a good reminder that we are dealing with a vast corpus of writings, many of which still lie unnoticed and in part available only in nineteenth-century or older editions. To be sure, whether this or that text represents a cult-, a story-, or a character-centred narrative, we, the modern students of saints’ Lives, bear the burden of proof and must argue in favour of their literariness; only then may we proceed to an aesthetic evaluation that may yield a positive or negative verdict. It should once again be emphasized that the purpose of literary interpretation is not to invent but to uncover literary qualities; if a text is relatively lacking in them, so be it. Yet to understand it correctly, we must avoid projecting our contemporary views upon the past and try instead to come closer to a medieval mentality that always considers a vita or an Encomium as written for a holy purpose.

However, in order to achieve this, we must first make a distinction between hagiography and the cult of saints on the one hand, and between hagiography as literature and as ancilla historiae on the other. Among other things, this means that hagiography as a method (one of many) of promoting a saint’s cult is not identical with the cult itself and that its literary value is not dependent upon its historical value. As has been pointed out, many writings about saints seem never to have served any functioning cult and there are many in which the dominant motives for composition are unrelated to any kind of liturgical veneration.30 Moreover, Lives with a rich manuscript tradition (a clear sign of a sizeable readership) and miracle collections which record a great number of beneficiaries are not necessarily indicative of an analogous, at least contemporary, appeal in society and diffusion of a saint’s cult. A recently published study on the cult of saints in Egypt showed that holy men such as the anchorite Antonios and the physician-healers Kyros and Ioannes did not enjoy any particular popularity among the Egyptians before the seventh century.31 There can be little doubt that the same was true with medieval saints whose 30 See Felice Lifschitz, ‘Beyond positivism and genre: “hagiographical” texts as historical narrative’, Viator 25 (1994), 96-97. 31 See Arietta Papaconstantinou, Le culte des saints en Égypte des Byzantins aux Abbasides. L’apport des inscriptions et des papyrus grecs et coptes (Paris 2001), 52-53 and 135-136.

exploits may have been recorded in admirable vitae but whose influence could not radiate beyond the monastery, the family or an influential person.32 Their vitae served as a guide to and a re-confirmation of the monastic or ascetic ideal in general or had a purely political or theological orientation.

In the same vein, it is plausible as a general rule that the more literary a vita is the more we should suspect a saint to have been fictitious or, more accurately, that he was shaped by the hagiographer’s creative imagination. No matter whether he was a humble monk or a Church Father, we Byzantinists have blamed this author for being submissive to rhetorical convention or, worse, a sinister figure prompt to literary manipulation, manoeuvrings and mannerism. He has never received our appraisal, not to say our attention, as an attractive story-teller, a master of style and language, or as challenging established narrative practices. As we know, hagiography was not an art served by big name but mostly by many anonymous, humble and ‘single-work’ (hapax!) authors whose qualities in several instances betray a literary gift and talent. Yet all talent requires good material; in this case, an engaging hero and a colourful setting.

The examples of medieval hagiographical romances (in the wider sense) suffice to show how authorial imagination could be activated if, for example, the life of a saint was set outside an urban context and the bonds with historicity could be kept pretty loose. The aforementioned vitae of Theoktiste and Philaretos are cases in point. By employing the already noted technique of an onion-like frame-story and by choosing a ‘dry and simple’ prologue reminiscent of the book of Job, their authors contested the model of a compact vita, so widely adopted in the age of monastic founders and holy patriarchs. We may infer that they felt free to do so by virtue of their main hero, no matter whether he or she was a real or a fictitious person. And the same must have been true for Elias the Younger and Theodoros of Edessa whose lives were partly or entirely placed in an ‘exotic’ Muslim (or other) East.

The literary study of a hagiographical text in its own right requires no more than a close and attentive reading that uncovers the author’s underlying argument. To repeat, despite their overall utility, databases, historical and cultural analyses, even translations, endanger overlooking the text itself. As in any other work of Byzantine literature, literary analysis should advance beyond mere dating and pinpointing classical reminiscences and literary borrowings. To quote Hans Georg Beck’s words spoken thirty years ago at another International Congress, ‘wir nennen dies leider Literatursgeschichte, obwohl es sich bestfalls als Textgeschichte bezeichnen lässt’.33 Interestingly (though not pointed out by Ševčenko in his aforementioned paper), this distinction between the textual and the literary, embracing as it does the whole domain of Byzantine literary output, has now become a hot issue at least among a new generation of Byzantinists.34

Priority of literary over historical interpretation presupposes a sound background, namely a good knowledge of Greek, an overview of classical and Byzantine literature and, last but not least, a sympathetic eye for Byzantium and its writers. This last feature depends on a general rehabilitation of rhetoric which, starting with classical literature, has positively affected at least the Roman and Late Antique periods. By and large, this modern shift from historicity to rhetoric

32 I have argued that in ‘The function of the holy man in Asia Minor in the Middle Byzantine Period’, in Byzantine Asia Minor (Athens 1998), 151-161. From another perspective this was also emphasized by P. Halsall, Women Bodies, Men’s Souls: sanctity and gender in Byzantium (PhD thesis, Fordham University, New York 1999), 261ff. 33 Byzantistik heute (Berlin-New York 1977), 16; though published as a separate slender volume, this book was based on his conference talk delivered at the 15th International Congress of Byzantine Studies held in Athens in 1976. 34 See the collective volume Pour une ‘nouvelle’ histoire de la littérature byzantine, ed. P. Odorico and P.A. Agapitos (Paris 2002). Also the fine and concise presentation of Byzantine literature by A. Littlewood, in Palgrave Advances in Byzantine History, ed. J. Harris (London 2005), 133-146.

and the gradual collapse of boundaries between hoche and kleine Literatur can also contribute to a good defence and appreciation of hagiographical discourse.

Understandably, in an age witnessing a general decline in numbers for the humanities and with few Byzantinists to go around, these thoughts, not to say requirements, easily risk becoming Spanish castles. At least, it might seem more plausible to ask for comprehensive studies of particular periods like Iconoclasm and Post-Iconoclasm or the Palaiologan period, for monographs on hagiographers belonging to the generations following those of Kyrillos of Scythopolis and Leontios of Neapolis,35 or on literary leit-motivs such as the themes of paradox and satire in saints’ Lives. Granted, we cannot be too demanding while the field is still longing for recognition, among other places, in my own country, and not only among the secular, but among the pious too. And before that, there are some basic things to be done in order to make Byzantine hagiography readable and accessible.

With these and other, more pragmatic, considerations in mind, I launched the idea of a collective handbook on Byzantine hagiography containing chapters written by specialists on the genre. It was a pleasure to see that it promptly met with good reception from both the many who agreed to contribute and the few who had to decline because of other commitments. Among the first, I must certainly mention the late Lennart Rydén who (before his passing) agreed to write a chapter on the hagiography of holy fools. There were, however, good tidings from Ashgate, the publishers who took up what is planned as a two-volume book over 600 pages long in English. Following an introduction where the question of what Byzantine hagiography is will be treated, the first volume will cover periodisation and the hagiography of the periphery, namely South Italy, Palestine, and other lands within or beyond the confines of Byzantium whose languages were not Greek. Periodisation will have the vita Antonii as a starting point and will encompass Late Antiquity (making a distinction between the desert and the rest of the empire), Iconoclasm and post-Iconoclasm, the seemingly poor eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the Palaiologan era. Languages and domains other than Greek to be covered are Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Georgian, Slavic and Syriac. A separate chapter will deal with Lives in Greek translated from Latin.

A second volume will be thematic and divided into four basic sections: a) genres, varieties and forms, b) authors, language and audience, c) hagiography and society, d) the hagiographical view of the world. More precisely, the first and most extensive category will deal with the problem of hagiographical genres, historical martyrdom, collections of miracles, hagiography of the Church Fathers, the saintly emperors, holy fools for Christ, Metaphrastes and the Metaphrastic movement, the Synaxarion and the hagiographical romance; the second section will examine what is central in any hagiographical text, the identity of the author, the interdependent issues of language, style and audience as well as the related problem of the extent to which hagiography was popular theology. The last two sections will address more theoretical problems, widening the parameters of the handbook and integrating aspects of ‘mainstream’ discussion: hagiography as an antidote for doubt, as reflecting economy and society, as opposed to or overlapping with historiography, and as an idiosyncratic view of the course of human life, life in the city, and female sainthood.

The titles alone perhaps reflect both the literary orientation of this handbook and its endeavour to cover, for the first time, subjects which have not so far benefited from an autonomous study and deserve much more extensive treatment in the future. Contributors were asked to emphasize the literary aspect of their subject matter and focus on what we consider the literary masterpieces of the genre as well as on texts that the Byzantines considered ‘authoritative’ (e.g., those with a 35 These are the only Byzantine hagiographers whose work has so far engaged the writing of a monograph; see B. Flusin, Miracle et histoire dans l’oeuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis (Paris 1983); and V. Déroche, Études sur Léontios de Néapolis (Uppsala 1995); and D. Krueger, Symeon the Holy Fool. Leontius’ Life and the Late Antique City (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1996).

rich manuscript tradition or about major holy figures). Yet the aim of this handbook is not to function as a comprehensive or elaborate inventory, chronological or other, of the enormous body of hagiographical texts, this need being largely satisfied by Beck’s Kirche und theologische Literatur and Halkin’s Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca. It is rather to engage with the variety of authors, languages, styles and geographical and social milieus, that produced Byzantine hagiographical literature.

Byzantine Hagiography: a handbook will address both a broader public and the scholarly community of Byzantinists, Western medievalists, historians of religion, etc. It also aspires to draw the attention of those interested in relevant fields and cultures, for instance classics, post-Byzantine orthodoxy, and even modern theorists of narrative. Byzantine hagiography offers considerable scope for scholarly study. Revealing its rich variety and highlighting its literary dimension, so far the most neglected, will certainly be helpful to the overall rehabilitation of the genre and in building bridges, for instance, with other branches of Byzantine literature and other hagiographies. Yet, for the wider promotion of this field more issues can be raised and more desiderata should be fulfilled.

First, it is worth considering the problems that currently hamper the sharing of news about ongoing scholarly activity. It will be very helpful to create a web-page indexing information about new editions of hagiographical texts that are in preparation, thereby supplementing the useful ‘Survey of Translations of Byzantine Saints’ Lives’ (www.doaks.org/translives.html). This work could be undertaken by the Société des Bollandistes and recorded on their website (www.bollandists.be) provided that modern hagiographers prove more communicative and extroverted than their predecessors. Otherwise, Analecta Bollandiana or some other journal could host an annual annotated report on all publications (books, articles and reviews) relating to Byzantine hagiography. This will of course require the joint effort of scholars in different countries, but will serve as a basic point of reference and consultation for those despairing of the ever-increasing flow of entries in the BZ. Finally, a survey of previous bibliography treating specific subjects would also be welcome.36

The art of a hagiographer in a modern sense is basically no different from that of any other philologist or historian. Most problems are common to any Byzantinist: difficulty of interpretation of texts and in locating their social context, risk of a wrong understanding, little interest in cross-cultural approaches and, finally, isolation. Where hagiography mostly differs from other genres is in its dynamic of ‘travelling’ from one text to another text, from language to language, from style to style; in crossing ages and frontiers; and after all, in telling exciting stories about human persons. This terra incognita still calls for rediscovery, admits renewal and imposes re-assessment.

36 Related examples are those by Chr. Hǿgel, ‘Literary aspects of Greek Byzantine hagiography: a bibliographical survey’, Symbolae Osloenses 72 (1997), 164-171, and S. Efthymiadis, ‘Greek Byzantine collections of miracles: a chronological and bibliographical survey,’ Symbolae Osloenses 74 (1999), 195-211.