Historical Anecdotes About Dimitry of Rostov: Biographical Legends and Hagiography

Abstract

The article offers an analysis of historical anecdotes, or biographical legends, dedicated to St. Dimitry of Rostov. These texts were discovered in the collection No. 828 in the Rostov Museum. Like most historical legends about outstanding personalities of the 18th century, they differ significantly from modern folklore and literary anecdotes. However, they do possess the features characteristic of the term anecdote as a moralizing unfamiliar story about an amazing act, often with an unexpected ending. A claim to historicity and a connection with historiography were their hallmark. Most of the biographical legends about Dimitry of Rostov, both in the collection No. 828 in the Rostov Museum, and in the Life of St. Dimitry, certainly fit into the historical and cultural context. However, they have another genre-related characteristic: they were not only a part of hagiographic texts (as the first of Dimitry’s biographies), but have also transformed into another genre, becoming a narrative about the miraculous, with parallels in Medieval literature.