Hagiographical Texts Research Articles

Кому молились о рождении Ивана Грозного: «неизвестные» и новые молитвы прп. Александра Свирского

<p>The idea for this article came about as a result of a combination of the revived veneration of St Alexander of Svirsky, and the study of the manuscript tradition of his Life (16th-19th centuries) and is connected with the attribution of prayers attributed to the Venerable in modern liturgical minyas. A study of over 315 folios of the Vita has shown that there is no evidence of the latter in the main source of information about the Monk. However, in the earliest edition, the Mineinaya, his prayers were preserved in the form in which they were recorded 12 years after his repose. One of them is in a sense key to Russian history and is directly connected with the veneration of the saint by the royal family; it is preserved only in manuscripts and is absent in the modern hagiographic text. The objectives of the study were both to establish the probable sources of the modern prayers attributed to St Alexander and to clarify the manuscript tradition of those prayers that were clearly preserved throughout the centuries in the texts of the Life.</p>

Ökumenisches Kirchenrecht im Zerrbild historiographischer Erzählung

Abstract The Quinisext Council, assembled in Constantinople shortly after 690 to issue a series of more than 100 canons on practical issues and on clerical discipline, was designed as an Ecumenical council, but failed to gain ‘universal’ acceptance in the West. Moving beyond traditional interpretations which saw the conflict over the Quinisext Council largely as one between Emperor Justinian II in Constantinople and the papacy in Rome, the article asks how issues related to the Quinisext Council were received in the churches of the Exarchate of Ravenna and the Lombard, Visigothic, Frankish and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Drawing on accounts in Paulus Diaconus’ ‘History of the Lombards’, the ‘Chronicle of Alfons III’ ( of Asturia ) and Agnellus’ ‘Book of Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna’, it is argued that there must have been a much wider debate about the Quinisext canons on celibacy and on chastity of clerics. As is shown by the analysis of these sources, some of the Quinisext canons on these topics were accepted in the exarchate of Ravenna, the Lombard kingdom of Italy and the Visigothic kingdom in Spain and Southern Gaul around 700; only when attitudes changed profoundly after the mid-eighth century, the acceptance of the council’s decisions by rulers and bishops became subject to polemical narratives in later historiography. By contrast, a case can be made on the basis of synodal decisions, canon law, hagiographical texts, theological treatises and chronicles that in the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the Quinisext canons on clerical marriage were refuted by bishops, who confirmed older positions on the debated issues as transmitted through canon law tradition. Asking what may have caused both the acceptance and rejection of the Council’s decisions and revisiting the development of the papacy’s attitude to the Quinisext canons, it is argued here that juxtapositions and a priori-statements on religious culture in ‘East’ and ‘West’ are not helpful to understand the wide-ranging connectivity and communication that becomes visible from this debate. A Mediterranean perspective that fully embraces the world of the post-Roman ‘West’ including Britain does more justice to the openness of historical processes around 700.

From Text to Relics: The Emergence of the Scribe-Martyr in Late Antique Christianity (Fourth Century–Seventh Century)

Abstract: This paper delves into the conflation of two prominent figures of authority in the early Christian world: the scribe-scholar and the martyr. While previous scholarship has largely examined these figures separately, this study focuses on their association and argues that they were meaningfully combined to establish a new form of textual authority. The motif of the scribe-martyr is explored in a series of Christian texts, from Pseudo-Pionius to John Moschus and late ancient hagiographic texts, tracing its origins to the fourth century. This development emerged from the growing association between the authority of written texts as physical objects and the rise of the cult of saints and their relics. In parallel with Foucault’s concept of the author-function, a distinct Christian “scribe-function” emerged within this context, i.e., discourses of authority, fictitious or historical, involving the individuals who reproduced or corrected texts. The paper posits that the motif of the scribe-martyr was then strategically employed in legal, scholarly, and institutional contexts to express faithfulness, resistance, authorization, and legitimation. As a result, this conflation contributed significantly to the attribution of holiness and authority to texts, sacred places, and religious institutions. Thus, the scribe-martyr, connected to the revered relic-texts, assumed a particularly potent role as a figure of theological authority within late ancient Christianity.

The Bull, the Cave and the Angel

Abstract This article aims to reconsider some previous explanations, and to propose new reflections on the genesis and function of the hagiographical text known as the Apparitio Sancti Michaelis in Monte Gargano. After a brief consideration of the narrative’s environmental setting, the sections of the legend are presented and analysed. The analysis focuses on selected topics: the hagiographer’s intention to convey the idea of a cultic substitution in the Gargano, the hagiographical topos of the animal uncovering the divinity, and the symbolic value of the characters involved. The date of the work’s composition, its intent, and issues of authorship are therefore examined.

The semantics of landscape vocabulary in the Lives of the Assumption Collection

The purpose of the work is to describe the semantics of words nominating parts of the landscape in hagiographic texts that existed in Ancient Russia. The object of the study is words with spatial semantics denoting objects of nature. The subject of the study is the semantics of these lexical units. The material chosen for the analysis is the hagiographic texts included in the Assumption collection. To systematize the material, a classification of landscape vocabulary by semantic groups is proposed. The theoretical part of the work is an analysis of the already available methods of thematic ideography of landscape vocabulary, on the basis of which a classification of landscape vocabulary for the considered language material is proposed. The practical part of the article is devoted to the description of the meanings of words that represent a group of landscape vocabulary. Attention is drawn to the meaning of the word, the frequency of its use, and the connection with the event semantics of texts. The lexical material was obtained by the continuous sampling method. Lexicographic, contextual, and quantitative analyses were used to identify semantics. The article describes the words with their basic meanings that characterize the landscape in the lives of the Assumption collection: elevations: mountain, hill; flat spaces — coincide with open spaces; depressions: deep, ditch, pit, cave (pechera); overgrown areas: boron, lѣs, squabble; open areas: field, deserts; water spaces and land areas next to it: source, rѣka, sea, mouth, brѣg, island. It is noted that the group of landscape vocabulary is few and infrequent in use. The author comes to the conclusion that the semantics of landscape naming in the considered hagiographies includes elements of various linguistic Slavic systems. It is emphasized that the formation of metaphorical meanings in landscape vocabulary occurs under the influence of biblical contexts. The novelty of the research lies in the chosen source of linguistic facts: the hagiographic texts of the Assumption Collection did not become the subject of systematic lexical and semantic analysis. It can also be noted that the analysis of spatial vocabulary based on the material of texts that existed in Ancient Russia was not carried out. The work can be useful in studies of the category of locativity in the Old Russian language, as well as in the study of images of space in Slavic hagiographic texts.

Агиографические источники, связанные с культом святых Медарда и Гильдарда

Introduction. Four hagiographical texts about St. Medard of Soissons, two about Eleutherius of Tournai, and one each about Gildard of Rouen, Evodius of Rouen, Bandarid of Soissons, and Laud of Coutances have survived. All of them are connected with the cult of Sts. Medard and Gildard, who, in later tradition, came to be erroneously called brothers. Methods and materials. The study was carried out on the basis of critical, historicalgenetic and biographical methods. Analysis. The results of the critical analysis of the mentioned monuments allowed us to conclude that all of them differ in the time of their creation and the value of the information reflected in them, describing the life and activity of these holy bishops of the Merovingian era. Several texts were already created at the turn of the 6th – 7th centuries by the famous hagiographer Venantius Fortunatus. They can be important sources both for the reconstruction of the real biography of St. Medard and for the study of the history of the Merovingian period. The other texts were created later (in the Carolingian period and during the Classical Middle Ages), and the information about Medard and his time, added by their authors to the facts already known from Merovingian hagiography, does not represent historical value for the 6th century. Results. On the example of these monuments, it is possible to trace a characteristic change in the function of hagiography, when the Merovingian texts, compiled to glorify the cult of the saint, are replaced by hagiographies, the creation of which is connected with the confirmation of the land claims of the church in the 9th century, with the struggle around the united church of Noyon and Tournai, unfolding in the 11th – 12th centuries, as well as with the development of the myth about the kinship of Medard and Gildard, and so on. The mentioned phenomenon reflects some peculiarities of the appeal to the cults of Merovingian saints in different epochs, in particular the change of the purposes of creating their hagiographies in accordance with the requirements of the time.

The importance of hagiographic texts for studying the realities of medieval Georgia

The importance of hagiographic texts for studying the realities of medieval Georgia

On Dynamics of Language Norms from Classical Period to the 19th Century (Biased on Hagiographic Texts Translated from Greek to Georgian Language)

The paper examines the dynamics of language norms from the classical period to the 19th century, based on the hagiographic texts translated from Greek into Georgian by a prominent Georgian church figure, Euthymius the Athonite. The translations were made between the end of the 10th century and the first half of the 11th century in the monastery of Iviron in Athos, Greece, and they have come down to us through manu-scripts copied both during this period and in the following centuries. They were creat-ed in different geographical spaces and cultural centers, which allows us to follow the evolution of language standardization over the centuries and to evaluate it in a wider philological, religious, and cultural context. In addition to the fascinating temporal and spatial range of the manuscripts, choosing the hagiographic texts as research material was also conditioned by the fact that hagiography, as an important genre of ecclesiastical writing, played a major role in the formation of religious and literary discourse in the Middle Ages. The literary, religious, and cultural weight of the Iviron Monastery of Athos has also been taken into account, which gives great linguistic value to the texts coming from there.

The internal structure of medieval Latin legendaries: a computational analysis

Abstract Since the middle of the 17th century, scholars have been systematically describing numerous medieval manuscripts preserved in libraries and religious institutions that contain hagiographic texts, that is texts recounting the lives of saints. In this article, we apply quantitative tools to the resulting database to consider these codices from a new point of view. As such, we study their internal organization, that is the order in which their texts are arranged. We first present a visualization tool that allows to grasp this structure at a glance. Then, we describe a model to automatically classify manuscripts according to their internal organization, based on a constrained spline regression. The results of this classification task make it possible to identify the manuscripts that have a particular internal organization, called per circulum anni (following the course of the year), and thus to study their properties. Furthermore, they open the possibility to obtain clues regarding the origin of some codices and potential kinship links between them.

La pensée au Moyen Âge dans les textes hagiographiques

Reading a medieval text is immersing yourself in another way of thinking, another way of looking at reality, and everything obviously finds its explanation in religion and, implicitly, in theology. The hagiographical texts of French literature from the Middle Ages (and more precisely, the Sequence of Saint Eulalia and also Life of Saint Alexis), starting from this constant, present two postulates of thought in the Middle Age: on the one hand, the dichotomous relationship between inner and inner beauty (that is, between body and soul) and, on the other hand, the antithesis between faith and philosophy. The first texts of French literature in the Middle Ages, in this sense, come from the biblical and patristic tradition. However, we should not consider this imprint on the literary sphere as a stigma or as a deficiency, but, on the contrary, as a specific way looking at the world, as an emblem of the beginning of modern culture. Thus, we will focus in the following lines on the role that these texts had and on the thinking that reflects from them. And at the same time, we hope to demonstrate, in one way or another, the fact that the Middle Age cannot be categorized only as an age of darkness; this period is, as Jean Verdon notes, between shadows and lights.

Vplyv svätováclavských legiend na hagiografické texty o svätých Borisovi a Glebovi

The Borisogleb and St. Wenceslas cults form the basis of ancient cultural and literary ties between the Czech lands and Kievan Rus. The work solves the question of how far texts of Czech provenance were used in the creation of hagiographic texts about the Kiev sufferers, not only as an ideological model for the justification of the cult, but also as a source of specific topos (common place), adopted in the creation of hagiographic texts. As a result of the comparison of Czech legends about St. Václav with the Narrative about Boris and Gleb is acquaintance that the author (or authors) of the Narrative knew the texts about St. Václav and used them as a template not only for the narrative plan of the story, but also by taking over specific images and sometimes whole passages, but reworked them to the realities of the place and time of the Kiev saints.

St. Cordula und die Kölner Johanniter. Zu Rolle und Funktion weiblicher Heiliger und ihrer Reliquien

St. Cordula and the Cologne Johanniter. On the role and function of female saints and their relics The Hospitaller commandery in Cologne not only had an extraordinarily rich collection of relics, it was almost unique in having relics found on its own grounds. In 1278 and 1327, remains of several saints were collected, which were attributed to the entourage of St Ursula and the 11.000 virgins. These were not particularly high-ranking saints, but the Hospitallers knew how to cleverly use the findings to secure a prominent place for their house in the legend, which was very well known throughout Europe. With the relics, especially those of St Cordula, whose discovery was staged in a hagiographic text, the Hospitaller commandery also succeeded in placing itself in Cologneʼs very dense sacral landscape and establishing connections far beyond the city and the Rhineland. Especially in difficult situations, the finding of the relics offered members of the order and the social environment of the commandery’s self-assurance, as they confirmed the promise of salvation. Last but not least, pilgrims and donations brought economic benefits. This article demonstrates that a particularly high-ranking relic or saint was not necessarily needed to be successful. Falling back on those who fit into a narrative that offered different points of contact could be just as advantageous in securing support and gaining influence.

Bankers and Usurers in the Early Byzantine Hagiographical Texts

The text discusses accounts from early Byzantine hagiographical texts depicting the activities of bankers and usurers in the period from the early 5th to the second decade of the 7th century. Texts by Palladius of Helenopolis, John of Ephesus, John Moschos, and Leontius of Neapolis are analysed. In the collated material we find relatively little information depicting the activities of bankers and usurers. Neither do we find any further details of the conditions under which money loans were granted. However, we note the statement that the cancellation of a loan, even if forced by circumstances (even if due to the intervention of a holy man), is charitable in nature and the ‘lost’ capital by the creditor in such a case bears the characteristics of a merciful deed. Most of the analysed accounts are presented in a somewhat fanciful way, which, however, should not question the information conveyed by the narrative. Two aspects of the analysed accounts are most significant. Firstly, the absence of any criticism of the Alexandrian Church deriving, even if not high, some profits (interest) from monetary loans. Secondly, in the accounts analysed we note a peculiar narrative, or in fact a new way of reasoning, by means of which the authors wanted to reach their audience, the potential benefactors. Thus, we become acquainted with somewhat naïve tales of how the benefits of granting a non-refundable loan to the needy, not only to the poor but also to merchants who traded on the high seas (?) would quite quickly return to the merciful benefactor, in a tangible material benefit, while he was still alive. We do not find such an argument in the patristic texts of the 4th and 5th centuries, where accounts of this kind merely refer to a prediction or even a guarantee of ‘heavenly interest’ that could tip the scales in favour of the merciful donor (creditor) at the Last Judgement.

Sustainable Governance in Historical Perspective: Impact of The Warrior Saints' Influence on Contemporary Policy for Sustainability

Objective: The article deals with the cultural, artistic, and historical aspects of the emergence of the Old Russian Warrior Saints cult in Kyivan Rus and their profound impact on sustainable development policies throughout the 10th to 13th centuries. Methods: Special attention is paid to the veneration of Warrior Saints in Russian culture as defenders and guardians of the Old Russian state as well as patrons of Old Russian princes. The authors analyze the hagiographic texts common in Russia over the 10th–13th centuries as sources of acts of the holy Warrior Martyrs. Results: Works of ancient Russian art depicting Warrior Saints are examined, including those on princely seals, which have a patronal nature and personify the rulers of the Old Russian state. The results of this research reveal a compelling connection between the veneration of Warrior Saints, princely unity, and the development of sustainable governance policies. Conclusion: Authors conlcude the historical significance of Old Russian Warrior Saints in the context of sustainable development policies and political cohesion during the 10th to 13th centuries in Rus. The study reveals that the veneration of saints like Boris and Gleb, characterized by their commitment to non-violence and unity, exerted a profound influence on the socio-political landscape. This research will be a valuable source for policymakers seeking to address contemporary challenges in the realm of sustainable development and peacekeeping.

Enslaved Christians, Jewish owners in Visigothic hagiography, theology and law

The Iberian Passio Mantii is a rare case of a late antique martyrdom account in which the protagonist, Mantius, is described as the Christian slave of Jewish owners who persecute him to death for not converting to Judaism. This unusual hagiographical text chimes with extensive legislation produced in Visigothic Iberia on the very question of Jewish ownership of Christian slaves. Placing these sources together and exploring their theological background allows us first to understand better the changes Visigothic legislators made to a long legal tradition of prohibiting both the conversion and ownership of Christian slaves by Jews. But it also allows us to go beyond the assumption that the sources reflect an active social practice and ask whether interest in Jews exercising power over Christians was part of the development of a discourse of Jewish danger that was itself fundamental to the elaboration of more clearly defined religious identities in the seventh century.

ГЛАГОЛ В ЛЕКСИЧЕСКОЙ СТРУКТУРЕ ЖИТИЙНОГО ТЕКСТА: ПАРАДИГМАТИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ

In the article, using an integrated approach to the analysis of linguistic facts, a fragment of the lexical structure of a hagiographic text formed by verbal units is characterized in a paradigmatic aspect. The material for the study was the lives of the synodal edition, included in the May cycle of the Four minas. It is shown that the lexical structure of the hagiographic text is formed by verbs of different lexico-semantic groups, commonality and differences in the use of verbal vocabulary due to the type of monastic or martyr asceticism are revealed. It is established that the systematic organization of verbs and stable verb-nominal combinations within the boundaries of the hagiographic text is provided by their synonymous, antonymic and hyper-hyponymic relations, the specifics of the implementation of which depends on the type of life.

APOCRYPHAL AND HAGIOGRAPHIC LEGENDS IN THE COLLECTION "LEGENDS OF OLD KYIV" BY NATALENA KOROLEVA: AN INTERTEXTUAL ASPECT

The article explores the hagiographic narratives in the collection "Legends of Old Kyiv" by Natalena Koroleva in the context of intertextuality. It reveals the characteristics and literary functions of intertextual connections in the creation of new artistic compositions. The focus is on the artistic richness of apocryphal and hagiographic legends in the collection. The hagiographies of saints interpreted by the writer are described as being woven into new narratives closely intertwined with the Bible, the Gospels, the history of Kyiv Rus, the Kyiv-Pechersk Monastery and one of the most well-known literary sources, such as "The Kyiv-Pechersk Paterikon" (narratives about the lives of monks). The focus is on the Gospel apocrypha, as well as on the narratives that are included in "The Kyiv-Pechersk Paterikon" dating back to the establishment of the Kyiv Monastery by Theodosius.
 Natalena Koroleva skillfully synthesizes well-known narratives about the deeds of canonized and non-canonized saints and righteous individuals creating new characters that focus on the moral values of humanity. The author emphasizes the semantics of her writing, the significance and the symbolic meaning of her intention. In the apocryphal legends of the collection "Legends of Old Kyiv" by Natalena Koroleva, there are both genetic connections and a new interpretation and methodology for reading the hagiographies of saints.
 The article specifically emphasizes the intertextual aspect not as a mere retelling of text within a text but as primary texts serve as the starting aesthetic point for the creation of new metatexts.
 A comparative characterization and analysis are offered of the author's interpretations of apocryphal narratives with the original versions of such saints, for example, the Gospel Marys, Saint Michael, Apostle Andrew, Alipy the Iconographer, his disciple Gregory, abbots Theodosius, Anthony and others. In the course of our research, the relevance of intertextual insertions and their aesthetic enrichment when dealing with apocryphal and hagiographic texts is highlighted.

Семантика и функции эмотивной лексики в региональном житийном тексте

The article examines the peculiarities of emotive vocabulary functioning in the hagiographic texts of the 17 th –18 th centuries based on the material of short and lengthy editions of the Life of the locally venerable Saint Paisius of Uglich. The research paper aims to describe the semantics of emotives and identify the features of their functions implementation in the regional text. Whilst analyzing the lexical meaning of linguistic units, special attention was paid to additional senses that are actualized in the lexical structure of the text. Thus, contextual analysis made it possible to distinguish between close synonyms with the meanings of "joy" – "fun" and "sadness" – "sorrow" through the establishment of a hierarchy of antonymic oppositions: "joy" – "sadness" as related to the divine, always socially approved feelings experienced by the subject within himself, and "fun" – "sorrow" as often having external manifestations associated with everyday life, not always socially approved emotional experiences. The main linguistic functions of emotives are characterological, which is found in the description of emotional experiences of characters, and text-forming, explicated through the correlation of emotives that denote dominant emotions in the text of the function. The connection of the emotives used in the Life with a certain territory is noted to be indirect, as the realization of plot-forming and ideological functions that allow recreating a special cultural code, understandable and recognizable by the reader.

РОЛЬ И МЕСТО ЧУДЕС В ОСМЫСЛЕНИИ СОВРЕМЕННИКАМИ СОБЫТИЙ СМУТНОГО ВРЕМЕНИ В РОССИИ.

The article analyzes the concepts of miracle and the miraculous and the role they played in the ways people made sense of the events of the Time of Troubles in early 17th-century Russia. Many sources of different types (chronographs, “literary” works and hagiographic texts) from this period have been preserved, which allow us to assume that the results of their analysis from a selected research perspective are representative. The perception and description of miracles in these sources show an amazing combination of the supernatural and the real, which actually are indistinguishable and equally trustable both for the authors and for the readers. Historical persons and ordinary people who happened to experience all the hardships of the Time of Troubles were witnesses and participants in miracles. The Russians’ need for miracles and miraculous things grew at turning points and critical moments of history, when hope for human will and action alone was not enough. In such circumstances, miracles acquired the character of unusual events vividly imprinted in the memories of "eyewitnesses." Later on, after the acute moments passed, the same events often received different, more realistic interpretations. The article compares descriptions of miracles in the works from the Time of Troubles and those of the 1620s - 1630s, showing how challenges faced by their authors changed and so did their narrative strategies.

POETICS OF THE LIFE OF ST. EPHRAIM OF TORZHOK

According to legend, the Venerable Ephraim of Torzhok was an 11th century ascetic, and the “ancient scripture” about him has been lost. The history of the saint was written anew: a Brief edition of his Life was created in the last quarter of the 16th century, an Extensive one — in the second quarter of the 17th century. The subject of research of this article is the poetics of the Life of St. Ephraim of Torzhok (mainly based on the material of the rhetorically adorned Extensive edition). The text’s highly complex structure is examined and attributed to the strong dependence of the Extensive edition on the Brief edition and to the special tasks that the compiler set for himself. The question of the place of the Life in the history of the hagiographic genre, and the ways in which traditional formulas and motifs, and biblical quotations work in the text is investigated along with the fragments of the composition marked by rhetorical means. The Life was probably created not so much with a focus on the hagiographic canon, but in the genre-appropriate language: the compiler of the Extensive edition approached the traditional elements of the hagiographic genre quite freely. One of the main events of the Life, both in the Brief and Extensive versions, was specifically the creation of the text about the saint. The fragmentary nature of the Life, which combines heterogeneous elements characteristic of folk and book lives, allows us to observe the process of formation of a new type of hagiographic text that took place in the 17th century.