Hagiographic Literature Research Articles

History and art pieces in the film “Alexander Nevsky” by Sergei Eisenstein

The heritage of Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein nowadays is a serious subject for scientific research. In the last two decades the original articles and books of the great director “cleared” of Soviet censorship and abbreviations, have been published, and the study of existing and lost cinematic works of the master continues nowadays. The film “Alexander Nevsky” (1938) was shot under the conditions of the already existing order for the arrest of Eisenstein, but the final approval of the film by Stalin actually suspended the prosecution of the director. The problem of including images of Russian and world painting in the film frame in Eisenstein’s works is practically not studied – his films (unlike, for example, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky) can hardly be regarded as those ones with direct quotations of certain works of pictorial art. Despite this fact, Eisenstein, as it will be shown in this article, repeatedly resorted to various methods of including in his films certain artistic images borrowed from very specific paintings. It is “Alexander Nevsky” and Eisenstein’s last film “Ivan the Terrible” that are examples of cinematic works where such intersections of frame structures with the pieces of world art become especially noticeable when carefully examined. “Alexander Nevsky” is not only a “defense film”. The attempt to analyze this film from this point of view is a way to miss the entire historical, symbolic, and philosophical subtext of the film. “Alexander Nevsky” is a kind of an epic film, shot in the format of a fresco-film and containing numerous allusions not only to the events of Biblical and Russian history and hagiographic literature, but also to works of pictorial art. In the frames of the film (not so clearly at the first glance), the world of paintings by Vasily Vereshchagin and Nicholas Roerich, illustrations to the fairy tales of Ivan Bilibin comes to life again. The frame image also shows clear intersections with paintings by Caravaggio and El Greco – one of Eisenstein’s the most valued masters of fine art.

МОТИВ ПРЕВРАЩЕНИЯ ДЕВУШКИ В МУЖЧИНУ В ФОЛЬКЛОРЕ ОСЕТИН: ТИПОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ

Рассматривается широко распространенный в мировом фольклоре мотив превращения девушки в мужчину. Основная фабула рассматриваемого мотива, имея в национальных вариантах отличительные признаки, в то же время содержит сходные черты: девушка вынуждена выдавать себя за мужчину, совершает различные подвиги, завоевывает славу, ей/ему ставят условие жениться, которое, в конце концов, она/он выполняет, превратившись в мужчину. В деталях, безусловно, национальные варианты сюжета выстраиваются в соответствие с локальными фольклорными традициями. Мотив превращения девушки в мужчину встречается как в сказках, так и в эпических произведениях осетин. Материалом исследования служат сказка «Как девушка превратилась в юношу» и эпическое произведение «Дочь Албега Алыты» из осетинского фольклора. Рассматриваемые сюжеты, хотя сохраняют общую схему мирового типологического мотива, в деталях отличаются друг от друга. Так, в сказке «Как девушка превратилась в юношу» приключения героини начинаются с того, что она отправляется на поиски пропавших отца и брата. В эпическом сказании осетин о нартах «Дочь Албега Алыты» приключения героини, по одним вариантам, начинаются с того, что нарты решили выбрать себе лидера, для чего с каждого нартовского рода на собрание должен был явиться один мужчина. Т. к. у Албега Алыты не осталось наследника, на собрание является его единственная дочь, переодетая в мужское платье. По другим вариантам, нартовский Созрыко, в надежде искоренить весь род Албега Алагаты, потребовал от каждого рода прислать на нартовское ристалище по одному представителю. Дочь Албега принимает вызов, переодевшись в мужскую одежду. В целом же, и сказочные и эпические сюжеты с переодеванием и превращением героини в мужчину сохраняют традиционную структуру рассматриваемого мирового мотива. На основе семиотического анализа мотива превращения героини нартовского эпоса осетин в мужчину, автор статьи приходит к выводу о инициационном характере рассматриваемого сюжета. Во всех национальных сюжетах наличествуют все признаки, характерные для инициационных нарративных текстов. Анализ типологического мотива у разных народов показывает, что превращение девушки в конце инициации в мужчину – аллегория. На самом деле рассматриваемый мотив относится к возрастным инициациям: мальчик (в начале инициационного пути, находясь под опекой матери, не считается мужчиной) – юноша (он отрывается от матери, проходит обряд посвящения в мужчины) – мужчина (после прохождения всех испытаний и женитьбы, он становится полноценным мужчиной).

Jain Image Worship and Hagiographical Literature

Jain Image Worship and Hagiographical Literature

Regional history in literature, narratives and performance in Bengal and Santhal Pargana

This is an attempt to study the regional history of Bengal with the help of literature and narratives and unheard past of Santhal Pargana through narrative performances. Since, the history was written for the ruling and aristocracy class which gives an understanding of the past from above and it hardly talks about the history of lower strata. There is a massive need of history writing pertaining to local areas. The knowledge of the local people is acquired through qualitative research because the indigenous knowledge is transferred from one generation to another and because of the west centric knowledge, the indigenous knowledge is marginalised which will even vanish after sometime. Similar is the situation of the knowledge of spiritual and religious past. The hagiographical literature of this region is considered as an important source to understand the socio- religious outlook. Beneath these literatures, there were several proto socio- religious outlooks that exercised a profound impact on people at lower level. In process to study these , one has to depend upon the oral history available in its surroundings.

Cultivating emotion and the rise of the vernacular: the role of affect in ‘early Hindi-Urdu’ song

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of emotion in relation to the medium of expression. Starting with an investigation as to what feelings are named and foregrounded, the paper looks for shifts in affect as the medium changes from cosmopolitan to vernacular. It studies scenarios of evoking and cultivating emotions to determine to what end they are mobilized and how this stimulates the formation of new emotional communities through songs of ecstasy. This broader frame is approached through case studies of songs in ‘Early Hindi-Urdu’ with earliest evidence datable from the 15th and 16th century. The first section provides analysis of ‘yogi songs’ that feature the affect of satire and spiritual awakening (śānti), exemplified by the fifteenth-century Kabīr. The second section revisits the question of why the vernacular is used for Sufi songs, foregrounding the rhetorical device of familiarization. The example here is Abdul Quddus Gangohī, whose Early Hindi-Urdu poems are sometimes interpreted as translations from Persian. Next follows an analysis of transcreations of Sanskrit scripture in the Braj devotional milieus of the first half of the sixteenth century, foregrounding synaesthetics. Examples here are the songs of intimacy of Harirām Vyās. Songs by that same author also provide evidence for the next section on devotional community formation, complemented with the hagiographical literature of the eighteenth-century Nāgarīdās. The final section analyzes sentiments that run the range from embarrassment and complaint to shameless surrender in adaptations of folk genres (focusing on the theme of ‘the woman at the well’) in diverse Hindu and Sufi contexts.

Изображения распятия в античном искусстве в римский период

The article is devoted to the analysis of the representation of the crucifixion in ancient art. Although ancient historians, philosophers, and writers tell a lot about this execution, only a few images correspond to our rich literary tradition. These are 1) a fresco from the Arieti Tomb, or, as it is sometimes called, the Tomb of Magistrates, in Rome (3rd–1st centuries BC); 2) a graffito from Puteoli (early 2nd century AD); 3) and the Alexamenos graffito (the end of the 2nd — the beginning of the 3rd century AD), found during excavations on the Palatine Hill in Rome. The author also examines some artifacts, the authenticity of which in our time is considered questionable. These are a seal-cylinder with Orpheus hanging on a cross and a bone amulet with the image of a crucified ass-headed figure. The rarity of these representations is possibly due to the fact that the Romans from the very beginning considered this ritual barbaric and applicable only to slaves and non-citizens. This topic could not be used to promote imperial ideology or maintain Roman identity. This explains the nature of the majority of the surviving monuments: either graffiti with offensive overtones, or magic gems. The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 21-011-44180 “The Political Dimension of Early Christian Hagiographic Literature”.

Meditatio mortis meditating on death, philosophy and gender in late antique hagioraphy

According to Socrates, as he is described in Plato?s Phaedo, the definition of a true philosopher is a wise man who is continuously practicing dying and being dead. Already in this life, the philosopher tries to free his soul from the body in order to acquire true knowledge as the soul is progressively becoming detached from the body. Centuries after it was written, Plato?s Phaedo continued to play a role for some early Christian authors, and this article focuses on three instances where Christian women mirror Socrates and/or his definition of philosophy. We find these instances in hagiographical literature from the fourth and fifth centuries at different locations in the Roman Empire - in the Lives of Macrina, Marcella and Syncletica. These texts are all to varying degrees impacted by Platonic philosophy and by the ideal of the male philosopher Socrates. As women mastering philosophy, they widened common cultural expectations for women, revealing how Christian authors in certain contexts ascribed authority to female figures.

Black Lives Matter: A Spiritual Response

Black Lives Matter:A Spiritual Response Michael Battle (bio) A soul of a child that is born and is unchristianed, because of original sin has no likeness of God; he is nought but an image of the fiend and a brand of hell. But as soon as it is christened, it is reformed to the image of God, and through virtue of faith of Holy Kirk suddenly is turned from the likeness of the fiend and made like an angel of heaven. Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, II.6.1 The Black Lives Movement (BLM) paradoxically sheds "light" on negative racial construction in Christian spirituality. Blackness sheds light. This is indeed a paradox and yet throughout Christian spirituality even the benign element of the via negativa could not prevent the onslaught of racism that infected Western Christian spirituality. This onslaught is important to be conscious of since the association of light and whiteness came to be synonymous with white people. Even in my own Anglican tradition, this is so in both the confusion of evangelizing the British Isles (already containing Christian faith) in the 6th century and mistaking Angles for angels (Non Angli, sed Angeli), a play on words attributed to Pope Gregory I for his affinity for fair-haired Anglian, slave children being auctioned in the Roman marketplace. For Pope Gregory, those children may have been born "unchristian," but they seemed innately closer to the kingdom of heaven because they resembled angels in their whiteness. In case the reader may have missed an important fact in my paragraph above, I need to reiterate it here. Anglian children were being sold as slaves in the Roman marketplace. For the 21st century reader this may come as some surprise but in the 6th century world this was commonplace in Greco-Roman occupational rule. What is most surprising, however, is that there was no legal justification to enslave these children on the basis of physiognomical difference as became the case in subsequent centuries to justify the North Atlantic slave trade. It took the epiphany of a pope in power to recognize the contradiction in this phenomenon of an Anglian slave that looked like an angel. I dare say it took a much longer time in the North Atlantic slave trade for a pope to see the contradiction of an African slave. My intention here is not simply to blame [End Page 20] individuals of the past for being racists, but to explore the confusing world-view of Christians in power when it came to the blindness of recognizing the likeness of God in black bodies. In particular in this essay, I look at how the BLM sheds light on how Western Christian spirituality can learn from the particular focus of how indeed black lives matter to God's likeness. I do this by looking at two well-known saints in Christian spirituality, St. Antony of Egypt and Hildegard of Bingen. Both of these saints are instructive in how they point to complex themes of light and darkness in Christian spirituality without being seduced into the evil associations of black people somehow being the image of the fiend and the brand of hell. I write this not because this allusion back to Walter Hilton makes him somehow a racist but to expose the confusing worldview in much of Western Christian spirituality that the Holy Kirk (Church) has often lacked virtue in seeing the likeness of God in black people and have instead structured such likeness primarily for those of European descent. ST. ANTONY OF EGYPT (251–356) In the past I engaged such contradictions between God's likeness and black bodies through the paradox of St. Antony's contest against the devil in the guise of a black boy.2 In holy passion, Antony boldly rebukes the devil's form of a black boy. When hearing this rebuke, the devil immediately flees, cowering at the words of Antony. Thus, from the very beginning of this seminal piece of hagiographical literature, Athanasius depicts Antony with a character so powerful that even demons fear to confront him. It is anachronistic however, to conclude that Antony was a racist because as I...

Muhammad siddique rushdie - the great representative of uzbek prose of the xviii century

Current scientific provides a comprehensive overview of the life and literary heritage of the XVIII century Turkic hagiographic literature, a well known poet and literary writer Muhammad Siddique Rushdie. The article reveals the place and role of Muhammad Siddique Rushdie as a great poet and writer of Uzbek literature of the 18 th century. A comparative analysis of “Tazkirat ul-Awliya” from the Tazkirs of Alisher Navoi is also being conducted. Muhammad Siddique Rushdie is a prominent Sufi poet, Sufi scholar, and translator. Rushdie lived in Eastern Turkestan and the Ferghana Valley. During the life of Rushdie, the sowing of East Turkestan and Zhungaria (Oirat-Kalmyk) of the Qing Empire took place and was replaced by Xinjiang Province (1759). After the war, some Turkic tribes fled to the Ferghana and Badakhshan valleys. Patron Rushdie Khoja Kifakbek was one of the hereditary noblemen of Kashgar, also came to Kokand with his people and lived in the shelter of the Kokand ruler Erdonabiy (1757–1763). Then he went to Beijing. Rushdie (in Arabic, “Rushd” means “The Right Way”) wrote a lot of gazelles and rubyes, but the sofa - a collection of poems has not yet been found. From his legacy of beasts, only the books Tazkirat ul-awliya and Risolai Kadiriya are known. Rushdie made a great contribution to the development of Turkic writing in contrast to the Tazkirs of great thinkers such as Ghazali, Ibn al-Arabi, Jalaluddin Rumi, Ibn Rushd, Imam Rabbani, Sullam, Jami and Navoi, Farididdin Attora are taken as an example. The content of the Tazkir consists of the memoirs of representatives of the Sunni Sheikhs of Sufism.

ПОРТРЕТ РЫБНИЦКОГО РЕБЕ И СПОСОБЫ КОММУНИКАЦИИ С НИМ

The article examines the practices associated with the veneration of the portrait of the Rybnitser Rebbe (Chaim Zanvl Abramovich, 1902–1995) that are currently common among natives of Rybnitsa (now Transnistria). The study is based on field research in Rybnitsa in 2011–2019, as well as on the analysis of hagiographic literature in Yiddish and Hebrew, published in the United States after the death of the rebbe. The ambivalent attitude towards the depiction of the tzaddik is studied in the context of general ideas concerning portraits of rabbis in Hasidism. In many oral narratives, the motive of the constant justification of the practice of referring to the portrait of Chaim Zanvl remains. The image of the rebbe, a portrait printed on canvas, is kept in almost every family that remember the Rybnitser rebbe. The portrait was given to the people of Rybnitsa by the rebbe’s widow, who in the early 2000s collected materials for writing a hagiographic book about her husband. The photograph for the portrait was made in the classical style of rabbinical portraits of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Rebbe is depicted sitting over a holy book, in ritual dresses such as tallit with tefillin on his head, looking straight at the viewer. Despite the fact that it is not customary for Jews to have icons, pictures, etc., the interviews reveal the fact that the portrait of the tzaddik functions precisely like holy image. People talk to the portrait and pray to it; they hang it in a significant place at their homes; they keep it as a card in a wallet or as a small picture on key chains, in cars and on phone screensavers. In addition, for people from Rybnitsa the portrait of Chaim Zanvl becomes an icon of Jewish identity, a tool of social connection within the community and beyond.

St. Demetrios: The Patron Saint of Thessaloniki, The Sources Related to His Life Story and Miracles, Cult and Images

Bu çalışmada Selanik kentinin koruyucu azizi, Aziz Demetrios’un, Bizans hagiografik yazını eşliğinde yaşam öyküsü, mucizeleri, kültü ve tasvirleri ele alınmıştır. Aziz Demetrios Bizans dini yazınında en erken 7. yüzyılda Selanik başpiskoposu Ioannes tarafından yazılan “Aziz Demetrios’un Mucizeleri”nde karşımıza çıkar. Ancak azizin biyografisine dair 9. yüzyıla kadar bilgi yoktur. 9. yüzyıldan itibaren Demetrios’un yaşam öyküsünün üç versiyonu ortaya çıkar. 
 Aziz Demetrios, geleneksel anlatıya göre Selanikli ve senatör sınıfına mensup bir ailenin oğludur. 4. yüzyılın başlarında Roma imparatoru Maksimianus’un emriyle öldürülür. 6. yüzyılda kentin valisi Leontios’un amansız hastalığından mucizevî olarak kurtuluşunu Aziz Demetrios’a atfetmesi sonrasında, Demetrios’un bedeninin gömülü olduğu kabul edilen yere, Leontios’un girişimiyle bir kilise inşa edilir. Yapı 603’ten sonra/649’dan önce, bölgede meydana gelen bir deprem sonrasında yangın geçirir. Ardından orijinal plan şeması korunarak II. Iustinianos’un 688/689 yılları civarındaki kenti ziyareti sırasında yeniden inşa edilir. Yapının ilk evresi, yazılı kaynaklar ve arkeolojik kanıtlara göre 6. yüzyılın başlarını işaret etmektedir. 
 Aziz Demetrios Bizans dönemindeki tasvirlerinde sivil ve asker olmak üzere iki temel tipte temsil edilmiştir. Azizin tasvirleri anıtsal duvar mozaikleri ve resimlerinde, rölyeflerde, ikonalarda, el yazmalarında, sikkelerde, mühürlerde, koutrouvialarda (hacı matarası), enkolpionlarda ve geç dönemde sırlı seramikler üzerinde yer alır. Aziz Demetrios 11. yüzyıldan itibaren, yaygın olarak, asker aziz olarak betimlenmiştir.

Humanismo renascentista e Hagiografia

Este estudo toma como ponto de partida um corpus restrito de produção hagiográfica novilatina no contexto do humanismo português. O seu autor pretende sustentar que o humanismo renascentista europeu exerceu um papel decisivo no nascimento de uma hagiografia renovada, com novas exigências críticas, filológicas e literárias . O contexto europeu de reformas doutrinais e a polémica em torno do culto dos santos foram determinantes na produção literária hagiográfica, mas outros factores foram pertinentes neste processo: certas características do espírito humanista, como o interesse pela reconstituição filológica, a imitação dos modelos literários gregos e latinos e uma certa paixão de ‘antiquário’. Este estudo pretende identificar este influxo humanista na literatura hagiográfica e suas consequências.

Hagiography as Source: Gender and Conversion Narratives in The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church

Drawing on the work of Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, this essay proposes utilizing hagiographies from the The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church, a fifteenth-century Ethiopian collection of saints’ lives, to explore various aspects of conversion. Other scholars employ a similar approach when analyzing hagiographical literature found in medieval Europe. While acknowledging that these texts do not provide details about the historical experience of conversion, they can assist scholars in understanding the conception of conversion in the imagination of the culture that created them. This essay specifically focuses on the role of women in conversion throughout the text and argues that, although men and women were almost equally represented as agents of conversion, a closer examination reveals that their participation remained gendered. Women more frequently converted someone with whom they had a prior relationship, especially a member of their familial network. Significantly, these observations mirror the patterns uncovered by contemporary scholars such as Dana Robert, who notes how women contributed to the spread of Christianity primarily through human relationships. By integrating these representations of conversion from late medieval Ethiopia, scholarship will gain a more robust picture of conversion in Africa more broadly and widen its understanding of world Christianity.

Новый мир, новый человек, новая биография: революционный некролог как жанр агиографической литературы

Новый мир, новый человек, новая биография: революционный некролог как жанр агиографической литературы

Moroccan female saints in written and oral traditions: Lallā Mennāna, patron saint of Larache

ABSTRACT There are few studies on female saints in medieval Islam, due, among other reasons, to the lack of information in primary written sources, in particular hagiographic literature. In these sources, the role attributed to women is secondary compared to that of men, such that some women are mentioned simply because they are the saint’s daughter, sister, or wife. However, we are optimistic that research findings based on oral traditions related to female saints can break such ‘rules’, restoring these female figures to prominence. This study examines one of the most emblematic and peculiar cases of a female saint in northern Morocco, not only because of her image as the ‘patron saint’ of the city of Larache, but also thanks to primary source material from our study of Spanish colonial writings. This research offers a first examination of the written tradition related to Lallā Mennāna compiled during the Spanish Protectorate. The scant data this documentation provides on the oral tradition surrounding her, however, is insufficient to support in-depth research into the subject. In this article, I will discuss the written traditions concerning Maghrebi hagiographies of women to demonstrate the singularity of Lallā Mennāna within the context of the Moroccan hagiographical tradition. I will also study female sainthood in the city of Larache, basing my analysis on the available information on the city’s patron saint, Lallā Mennāna.

Семантическая оппозиция «истина - ложь» в структуре дихотомии «Бог - дьявол» (на материале житийных текстов XV-XVII веков)

By the material of hagiographic literature of the XV-XVII centuries, the article examines the lexemes possessing the meanings “truth” and “lie”, which simultaneously are the means to represent the concepts GOD and DEVIL. The paper aims to reveal the influence of these semantic meanings on the formation of the conceptions of God and Devil. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that the author for the first time provides a comprehensive linguo-axiological analysis of the mentioned semantic opposition as a component of the dichotomy “God - Devil”. Hagiographical works of the XV-XVII centuries served as the research material. The research findings are as follows: the author identifies semantic peculiarities of lexemes - representatives of the concepts GOD and DEVIL, in which the semes “truth” and “lie” are presented either explicitly or implicitly, reveals a mechanism for the formation of the “God - Devil” opposition on the basis of the specific opposition “truth - lie”.

Święte i doczesne… ciało, czyli o somatycznym wymiarze narracji

The article briefly presents a series of problems discussed in the dissertation entitled Свето и пропадљиво. Тело у српској хагиографској књижевности (Holy and Worldly. Body in Serbian Hagiographic Literature) by Smilja Marjanović-Dušanić. Dedicated to a wide professional and non-professional audience, the book in question is a significant scientific work since it refers not only to the historical, but also to the anthropological and culturological description related to the activity of decoding of such essential socio-cultural category like body. Considered as a highly complex phenomenon, body is a sign generated by the realm of various traditions and discourses which render different cultural modes or primary and secondary contexts; it might be also conceived as a distinctive signature of given time-space, community and cultural system. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the dissertation is an extremely interesting and indeed outstanding study of the subject which impresses with its high cognitive value and research rank. What is more, it offers a serious and objective view of the convoluted and multidimensional cultural phenomenon and identity construct.

Sanctity, Orality and Questions about Cultural and Religious Identity in North Morocco

Abstract This study presents some results from my fieldwork dealing with the female saints of the north Moroccan city of Alcazarquivir, which has been carried out between 2012 and 2014 in that village. The connections between orality and writing are more frequent as the educational level of the interviewee is higher; some of these informants raised roader issues regarding the evolution of the customs or the cult of saints. At the same time, it has been possible to observe the dissemination of oral traditions existing in other Moroccan regions that were not gathered in the hagiographical literature. In this study, I will offer some reflections concerning the data collected about a concrete example, that of Lallā ʿĀʾisha al-Khaḍrāʾ, one of the most important saints of Alcazarquivir and main character of a large part of the information compiled about the female saints of this city. Both the oral and written sources used in this study will be provided. Narrations related to Lallā ʿĀʾisha will be analyzed together with additional stories from ethnographic and anthropological sources on Moroccan female saints. The studied narrations highlight the problematic and complex character of Lallā ʿĀʾisha’s historicity, among other things. Finally, the symbolism of color green will be studied since al-Khaḍrāʾ (the Green) is the denomination by which Lallā ʿĀʾisha is known.

Święci władcy Słowian południowych

The problem of the sanctity of rulers, lively discussed in science, especially in the times closer to us, due to the extent of the issue, was only signaled in the introductory part of the article. In the science to date, at least outside the Balkans, this question has been raised rather exceptionally and briefly. It deserves attention, however, since the phenomenon of the cult of the rulers, as far as medieval Slavdom is concerned, occurred in more developed forms (apart from the case of St. Wenceslas in Bohemia) only in Kievan Rus, during the period of Mongolian domination, and (again apart from the isolated and questionable case of Carantania) in two regions of southern Slavdom: to a modest extent in the early Bulgarian state and on a much larger scale in Serbia. The article depicts the development of the cult of the holy rulers in these countries, factors conducive to it, their importance in spiritual life, and political turmoil (especially after the conquest of the Ottoman Turks - the tradition of the Battle of Kosovo), also gives some examples of relevant hagiographic literature, mainly developed by the Serbs.

Агиографическая литература как практическая педагогика православной культуры

Throughout the millennium, the phenomenon of Orthodox pedagogical culture has been developing in Russia. Its theory was formed on the basis of the generalization of the experience of religious and moral development and upbringing of personality, presented, among other things, in hagiographic literature. The purpose of the article is to characterize the dominant ideas of Orthodox pedagogical culture, based on examples from the practice of the lives of saints. The methodological basis of the research was philosophical and anthropological ideas - characteristics of a person as an individual personality; ideas about deterministic influence of axiology on spiritual culture, a variety of which is Orthodox pedagogical culture. As a result of analysis, the author concludes that hagiographic literature has a significant pedagogical potential, as it illustrates, from the point of view of the Orthodox faith, the built up activity of the individual; it illustrates the theoretical provisions and spiritual dominants of the Orthodox pedagogical culture, which reflect its value orientation, standards that serve as a basis for building and verification of the behavior of an Orthodox Christian. From this point of view, hagiographic literature can be called practical pedagogy in Orthodox culture and can be studied in order to fix and reproduce the standard height of the image of a spiritually and morally developed person.