Hagiography ("Writing about Saints")

    General
  • Hamilton, Bernard. Religion in the Medieval West. London: Arnold, 1986. [On saints, see Chapter 8.]
    Standard Collections of Lives
  • Farmer, David High. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. 3rd. ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. [Gives feast days and references to Acta Sanctorum (AA.SS.), the standard edition of Latin lives.]
  • Voragine, Jacob of. Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend). Theodore Graesse, ed. Leipzig, 1890; repr. Zeller, 1969. [Translated by Caxton; there are several modern English translations.]
    About Hagiography
  • The "Bollandists" are a religious society in Belgium specially dedicated to the gathering and publication of the lives of saints celebrated by the Western Christian community. Bollandist Web Site
  • Knowles, David. "The Bollandists." Great Historical Enterprises. Problems in Monastic History. London: Nelson, 1963. 2-32. [About the Gollandists and their project.]
  • Delehaye, Hippolyte. Les L‚gendes hagiographiques. 4th ed. Subsidia Hagiographica 18. Bruxelles: Soci‚t‚ des Bollandistes, 1955. Translations. Crawford, V.M. The Legends of the Saints. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 1961. Attwater, Donald. The Legends of the Saints. New York: Fordham UP, 1962.
    Early, Influential Saints' Lives
    Saints' lives tend to imitate the patters set by a few early and influential works:
  • Athanasius of Alexandria. The Life of St. Anthony, newly translated and annotated. Robert T. Meyer. Ancient Christian Writers 10. Westminster MD: Newman, 1950. BR60 .A35 no. 10 1978. (Also trans. in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. 2nd Series. Vol. 4, 195-221. Original Greek text in PG 26, 875 ff. Early translation into Latin by Evagrius of Antioch in PL 73, 115 ff., critical edition by G. Garitte, 1939;
  • Sulpicius Severus. Life of St. Martin . Trans. A. Roberts. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. 2nd Series. Vol. 11 (New York, 1894; repr. Grand Rapids: Erdmans, 1980). 3-17. (Latin ed. C. Halm, CSEL 1 [Vienna, 1866]; in PL 20, 95 ff.; new ed. in prep. by CCSL.)
  • Jones, Charles W. Saints Lives and Chronicles in Early England. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1947.
    Studies
  • Lapidge, Michael. "The Saint's Life in Anglo-Saxon England." Godden, Malcolm and Michael Lapidge, ed. The Cambridge companion to Old English literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 243-63.
  • Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate and Timea Szell, ed. Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.
  • McNamara, Jo Ann and John E. Halborg, ed. and transl. Sainted Women of the Dark Ages. Durham NC: Duke UP, 1992.

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