Academic literature on the topic 'Christian saints – Bibliography'

Abstract: In the context of renewed interest in sixteenth-century martyrologies, this article considers a lesser known Dutch work, The True Story of Hostes van der Katlyne, by Marten Micron. After dealing with introductory questions of bibliography and authorship, the article proceeds to analyze the work. Micron recounts Hostes’s life leading to his martyrdom and inserts into the narratives theological treatises showing Hostes’s teaching on the human nature of Christ and the Lord’s Supper. Micron uses Scripture to depict Hostes as an exemplary Christian, but the primary focus is on the doctrine Hostes taught. In contrast to Catholic martyrologies, there is no place for post-mortem merits of the Protestant saints. The article notes too that the work has both edificatory and apologetic functions.

Although the academic study of hagiography continues to flourish, the role of comparative methods within the study of sanctity and the saints remains underutilized. Similarly, while much valuable work on saints and sanctity relies on materialist methodologies, issues of critical bibliography particular to the study of hagiography have not received the theoretical attention they deserve. This essay takes up these two underattended approaches to argue for a comparative materialist approach to hagiography. Through a short case study of the Latin Vita of Lutgard of Aywières (1182–1246) written by the Dominican friar Thomas of Cantimpré (c. 1200–1270), I suggest that comparative material research into the textual history of hagiographic literature can provide us with a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of the production of any specific holy figure, as well as the evolving discourses of sanctity and holiness in general. While this suggestion emerges from my own work on medieval hagiography from the Christian Latin West, it resonates with recent arguments by Sara Ritchey and David DiValerio to call for a materially comparative approach to narratives of holy lives in any religious tradition in any time period. Furthermore, I suggest that medieval studies, and in particular medieval manuscript studies, may have much to offer to scholars of sanctity working in later periods and other settings. Offering a view of material textual scholarship as intrinsically comparative, we may expand our theoretical definitions of the comparative and its possibilities within the study of sanctity.

This article describes The Gateway to the Syriac Saints, a database project developed by the Syriac Reference Portal (www.syriaca.org). It is a research tool for the study of Syriac saints and hagiographic texts. The Gateway to the Syriac Saints is a two-volume database: 1) Qadishe and 2) Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica (BHSE). Hagiography, the lives of the saints, is a multiform genre. It contains elements of myth, history, biblical exegesis, romance, and theology. The production of saints’ lives blossomed in late antiquity alongside the growth of the cult of the saints. Scholars have attended to hagiographic traditions in Greek and Latin, but many scholars have yet to discover the richness of Syriac hagiographic literature: the stories, homilies, and hymns on the saints that Christians of the Middle East told and preserved. It is our hope that our database will give scholars and students increased access to these traditions to generate new scholarship. The first volume, Qadishe or “saints” in Syriac, is a digital catalogue of saints or holy persons venerated in the Syriac tradition. Some saints are native to the Syriac-speaking milieu, whereas others come from other linguistic or cultural traditions. Through the translation of their hagiographies and the diffusion of saints’ cults in the late antique world, saints were adopted, “imported,” and appropriated into Syriac religious memory. The second volume, the BHSE, focuses on Syriac hagiographic texts. The BHSE contains the titles of over 1000 Syriac stories, hymns, and homilies on saints. It also includes authors’ or hagiographers’ names, the first and last lines of the texts (in Syriac, English, and French), bibliographic information, and the names of the manuscripts containing these hagiographic works. We have also listed modern and ancient translations of these works. All of the data in the Gateway to the Syriac Saints has been encoded in TEI, and it is fully searchable, linkable, and open.

Несмотря на существование огромнейшей библиографии трудов великого святителя IX в. - святого патриарха Фотия, совсем не много исследователей рассматривают его как филолога и учёного, который, имея опыт прочтения и анализа целого массива древних текстов, делал бы выводы о том, как правильно пользоваться ими, дабы иметь верное их понимание, какими языковедческими навыками в итоге должен обладать читатель и какие филологические приёмы следует использовать для разрешения экзегетических затруднений. В настоящей публикации представлены взгляды св. патриарха Фотия по вопросу лексического значения слова для христианского богослова, толкователя христианских текстов и догматиста. Выявляются выводы святителя о важности филологической эрудиции, морального состояния человека и обладания им особой харизмы для верного понимания и трактовки священных текстов. Значение слова в экзегезе священных текстов показано на примере толкования св. Фотием апории о том, почему в книге Деяний упоминается крещение исключительно во имя Господа Иисуса, вопреки повелению Христа крестить во имя Святой Троицы (Мф. 28, 19). Излагаются филологические взгляды свт. Фотия о причинах многообразия имён и терминов в священных текстах, о значении смысловых оттенков для передачи догматических идей, о качествах подлинного христианского филолога, а также о необходимости филологической подготовки, предваряющей чтение и толкование священных текстов. Despite the existence of a tremendous bibliography on the works of the great saint of the 9th century, the holy patriarch Photius, not a lot of researches that considered him as a philologist and scholar who, having experience in reading and analyzing a whole array of ancient texts, drew conclusions on how to properly use texts for having the right understanding of them, what linguistic skills the reader should possess and what philological techniques should be used in solving exegetical difficulties. This publication presents the views of St. Patriarch Photius on the lexical value of the word for the work of a Christian theologian, interpreter of Christian texts and a dogmatist. The views of St. Photius is about the importance of philological erudition, the moral state of a person and possessing special charisma for a correct understanding and interpretation of sacred texts. The meaning of the word in the exegesis of the sacred texts is shown by the example of the interpretation of St. Photius of the aporia about why the Acts of Apostles refers to baptism exclusively in the name of the Lord Jesus, contrary to the command of Christ to baptize in the name of the Holy Trinity (Matthew 28, 19). The author reveals the philological views of St. Photius on the causes of the variety of names and terms in sacred texts; the value of semantic shades for the transmission of dogmatic ideas; the qualities of a genuine Christian philologist; the need for philological training that precedes the reading and interpretation of sacred texts.