26 Aims and social functions of hagiography The specific way in which themes are represented in saints’ Lives, including monastic mobility, would have been the result of various aims and social functions that the author consciously or unconsciously had in mind, in addition to the literary conventions of the genre which to a degree dictate its form. The main aims and social functions of hagiography may be described as following: hagiography as devotion, as commemoration, as providing exempla, as entertainment and as persuasion.77 Hagiography should first be understood as literature to honour saints. By writing up a biography of a saint, the authors may have hoped to increase devotion to the saint and spread his/her cult.78 Additionally, the writing of the texts themselves could also be considered as an act of piety by the author (and future copyists).79 This act of veneration often included a direct address to the saint for supplication. Hagiography could thus function as a literary vehicle for veneration and for communication to the saints themselves. To a varying degree, saints’ Lives could also be considered historiography: hagiography aimed to record and preserve for the memory of future generations the deeds of the celebrated individuals.80 The degree of historicity, that may result from a desire to commemorate past events, however, greatly varies from Life to Life and may not have been of central concern to the authors. The representation of events involved selection, and interpretations of events would have been coloured by other authorial aims. Moreover, authors were restricted by the information gained from informants and their familiarity with the acts of their subjects. Authors possibly freely added imagined or invented information as well.81 Some hagiographies were written down only after a long oral tradition of passing down stories and legends.82 The particular saints’ Lives studied, however, were written soon after the deaths of the saints. Some contemporaries will have known the saints personally, so the authors could not divert too much from accepted information about the lives of the saints if they wanted to create a credible story. Moreover, the Lives studied all include events and mention individuals known from other sources. It is therefore assumed here that the case studies, to a degree, are broadly reflective of historical reality. 77 This is a non-comprehensive overview, and other aims and social functions may be applicable as well. In this study, less attention is paid for example to potential political aims of hagiographers, which may be relevant in certain cases as well. Another social function that hagiography may have is community-building (which overlaps with hagiography as devotion, as providing exempla and as persuasion), by connecting the celebrated saint to group identity and by providing norms of ideal behaviour, which could contribute to a sense of shared values and thus contribute to a sense of a common identity for a particular community. For hagiography’s contribution to processes of community building, see e.g., Kramer and Novokhatko (2022). 78 This was the understanding of Delehaye of hagiography: ‘writings inspired by religious devotion to the saints and intended to increase that devotion’ (this definition has been critiqued, e.g., by Lifshitz (1994), see footnote 80 below). Delehaye (1962), p. 3. 79 See the chapter on hagiography as devotion in Krueger (2004), pp. 63–93. 80 The desire to record the past and the interpretation of saints’ Lives as historiography has been discussed by scholars working on Greek and Latin saints’ Lives alike, see e.g., Kreiner (2014), p. 3; Tounta (2016), p. 433, note 10; Lifshitz thinks we cannot distinguish between historiography and hagiography at all as separate genres. Lifshitz (1994). 81 For fiction in hagiography, see Messis (2014). 82 E.g., the (probable) varied oral traditions of the popular saint George resulted in many different written versions of his Life.
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