Medieval Hagiography

An Anthology

Thomas Head

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317325147
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This collection presents-through the medium of translated sources-a comprehensive guide to the development of hagiography and the cult of the saints in western Christendom during the middle ages. It provides an unparalleled resource for the study of the ideals of sanctity and the practice of religion in the medieval west. Intended for the classroom, for the medieval scholar who wishes to explore sources in unfamiliar languages, and for the general reader fascinated by the saints, this collection provides the reader a chance to explore in depth a full range of writings about the saints (the term hagiography is derived from Greek roots: hagios=holy and graphe=writing). The thirty-six chapters contain sources either in their entirety or in selections of substantial length. The great majority of the texts have never previously appeared in English translation. Those which have appeared in earlier translation, are here presented in versions based on significant new textual and historical scholarship which makes them significant improvements on the earlier versions. All the translations are accompanied by introductions, notes, and suggestions for further reading in order to help guide the reader. The first selections date to the fourth century, when the ideals of Christian sanctity were evolving to meet the demands of a world in which Christianity was an accepted religion and when the public veneration of relics was growing greatly in scope. The last selections date to the period immediately prior to the Reformation, a period in which the traditional concept of sanctity and acceptability of de cult of relics was being questioned. In addition to numerous works from the clerical languages of Latin and Greek, the selections include translations from Romance, Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic vernacular languages, s well as Hebrew texts concerning the martyrdom of Jews at the hands of Christians. Originating in lands from Iceland to Hungary and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, they are taken from a full range of the many genres which constituted hagiography: lives of the saints, collections of miracle stories, accounts of the discovery or movement of relics, liturgical books, visions, canonization inquests, and even heresy trials.

CHAPTER 1
ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA, LIFE OF ST. ANTONY OF EGYPT

Translated by David Brakke

INTRODUCTION

Athanasius was bishop of Alexandria, the leading city of late ancient Egypt, from 328 until his death in 373. His career coincided with one of the most significant and tumultuous periods in the history of Christianity. During Athanasius’s youth Christianity went from being an illegal, persecuted sect to the favored religion of the Roman emperor Constantine. Although from their earliest days Christians had claimed to form one Church throughout the world, they actually had existed in multiple diverse groups. Now with the support of the emperor, Christian leaders could work to form one international Church that would truly be catholic or “universal.” Athanasius was a vigorous participant in this effort, and his most famous work, the Life of St. Antony, was intended to define the rightful place of the superior monk in Christian thought and practice. The Life was translated from its original Greek into several other languages, including Latin. Countless later Christians used Antony’s Life as a model for their own asceticism, and the biography became the primary model for later Christian hagiographers.

Antony was born around 250 to a prosperous family in one of the villages that lay along the Nile River south of Alexandria. Orphaned as a young man, Antony devoted his life to service and contemplation of God through a program of “discipline” (in Greek, askesis, and hence “asceticism”), consisting of celibacy, poverty, fasting, and the like. For years Antony was just one of several such “zealous ones” who lived in and around Egyptian towns; but eventually he entered a deserted military fort, and, supported with food from visitors, he seldom saw or was seen by anyone for nearly 20 years. This spectacular feat made Antony famous, and he soon inspired numerous imitators, who abandoned city life for devotion to God in the desert. Ordinary Christians greatly admired these “solitary ones” (in Greek, monachoi, and hence “monks”), sometimes to the annoyance of their local priests and bishops. As more and more people came to Antony for spiritual guidance or supernatural aid (such as healings), he retreated to a remote oasis deep in the desert (“the inner mountain”), where he remained (except for occasional trips to “the world”) until his death around 356.

Also in 356 the imperial government for the third time forced Bishop Athanasius to relinquish control of the churches in Alexandria. Athanasius had troubled the emperors for decades due to his steadfast opposition to a form of theology called (somewhat misleadingly) “Arianism,” which taught that the Son of God who became incarnate in Jesus Christ was divine, but less divine than God the Father. Athanasius insisted on a much stronger interpretation of a creed that had been adopted at the Council of Nicea in 325, which declared that the Son was “of one substance (homoousios) with the Father.” To Athanasius’s mind, the Son was fully God, just as divine and eternal as the Father, although together the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit formed one God. Only through the incarnation of the fully divine Son or Word (Logos) of God in a human body could humanity be saved from sin and death. The Roman emperors wanted Athanasius to compromise with his theological opponents, but he never would, so the government repeatedly sent Athanasius into exile away from Alexandria. In February of 356 soldiers tried to arrest Athanasius, but he escaped into the desert with the help of supportive monks. He spent the next six years hiding from the police and writing numerous works in defense of his views, including the Life of St. Antony.

Athanasius wrote the Life, then, at a time of personal crisis: he designed his picture of Antony so that the recently deceased famous monk would exemplify Athanasius’s views on the ascetic life, the place of monks in the church, and salvation through the Son of God. How did Athanasius get his information about Antony? In the preface, Athanasius states that he saw Antony “often,” but this is a lie, designed to lend his account great authority: he probably met Antony only once (see Chapters 69–71). (Athanasius was a brilliant polemicist who did not hesitate to bend the truth if he thought it would serve the cause of “orthodoxy.”) Athanasius refers also to what he learned from another source, a person “who followed him (Antony) for no short period of time and who poured water on his hand,” an allusion to 2 Kings 3:11 and the relationship between the Israelite prophet Elijah (Antony) and his disciple Elisha (the unnamed person). Some scholars have guessed that this anonymous follower of Antony may be Bishop Serapion of Thmuis, an ally of Athanasius and a former monastic leader in his own right: Serapion is later described as being present when Antony had a vision (Chapter 82), and he is named along with Athanasius as a recipient of a “sheepskin” from the dying Antony (Chapter 91), another allusion to Elijah and Elisha (see 2 Kings 2:12–14). It is likely, then, that Athanasius learned about the basic events of Antony’s career and gathered most of the stories he tells from Serapion and other monks who had known Antony. But many episodes and probably all of Antony’s speeches must have been invented by Athanasius in order to create his picture of the ideal monk.

The Life of St. Antony was something new for Christians: the first extended biography of a holy person or “saint.” To be sure, earlier Christians had written books about important persons in the faith: these include the Gospels about Jesus, popular novels about the journeys of the apostles (the “apocryphal acts,” such as the Acts of Thomas), accounts of the trials and execution of martyrs, and a short biography of the Christian scholar Origen that Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea included in his Ecclesiastical History. Athanasius borrowed from these works and from biographies of “pagan” holy men to do something innovative: tell the story of an ordinary Christian who, through the hard work of ascetic discipline, achieves such holiness that he can do miraculous deeds and provide spiritual guidance to others. The result was a new form of Christian literature that was imitated and revised for centuries.

The Antony that we find in Athanasius’s Life is the model of what a bishop thought a Christian monk should be. Indeed, Athanasius presents his work as a response to a request from “foreign monks” for information about Antony so that they can imitate him. As Bishop Athanasius presents it, Antony’s decision to become an ascetic is prompted not by a private call from God, but by the public reading of the Gospel in church. Antony creates his virtue by resisting temptations from the devil, but Athanasius attributes this success to the victory that Christ won over evil and the flesh in his incarnation, death, and resurrection. Antony achieves such a level of virtue and purity of soul that he is able to benefit others in miraculous ways, such as healings and exorcisms, and in less spectacular fashion, through spiritual advice and exhortation. Athanasius describes numerous miracles in great detail, but Antony never claims to perform such deeds himself: only Christ can heal the sick, and so they should give thanks to him, not to Antony. Despite his superior virtue, Antony remains obedient to the organized Church and submissive to priests and bishops. He refuses to have any dealings with “heretics” and “schismatics” and even appears briefly in Alexandria to show support for Athanasius’s theology and to condemn that of the Arians. When he dies, Antony forbids the establishment of any cult devoted to his own corpse, which he commands to be buried in a secret location. In this way, Athanasius creates a significant, but carefully limited, role for the charismatic monk within the wider Christian community made up of bishops, priests, and ordinary lay people. Salvation depends not on contact with Antony, but on living a Christian life as Antony did.

Modern readers of the Life find most striking the prominent role of demons, who oppose Antony at every turn. Ancient people believed that there were numerous supernatural beings that were less divine than God, but more powerful than human beings. Demons (in Greek, daemon) could be good or bad; they were invisible and everywhere (like germs to us), responsible for everything from illnesses to good weather. Although ancient Christians believed in angels (which were good), they considered all demons to be evil allies of Satan, a fallen angel. The gospels in the New Testament present Jesus as coming to earth to defeat the devil and his demons by resisting their temptations and casting them out of people. Egyptians believed that demons populated the arid desert, and so the decision of monks like Antony to move into the desert represented an attempt to reclaim for God territory that had belonged to the devil.

In the life of the ascetic, demons form the resistance that he must overcome in order to shape himself into a virtuous person. If the goal of the Christian life is to ascend to God and to reach heaven, the demons try to prevent the monk from reaching this goal (Chapters 65–66). Demons represent the ambiguity of temptation: although it originates from external forces of evil, it nonetheless derives also from the monk’s internal fears and insecurities. Demons not only tempt Antony, but they also try to frighten him and so to undermine his confidence in God; Antony, however, remains serene and un-troubled, secure in his faith in Christ. As Athanasius presents it, the monk’s discipline replaces the struggle of the martyrs in the post-Constantinian era (Chapter 47): just as the martyrs had to resist the power of the Roman state, so too the monks must resist the power of the demonic hosts.

The accuracy of Athanasius’s presentation of Antony is open to question because little evidence remains with which we can compare Athanasius’s version of events. Seven letters that Antony wrote to his followers do survive: although their teachings are similar to those in the Life in several respects, there are also striking differences. While Athanasius presents Antony as a simple, uneducated man whose ascetic life is a struggle against demons, the Antony of the letters is an educated, philosophically astute teacher who sees the ascetic life as a means of transforming the self into a higher spiritual state. Demons play a much more subtle role. These letters reveal that Athanasius did not hesitate to present Antony as he wanted him to be, not necessarily as he really was.

Still, the Life of St. Antony is a brilliant work whose influence in Christian history and thought cannot be overestimated. Its story of a simple Christian who achieved great holiness with God’s help inspired numerous ancient and medieval men and women to serve God in monasticism. Great artists have attempted to capture the drama of Antony’s struggles with demons. Most important for the theme of this collection, Athanasius’s engaging narrative became one of the most influential examples of how to write the Life of a saint for all later hagiographers in Western as well as Eastern Christendom.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

The following translation of Athanasius’s Life of St. Antony (Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca, no. 140) is based on the text provided in Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine, ed. and trans. G.J.M. Bartelink, Sources chrétiennes 400 (Paris, 1994), which marks a significant improvement on all previous editions. For the sake of brevity, many passages are provided in summary form only, marked by square brackets. An excellent translation of the entire Life is provided by Robert C. Gregg in Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, 1980). Like all previous translations, however, Gregg’s is based on an unsatisfactory edition of the Greek text.

An outstanding study of Antony’s life and thought, complete with English translations of his letters, is Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint, Studies in Antiquity and Christianity (Minneapolis, 1995). Athanasius’s presentation of Antony in the Life and his wider ascetic teachings are studied in David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 1995), which has been reprinted as Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore, 1998). On the spirituality of the Egyptian desert monks, see the relevant chapters in Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Lectures on the History of Religions, new series 13 (New York, 1988).

ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA, LIFE OF ST. ANTONY OF EGYPT

Letter of Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, to the Monks in Foreign Places Concerning the Life of the Blessed Antony the Great

(Preface.) It is a good competition that you have begun with the monks in Egypt by seeking either to equal or surpass them in your discipline in virtue.¹ For at last there are monasteries among you as well, and the reputation of the [Egyptian] monks is the basis of their organization: therefore, this plan [of yours] deserves praise; may God bring it to completion through your prayers.

Inasmuch as you have asked me about the blessed Antony’s way of life and want to learn about how he began the discipline, who he was before this, what the end of his life was like, and if the things that have been said about him are true, so that you might guide yourselves by imitation of him, I have received your charge with great enthusiasm. Indeed, for me as well it is of great profit just to remember Antony, and I know that once you have heard about him, in addition to admiring the man, you too will want to imitate his determination, since monks have in Antony’s lifestyle a sufficient pattern for their discipline.

Therefore, do not disbelieve what you have heard from those who have brought reports of him; rather, think that you have heard only a little from them, for even they scarcely can have completely related such great matters. And since I too, urged by you, am telling you what I can by letter, I am sending only a few of the things that I have remembered about him. You for your part should not stop questioning those persons who sail from here, for it is likely that after each person tells what he knows, the account concerning him will still hardly do him justice. Therefore, when I received your letter, I decided to send for certain monks, particularly those who had spent the most time with him, in the hope that I could learn more and send you the fullest possible account. But since the sailing season was coming to an end and the letter carrier was ready to go, I hurried to write to your piety what I know—for I saw him often—and what I was able to learn from the man who followed Antony no short period of time and who poured water on his hand [see 2 Kings 3:11].² I have in every place kept my mind on the truth, so that no one, having heard too much, would disbelieve it, or, having learned less than necessary, would look down on the man.

(1.) Antony was an Egyptian by birth, and his parents were well-born and possessed considerable wealth. Since they were Christians, he was raised in a Christian manner. As a child, he lived with his parents and was familiar with nothing other than them and their house. When he grew to become a boy and became older, he did not put up with learning letters because he wanted to be removed even from the companionship of children. It was his complete desire, as it is written, to live in his house as an unformed person [see Gen 25:27]. He would go to church with his parents. As a boy, he was not lazy, nor did he become rude as he got older. Rather, he was obedient to his parents, and by paying attention to the readings [see 1 Tim 4:13], he preserved in himself what was beneficial in them. Although as a boy he lived in moderate wealth, he did not trouble his parents for diverse and expensive foods, nor did he seek such pleasures. He was happy merely with whatever he found and asked for nothing more.

(2.) After the death of his parents, he was left alone with one small sister; he was about eighteen or twenty, and it was his responsibility to care for the house and his sister. Not six months after his parents’ death, he was going to church as usual, and he was thinking to himself and considering all this: how the apostles abandoned everything and followed the Savior [see Mt 4:20; 19:27]; how the people in Acts [of the Apostles] sold their possessions and brought the proceeds and laid them at the feet of the apostles for distribution to the needy [see Acts 4:35–37]; and how such a great hope was stored up for these people in heaven [see Col 1:5]. Considering these things, he entered the church, and it happened that just then the Gospel was being read, and he heard the Lord saying to the rich man, If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all your possessions, and give the proceeds to the poor, and come, follow me, and you will have treasure in heaven [Mt 19:21]. And Antony, as if the remembrance of the saints had been placed in him by God and as if the readings had been made on his account, left the church immediately and gave to the villagers the possessions he had received from his ancestors—three hunderd arourae of fertile and very beautiful land—so that they would no longer trouble him and his sister.³ He sold all their other movable possessions, collecting a sizable sum of money, and gave it to the poor, although he kept a little for his sister’s sake.

(3.) But when he again entered the church and heard in the Gospel the Lord saying, Do not worry about tomorrow [Mt 6:34], he could not stay: he went out and gave even that [little money remaining] to the common people. When he had delivered his sister to known and faithful virgins in order to be brought up for virginity, he at last devoted himself to the discipline outside the house, attending to himself and guiding himself with patience. For there were not yet so many monasteries in Egypt, and no monk knew the great desert; rather, each of those who wanted to attend to himself practiced the discipline alone, not far from his own village. Now, at this time there was an old man in the neighboring village who had practiced the solitary life from his youth: when Antony saw him, he imitated him in virtue [see Gal 4:18]. At first he too began by remaining in the places around the village; then if he heard of some zealous one somewhere, like the wise bee, he went and sought that person, and he did not return to his own place until he had seen the man and had rec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Note on the Translations
• Contributors
• Chapter 1: Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of St. Antony of Egypt
• Chapter 2: Victricius of Rouen, in Praise of the Saints
• Chapter 3: Mark the Deacon, Life of St. Porphyry of Gaza
• Chapter 4: Constantine the Great, The Empress Helena, and the Relics of the Holy Cross
• Chapter 5: Life of the Holy Virgin Samthann
• Chapter 6: Jonas of Bobbio, The Abbots of Bobbio from the Life of St. Columbanus
• Chapter 7: Dado of Rouen, Life of St. Eligius of Noyon
• Chapter 8: Bede, Martyrology
• Chapter 9: Einhard, Translation of the Relics of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter
• Chapter 10: Raguel, Martyrdom of St. Pelagius
• Chapter 11: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, The Establishment of the Monastery of Gandersheim
• Chapter 12: Odilo of Cluny, Epitaph of the August Lady, Adelheid
• Chapter 13: The Cult of Relics in the Eleventh Century
• Chapter 14: Peter Damian, Life of St. Romuald of Ravenna
• Chapter 15: Life of St. Alexis
• Chapter 16: The Miracles of St. Ursmer on his Journey Through Flanders
• Chapter 17: Drogo of Sint-Winoksbergen, Life of St. Godelieve
• Chapter 18: Hartvic, Life of King Stephen of Hungary
• Chapter 19: Guibert of Nogent, on Saints and Their Relics
• Chapter 20: A Tale of Doomsday Colum Cille Should Have Left Untold
• Chapter 21: Life of the Dear Friends Amicus and Amelius
• Chapter 22: The Book of Ely
• Chapter 23: The Tract on the Conversion of Pons of Léras and the True Account of the Beginning of the Monastery at Silvanes
• Chapter 24: Thomas of Monmouth, Life and Passion of St. William of Norwich
• Chapter 25: The Jewish Martyrs of Blois
• Chapter 26: Liturgical Offices for the Cult of St. Thomas Becket
• Chapter 27: Saga of Bishop Jón of Hólar
• Chapter 28: Gautier De Coincy, Miracles of the Virgin Mary
• Chapter 29: The Cult of Mary Magdalen in Late Medieval France
• Chapter 30: The Lives of St. Margaret of Antioch in Late Medieval England
• Chapter 31: The Middle-English Version Of jacques De Vitry’s Life of ST. Marie D’Oignies
• Chapter 32: Peter of the Morrone (Pope Celestine V), Autobiography
• Chapter 33: The Life of St. David Set Down by an Anchorite at Llanddewibrefi
• Chapter 34: The Old Czech Life of St. Catherine of Alexandria
• Chapter 35: The Canonization Process for St. Vincent Ferrer
• Chapter 36: The Mission of Joan of Arc