Jan 2, 2010

Guide to Literary Terms | Hagiography

Hagiography - a subtype of biography dealing with the lives and legends of saints and the critical study of these lives and legends. There are two main groups: literary, such as The Golden Legend of Jacobus a Voragine of the Thirteenth Century, and liturgical, such as The Roman Martyrology of the late Sixteenth Century. A second definition for hagiography is any idealizing or worshipful biography.

The word was formed by combining the Greek hagio, meaning “saint or sacred,” and grapha, meaning “written or writing about.”