Vera Figura Sancti

This article investigates the role of hagiography as a mediating genre between Scripture and liturgy. Hagiographical readings for saints (legenda) have been featured in the office of Matins in Rome from at least the eighth century. By the early modern period, these texts came under scrutiny for a lack of historical credibility, a concern echoed in the reform of the breviary after the Second Vatican Council which pruned the office of much legendary material. Yet recent scholarship on hagiography suggests that the dominant postconciliar concern-historicity-failed to fully understand the genre. Legenda were not bad history, but forms of narrative exegesis, a means to "display to the faithful fitting examples for their imitation" (SC 111). The liturgical function of the hagiographical readings emerges clearly in four case studies comparing Matins of the Breviarum Romanum 1568 to the Liturgia Horarum of 1971 for Agatha, Cecilia, Agnes, and Lucy. These feasts demonstrate both the motivation and the result of the directive to reform the readings of the saints to accord with the "facts of history" (SC 92c). This study demonstrates the need for further work on these understudied hagiographical readings, which use the liturgical and Scriptural context to propose saints as living extensions of the Gospel, rendered concrete and attractive through narrative

Arithmetic · Art · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · Mathematics · Medieval Literature and History

• Virgin Martyrs

  Karen A Winstead•Virgin Martyrs•1997

  Add to list

• La lecture des Actes des martyrs dans la prière liturgique en Occident. A propos du passionnaire hispanique

  Baudouin de Gaiffier•Analecta Bollandiana•1954

  Add to list

• The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity

  Open Access•Peter Brown•The Journal of Roman Studies•1971

  Add to list

• The Cult of the Saints

  Peter Brown, Peter Robert Lamont Brown•Cult of the Saints•1982

  Add to list