A hagiographic text, like any other text intended to tell a story, crystallize the memory it carries in a determined form and perspective. It is well known that history changes as time, place and contexts change. If it is true that every...
moreA hagiographic text, like any other text intended to tell a story, crystallize the memory it carries in a determined form and perspective. It is well known that history changes as time, place and contexts change. If it is true that every society builds the saints it needs and models itself on their image (Delooz), then the hagiographic "discourse" (De Certeau) is essentially dynamic by its inherent nature, as it is a performative action meant to affect reality and direct it in a specific sense (Van Uytfanghe). Not infrequently hagiographic texts act as “myths of foundation”, crediting new institutions, orders, kings or dynasties and anchoring them in revered, often charismatic memory. This continuous interchange between society and depiction of sanctity allows also the most ancient and apparently stable models to face unending processes of re-actualization. This requires a number of “adjustments” often resulting in real “rewritings”. It is clear both on a strictly literary level (Goullet) and on monumental, iconographic, liturgical levels. In this regard, the rise and affirmation of sacred royalty can be seen as a paradigmatic example. It appears somehow as a “rewriting” of previous models, coming from different cultural and religious contexts, but then it evolves repeatedly together with cultural, religious and politic changes in the environments that use it as an extraordinary tool of communication, pressure and power.
