Talk:Hagiography

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"Hagiography is the study of saints. 'A hagiography' refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy persons; and specifically, the biography of a saint. Hagiology, by contrast, is the study of saints collectively, without focusing on the life of an individual saint." This is uninformed, but I hesitate to tackle it. Anyone who's actually read some hagiography want to step in here? Wetman 05:30, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

THis is nonsense. Every definition of hagiography from a legitimate source that I've found from OED to M-W to Amer Her define hagiography as either a biography of a saint or saints, by ext. an overly reverential biography of anyone, and as an obsolete term from Hagiographa, the third section of the masoretic Hebrew Bible from Psalms to II Chronicles. Nowhere can I find a corroboration that hagiogrpahy is the study of saints. Neither is the term hagiology defined that way. Dec 27 2006

Added a little about early English Hagiography and AElfric. Sorry if the formatting is substandard. Catullus 14 December 2004

This sentence in general is problematic: "A hagiography refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically the biographies of ecclesiastical and secular leaders." "A hagiography" is not clear English: it should be either "Hagiography refers to writings on a saint or saints" or "A hagiography is a writing on a saint or saints" (the antecedent of 'such holy people' being 'saints'). Hagiography is a literary genre, as is stated below, not a field of study. And then, 'saints' are not specifically 'ecclesiastical and secular leaders' - take, e.g., Sts Felicity and Perpetua. 128.100.110.82 (talk) 18:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Contents 1 Canonization 2 See also 3 Ethiopian Hagiography 4 To what extent is a hagiography a good source for a biography in Wikipedia?

[edit] Canonization

Saints are canonized by the Catholic and Orthodox churches only, AFAIK. There really is no "Christian church," and considering that about half of all Christians are not orthodox, I think it is an important distinction to make. I will change this soon if there are no arguments.

[edit] See also

What exactly is the relevance of entries such as Robertson Davies in the entries in "see also"? Is this some witty joke, "hagiography: see <x>" where x is an article deemed by the editor to be an example of the secular meaning of hagiography? If so, totally inappropriate...Stevage 19:11, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

to any English reader who has an interest in studying hagiography, Fifth Business will be interesting because of the more or less accurate insight it gives into the workings and personnel of the Bollandists. 128.100.110.82 (talk) 18:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ethiopian Hagiography

Ethiopian Hagiography is pretty widespread and important beginning in the 13th century, and I think it should be mentioned in the article somewhere (although I don't have time to do it myself right now). Yom 20:31, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] To what extent is a hagiography a good source for a biography in Wikipedia?

I am having a dispute at Sathya Sai Baba in which I assert that a book that was labelled by a reputable sources as a hagiography is not a good source for the Wikipedia biography. Another contributor thinks otherwise. Andries 19:49, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

The article previously said "the study of saint". I changed saint to "saints". I don't know if anyone had reason to have it as "saint" beforehand. Feel free to change it back if there was a good reason. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.7.241.89 (talk) 17:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC)