Hagiographic Research
Through the centuries, the saints have given rise to a huge literature. Thousands of Lives, Relic Translations, Miracles have been dedicated to them in Greek, Latin and in the languages of the Christian East (Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Georgian), as well as in the modern vernacular languages. Those texts need to be identified in the manuscripts, published in critical editions and studied from a historical critical point of view.
Hagiography is a literary genre which has its own rules of interpretation: some Lives teach us more about their author and his times than about the saint they claim to describe. Respect to other historical figures, the saints may enjoy a long “afterlife”, often extending through centuries until the present times: studying the evolution of their cult is also an important part of the hagiographic research.
The Bollandists: A unique laboratory dedicated to all the saints, a multidisciplinary team,
a scientific methodology, and a specialized and updated bibliography